NEW DELHI - Amity, a leading education-oriented group, will become the first from India to open two new business and management-oriented campuses in London and Singapore.

Announcing this new initiative, Atul Chauhan, CEO of AKC Group of Companies and President of Ritnand Balved Education Foundation, said the two campuses were being set up in a European and South East Asia environment with the specific objective of attracting students of those regions to experience the best of the West and East in terms of education. They would begin functioning on a semester basis from September this year, he added.

With the Amity Group already having 17 years of experience in the field of education and over 60,000 students on its rolls in India, Mr. Chauhan said the aim was to broaden and reach out and offer degrees in business and management abroad at subsidized fees.

Programs on offer include MBA for one and two years, M.Sc. (Management) for a year and a B.A. (Honours) in Business Management for three years.

He said it was a fact that it was prohibitively expensive to acquire higher education in Europe in the normal course, and the Amity Group was of the view that this was one area where it could contribute.

When asked how many Indian students have responded to Amity’s offer of studying in London and Singapore, Mr. Chauhan said that about 100 to 120 students have applied. When asked how difficult it was to acquire the required clearances abroad, he said it was stringent. Asked to make a comparison between the regulatory framework that prevailed in India with what prevailed in Europe or South East Asia, Chauhan said they were similar in many ways, and more or less equal in terms of degree of difficulty as far getting approvals was concerned.

Dr. Peter Taylor, the Director of the Amity Campus, London, told ANI that this was a laudable initiative on the part of Amity, and said he expected interested students to take full advantage of the subsidized fee structure and the global standard of education and facilities on call. He said that London campus is housed in a grade one heritage building in the prestigious Bloomsbury area of Central London. Top academic institutions and cultural landmarks like the British Library, the London School of Economics and the London Business School etc surrounded the campus, he added.

Earlier, he had told the gathering at the event that the Singapore campus is located in Raffles Place in the heart of Singapore’s financial district. Dr. Craig Ewan formerly of the Australian National University, one of the top 20 universities in the world, would oversee the Singapore campus.

Chauhan and Taylor both informed that Amity has tied up with one of Britain’s leading universities, Anglia Ruskin University, for awarding one and two year degrees to students at these two campuses.

Dr. Taylor said that apart from the amazing central location and the affordable fee structure, both university campuses offer a two-year work visa after completion of the MBA (one year course). (ANI)