The United States of America (USA) hosts the most number of international students in the world. Quality education, unique curriculum, multicultural environment, and abundant opportunities are just some of the reasons why many Indian students want to study in the USA.

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Here are top 5 reasons why studying in the US could be the best decision of your life:

1. Academic excellence

The US boasts of some of the finest universities, a lot of which consistently rank in the world university rankings. American institutions are also known to have high academic standards, follow rigorous practices to maintain quality and are well-supported to be able to offer excellent education to its students. As per the QS World Ranking 2019. 33 of the top 100 universities are from the US. Similarly, Times Higher Education Ranking has also ranked seven of the American universities among top 10 list of universities.
2. Flexible education system

American universities and colleges offer a myriad of courses and programs to choose from. You have the freedom to not only select the course content, but also the structure. At the undergraduate level, you have the liberty to pursue different courses before they you declare your major at the end of the second year. This helps to explore your subject interest and then decide without much hurry. Similarly, for your post-graduation in USA, you can choose your preference and when you progress for your dissertation, you can focus on the ideas you want to emphasise upon.
3. Excellent support system for international students

American universities understand the struggles of international students and therefore conduct regular orientation programs, workshops and training to offer assistance. In fact, the international student office helps students like you to get accustomed to a new kind of lifestyle – whether it is an academic query, cultural or social, the staff will be there to assist you round the clock.
4. Cultural diversity

The US is a melting pot of different cultures, races and ethnicities. Its diverse environment ensures that there is acceptance among all communities and there is no room for any sort of discrimination. You’ll be learning with students from different regions of the world thereby making it a rich and stimulating education experience. Growing in the midst of diversity will provide you with strong personality traits and skills that will be valuable in the international market. These days employers prefer students with a multi-cultural background, which you would get a great taste of in the US. A one-of-a-kind international exposure, the US will help you explore a variety of cuisines, customs, festivals, and art too.
5. Lively and vibrant campus life

It’s a known fact that campus life of the US is matchless. Irrespective of the university you study at, you will find yourself in the midst of new cultural experiences and the American way of life. Embrace it and open yourself up to new ideas and new people.

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The Brexit Fueled Death of the British University 

A grim outlook for the British education sector at the start of the year has only got worse as the nation prepares for a “No Deal Brexit” and a long period of uncertainty around UK trade and immigration policies.

A joint letter sent by the heads of 150 UK universities to British Members of Parliament called a No Deal Brexit one of the “biggest threats ever” to British universities. The letter stated “vital research links will be compromised, from new cancer treatments to technologies combating climate change. The valuable exchange of students, staff and knowledge would be seriously damaged.”

British universities are now warning that international students, worth £26bn to the UK economy, will opt for countries such as the US, Canada and Australia instead. Already Australia has moved ahead of the UK as the second biggest destination for overseas students.

However, in a time of crisis for UK universities, opportunities could open up for African higher education institutions. While political developments like Brexit are putting up increased barriers to free global movement, the demand for international education and experience has never been higher.

A British Education in Africa

Since 2002 Rushmore Business School in Mauritius has offered British education in association with British universities from its base in Mauritius. The idea of a winning a British degree without the high cost of relocating and living in the UK proved popular with Mauritian students. Rushmore now offers over 60 programmes in collaboration with UK institutions, some up to PhD level.

In an interview with AfricaLive.net

Dr Essoo announced plans to open new international Rushmore campus in East Africa and Europe.

Both moves would represent a significant reversal of the current trend in Mauritian education of attempting to build the country as an education hub and attract students from Africa and India to study on the island.

Future of Pan-African Education

A Mauritian higher education institution moving into East Africa could be a significant moment in the development of Pan-African internationalist education.

Dr Essoo outlined Rushmore’s development strategy by stating “We were the first institution to really look at this idea of the education hub, of developing Mauritius as a knowledge hub. The previous government started the education hub programme and this government has continued.

However, having looked at it we realised that we are maybe putting the cart before the horse. My personal opinion is that we have tried this education hub approach and it hasn’t worked very well. We attracted maybe 10 to 15% of our students from Africa and India.

I think our next step needs to be going physically to those markets and expanding there. We are working on that now, we call this the third stage of our development. The first stage was setting up initially, the second stage was building our campus here and consolidating what we had, and now the third stage is to go in to other markets and take our model there.

The plan is to have campuses in Mauritius, Eastern Africa, and Europe offering the same courses and offer students mobility between the three campuses. Students from Europe could spend some time in Africa and some time in Mauritius, and see three different cultures. We would then be a truly international school or University and students would get a truly international education.

In addition to Africa, a lot of Europeans, particularly from eastern Europe, study in the UK either for their full degree or for one term or one year through exchange programmes such as Erasmus.

We believe that with Brexit there is going to be an impact on education and on those students. We believe that we can go into those European markets and offer British education.”

The developments at Rushmore highlight the rapid changes the international education market is going through.

Demand for international education has never been higher. However, the traditional education markets in the global north are fostering political environments increasingly hostile to internationalisation.

