Pakistani students can get international degrees from Italian universities at low cost: Ambassador Andreas Ferrarese

Staff Writer

Islamabad: Italy’s Ambassador to Pakistan Andreas Ferrarese said this week that Pakistani students can get international degrees from the Italian universities at low cost.

Given that about 30,000-35,000 students go abroad to study every six months, countries are interested in attracting students from Pakistan. Until recent times, Italian universities taught in the national language, which was a bottleneck.

But now more courses are being offered in English. Italy offers good public-sector universities that cost roughly as much as a degree from the Lahore University of Management Sciences or the Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture.

Ambassador Andreas Ferrarese said Italy was still working on developing an infrastructure to process large volumes of students coming in. Sifting through actual students and those using education as a ploy to find a way into the country to settle and flip pizzas is an arduous labour-intensive task, the ambassador explained. While a foreign student is allowed to work 18 hours a week, they are not allowed to enter the job market on a student visa.

“We have a community of 200,000 Pakistanis in Italy. About 140,000 are documented and 60,000 are being documented,” said the ambassador.