A recent blogpost brought to mind the difficulties faced by foreign students as well as some of their successes.
Every year-end, we have a farewell party for the outgoing batch. In that, the best outgoing student is voted/selected. This year it was an African (Tanzanian I think) student. A foreigner, who has learnt English and "koncham koncham" Telugu and a little Hindi in his three year stay and managed to get good marks and make a huge number of friends.
This is unfortunately, not common. Most African students have studied in Arabic and cannot understand English. The amount of science they have done in school is also not adequate. With these two huge handicaps, many of them are unable to cope.
In addition, they meet with a lot of prejudice amongst society as a whole and are unable to get houses for rent etc.
(Some of the prejudice is understandable, since in Hyderabad, there have been a few cases of Nigerian drug peddlers posing as students.)
The University, through which they come, should call them six months in advance, teach them English and a little bit of the local language before they enrol in the colleges.
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