Washington: Western Kentucky University asks 25 Indian students to leave US varsity as they lack coding skills
At least 25 Indian students who were in their first semester of computer sciences programme at Western Kentucky University have been asked to return to India or find placement in other schools because they did not meet the admission standards, according to a media report.
Some 60 Indian students were enrolled for the programme in January this year and the university was said to have used international recruiters to enrol them, the New York Times reported on Monday.
James Gary, the chairman of Western Kentucky’s computer science programme, told the Times that “almost 40” of the students did not meet the requirements for their admissions, even though they were offered remedial help by the university.
This meant that 35 students may be allowed to continue while 25 “must leave”, the newspaper said.
Gary said permitting the students to continue in the programme would “be throwing good money after bad” because they were unable to write computer programmes, a necessary part of the curriculum and a skill that US schools teach to undergraduates.
“If they come out of here without the ability to write programmes, that’s embarrassing to my department,” Gary said.
The university in a statement said it had altered its international recruitment efforts in India. The school will also send members of the computer science faculty to India to meet with students before offers of admission are made in the future.
The chairman of the Indian Student Association at Western Kentucky University, Aditya Sharma, has expressed concern for the students who have been asked to leave.
“I definitely feel bad for these students,” said Sharma, a graduate student in public health administration. “They’ve come so far. They’ve invested money into it.”
But he admitted that some of the students had adopted what he called a “casual” approach to their studies. “They could not meet their GPA (grade point average), so the university had to take this decision.”