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September 26, 2006
Disabled students turn to foreign universities
Disabled students turn to foreign universities
Swastika Mehta
Saturday, September 23, 2006 NDTV (New Delhi):
The lack of infrastructure on campus for students who are visually impaired
or hearing impaired has now forced several of them to look at foreign
universities.
Smriti, 22, is an M Phil student at Jawaharlal Nehru University and among
the 1 per cent visually impaired students in the country to reach this
educational level. But her journey so far has been a difficult one.
"There are no facilities in India. I have to do everything on my own. I have
to go to libraries, scan all my books. It's a struggle, visually challenged
people work more than sighted people," she says.
Smriti wants to make a crossover in every sense of the word. After
completing her M Phil in Mythology, she plans to go to Chicago University
for a doctorate in Disability Studies.
"Here we don't even have books and computers. Some people are from such poor
families that they don't even have a tape recorder to study from," she adds.
Better infrastructure
For disabled students, the West promises full fledged universities like the
Gallaudet University in Washington DC for the hearing impaired and better
physical infrastructure on campuses.
What's more, it opens up a whole new world of job opportunities.
For instance Jagdish, who is hearing impaired and a class X pass out, has
with grave difficulty managed to get a job as a teacher at the School for
Deaf.
He earns a meagre amount of Rs 6,000 every month and has been limited by the
fact that signing is not recognised as a language, like it is in the West.
He was unable to study courses like Engineering and Medical Science.
"Abroad, there are deaf and dumb pilots," says Jagdish.
"There are only few of us who have family support and can thus afford to go
abroad," adds Smriti.
Looking West
Twenty five-year-old Shobhan, a PhD student at JNU, took his GREs last year.
He is waiting to arrange a scholarship to go to the US.
Though the Centre provides scholarships to Dalit, tribal and Muslim students
who want to pursue higher education abroad, there is no government
scholarship for students with disabilities.
"If I put it simply, we can't even walk freely here. We don't have
accessibility like we have in the US," complains Shobhan.
For students like Smriti and Shobhan, it's a mixture of both ambition and
disillusionment that pushes them to apply to universities in the West.
Ambition to find a place under the sun and disillusionment as there is lack
of infrastructure in India.
Source:
http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?category=National&template=Education&slug=Disabled+students+rue+lack+of+facilities&id=93668&callid=1
Aqeel Qureshi
Posted by jicafriends at September 26, 2006 02:13 PM