International higher education is now a $1.9 trillion global market and enrollments in higher education institutions are projected to grow by 200% by 2040. Total enrolment across the African continent will roughly triple from 7.4 million students to nearly 22 million by 2040.

Following the historic launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area

The continent must develop leaders with both a Pan-African and internationalist mindset. The expansion of institutions such as Rushmore Business School will be a significant catalyst in created an integrated African higher education sector able to attract partnerships with the leading British and international academics and teachers.

Rushmore Business School offers a wide range of programmes that address Africa’s future development needs, from engineering, business, hospitality and tourism through to aviation.

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Within his homeland, Winston Churchill’s colossal contribution to saving his people from Hitler eclipses all else, and he is widely regarded as the greatest Briton of all time. So it came as something of a surprise when a senior Labour Party politician recently described him as a “villain” for having ordered troops to fire on striking workers in the Welsh town of Tonypandy in 1910. The claim provoked vigorous denunciations from prominent politicians, as well as more sober reflections in op-ed pages. When the dust settles, as it soon must, Churchill will revert to being the figure of sanctity that he has always been.

Within his homeland, that is. Outside the United Kingdom, Churchill has always had a decidedly mixed reputation. This is especially so in India, my own country, where his undying opposition to freedom for Indians is both well known and widely deplored. As is his hatred for Mahatma Gandhi, a figure he repeatedly mocked, callinghim (among other things) a “malignant subversive fanatic” and “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace.”

Churchill and Gandhi met once, in November 1906. The Englishman was then the undersecretary of state for the colonies; the Indian, a spokesman for the rights of his countrymen in South Africa. Back then, Gandhi wore a suit and tie, as befitting a lawyer trained in London. It is not clear whether Churchill remembered their meeting when, in the early 1930s, he began attacking Gandhi, whose Salt March had made waves around the world and established him as the preeminent leader of India’s struggle for freedom from British rule.

At the time, Churchill was out of office and seeking to rebuild his political career by working up British sentiment in defense of the empire. By the time he was prime minister a decade later, leading the fight against the Nazis, he remained implacably opposed to independence for Gandhi’s people. His senior cabinet colleague Leo Amery recalled how Churchill had once referred to Indians “as a beastly people with a beastly religion.” He might have added that their leader was, in his opinion, the beastliest of them all.

In August 1942, Gandhi launched his last great popular struggle, the Quit India Movement. He was immediately arrested and taken to a prison in Poona (now known as Pune). Churchill also convinced himself that Gandhi was acting on behalf of the Axis powers. Archived British documents show that in September 1942, Churchill wrote to Amery, “Please let me have a note on Mr. Gandhi’s intrigues with Japan and the documents the Government of India published, or any other they possessed before on this topic.” Three days later, Amery replied, “The India Office has no evidence to show, or suggest, that Gandhi has intrigued with Japan.” The “only evidence of Japanese contacts [with Gandhi] during the war,” Amery continued, “relates to the presence in Wardha of two Japanese Buddhist priests who lived for part of 1940 in Gandhi’s Ashram.”

The Quit India Movement was marked by protests across the country. A British government report blamed Gandhi for the violence that followed his arrest. Gandhi was hurt by the accusations, since he had always preached and practiced nonviolence. When the Raj refused to retract the accusations, Gandhi began a three-week fast in prison. Once again, Churchill developed unfounded suspicions about Gandhi, this time convincing himself that the Indian was secretly using energy supplements, and therefore not really fasting.

On February 13, 1943, Churchill wired the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow: “I have heard that Gandhi usually has glucose in his water when doing his various fasting antics. Would it be possible to verify this.” Two days later the Viceroy responded, “This may be the case but those who have been in attendance on him doubt it, and present Surgeon-General Bombay (a European) says that on a previous fast G. was particularly careful to guard against possibility of glucose being used. I am told that his present medical attendants tried to persuade him to take glucose yesterday and again today, and that he refused absolutely.”

As Gandhi’s fast entered its third week, Churchill again wired the viceroy:

Cannot help feeling very suspicious of bona fides of Gandhi’s fast. We were told fourth day would be the crisis and then well staged climax was set for eleventh day onwards. Now at fifteenth day bulletins look as if he might get through. Would be most valuable [if] fraud could be exposed. Surely with all those Congress Hindu doctors round him it is quite easy to slip glucose or other nourishment into his food.

By this time, the viceroy was himself exasperated with Gandhi. But no evidence showed that he had actually taken any glucose. So the viceroy now replied to Churchill in a manner that stoked both men’s prejudices. “I have long known Gandhi as the world’s most successful humbug,” Linlithgow fumed, “and have not the least doubt that his physical condition and the bulletins reporting it from day to day have been deliberately cooked so as to produce the maximum effect on public opinion.” Then, going against his own previous statement, the viceroy claimed that “there would be no difficulty in his entourage administering glucose or any other food without the knowledge of the Government doctors”—this when the same government doctors had told him exactly the opposite. “If I can discover any firm of evidence of fraud I will let you hear,” Linlithgow wrote to Churchill, adding, “but I am not hopeful of this.”

