Mumbai and Kathmandu... Are you ready for Ben??

As I mentioned yesterday, I am heading to India and Nepal at the end of October. I work for a University in Minnesota as the Assistant Director for International Student Services. 30% of my responsibilities is to recruit international students. Every morning I log on to my computer and respond to inquiries about our university... Of course I have been given the charge of increasing our international student population. A year ago, I established a business relationship with a company in Nepal and since then, our numbers have begun to climb. As a result, we have gone from 160 international students two years ago, to 220 international students today. Although I must say that with that increase has come growing pains. This is largely a result of not having enough jobs on campus to employ all of these students. Also, it seems that this recruiting agency is telling students inaccurate information which gives them unrealistic expectations when they get here... so I am headed to Nepal to speak with the director of this recruiting agency to make sure he is telling our prospects the right things. Also, since I am over there... I will be stopping in Mumbai India. One of our former students has a few connections with some recruiting agencies over there, so we are going to try and increase our numbers from India. Over the last few years, we have only had about 2 or 3 Indian students. Current Statistics show that, other than China, India sends the most students to the US. Our perspective is: if this is the case, why do we only have 3 students from India then? So, I will be attempting to establish realationships with at least one agency in India. Besides this, I will be taking a few days to experience the culture and eat the food while simultaneously trying to avoid bacteria... thereby reducing my chances of experiencing dissentary.

Anyway... good times ahead as I become a world traveler.