This prompted an equally disappointed reply from Churchill: “It now seems certain that the old rascal will emerge all the better from his so-called fast.”

In 1943, Lord Wavell replaced Linlithgow as viceroy. The prime minister warned Wavell “that only over his [Churchill’s] dead body would any approach to Gandhi take place.” Then he joked that Wavell had “one great advantage over the last few Viceroys”: They “had to decide whether and when to lock up Gandhi,” whereas this viceroy “should find him already locked up.”

Wavell, however, stood against Linlithgow and Churchill and believed that India should become independent. He released Gandhi from prison in May 1944. When World War II ended a year later and a Labour government came to power in Britain, Churchill’s reactionary policies were set aside, and formal negotiations for a transfer of power began. The British departed the subcontinent in August 1947, dividing it as they left into the separate, sovereign nations of India and Pakistan. Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu fanatic in January 1948.

These facts are well known. What is not is that Churchill’s dislike of Gandhi persisted even after British rule in India had ended and his adversary had died.

In 1951, Churchill published an installment of his war memoirs, The Hinge of Fate, and made an astonishing charge against Gandhi. The former prime minister claimed that the Indian had conducted his 1943 fast “under the most favourable conditions in a small palace” and that “the most active world-wide propaganda was set on foot that his death was approaching.” Then Churchill wrote, “It was certain, however, at an early stage that he was being fed with glucose whenever he drank water, and this, as well as his own intense vitality and lifelong austerity, enabled this frail being to maintain his prolonged abstention from any visible form of food.”

“In the end,” Churchill continued, “being quite convinced of our obduracy he abandoned his fast, and his health, though he was very weak, was not seriously affected.”

The publication of this volume of The Hinge of Fate created an uproar in India. Gandhi’s secretary, Pyarelal, and his doctor, B. C. Roy, wrote angry letters to Churchill, dismissing the Englishman’s claims as canards. Gandhi had refused to take glucose at any time during his fast—which Linlithgow had written to Churchill—even though a government doctor had warned him that he might die if he did not. Further, Gandhi had always said that his fast would last exactly three weeks.

The Indian press also responded with fury, archival materials show. The Tribune, a newspaper based in the northern-Indian city of Ambala, said Churchill’s charges had been refuted by those who had firsthand knowledge of Gandhi’s fast, and put Churchill’s baseless attacks in a broader context. “Mr. Churchill’s remarks only betray his lack of understanding of the Mahatma’s character and his general ignorance about this country,” the paper wrote. “Mr. Churchill is a great war-time leader. But no man is more insular in his outlook. He has yet to realise that the people of Asia, Africa and the Middle East are entitled to a life of their own. He still thinks in terms of the hegemony of the world by Anglo-Saxon peoples.”

Even sharper in its criticism was the now-defunct Indian News Chronicle. Its editorial on September 27, 1951, titled “Churchilliana,” said the former British leader’s memoirs were full of myths and misstatements, of which the calumnies against Gandhi were representative. Churchill’s “entire political career,” the paper thundered, “is a record of political opportunism, inconsistency, and downright wickedness.” Calling him a “friend of reaction” and “a high priest of British imperialism,” the editorial ended:

Mr. Churchill is incorrigible, hopelessly out of date, and is getting unpopular day by day. His memoirs might be read for their grandiloquent phraseology, bombast, and nineteenth century English, but no student of history will find his version of recent history a safe guide. The odds are that these memoirs, in course of time, will be rescinded to the dustbin. And as for his malicious attacks on Mahatma Gandhi, we are certain that they will deceive no one. Long after Churchill and his memoirs have been forgotten, humanity will continue to regard Gandhiji as a beacon of peace; and cherish his memory with reverence even as they cherish the memory of Jesus, Buddha and Socrates.

The Hindustan Times’ response was less polemical, but arguably more effective. The paper was then edited by Gandhi’s son Devdas, who dispatched a reporter to locate Major General R. H. Candy, the British doctor who had attended to Gandhi during his prison fast. Asked to comment on Churchill’s allegations, Candy, then living in retirement in rural Hampshire, confirmed that he had indeed advised Gandhi to take glucose, but that Gandhi had refused. “From my knowledge of Mr. Gandhi,” he said, “I am convinced that he would not willingly have taken glucose or any other form of food” during his fast. Churchill’s response to these corrections is unknown.

Recent works by Indians have blamed Churchill for the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, in which more than 2 million people died. As prime minister, Churchill could have done more to ensure speedy supplies of grain to the affected areas. But to call him a war criminal and a mass murderer, as some polemicists have done, is surely hyperbolic.

That said, there is no question that Churchill had an intense dislike of Indians in general, and a pathological suspicion of one Indian in particular. His venomous and long-lasting hatred of Gandhi shows that this great Briton could sometimes think and act like a small-minded parochialist.

This essay has been adapted from Ramachandra Guha’s book Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA is a historian based in Bengaluru.

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