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"As we approach the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, I am delighted to share this update. This year, there are seven alumni from NALSAR Hyderabad who will soon be completing the prestigious B.C.L. programme offered by the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. The B.C.L. programme is equivalent to a masters in law and every year it admits promising law graduates from the various common law countries.
For the 2020-2021 academic year, there were 158 postgraduate students admitted into this programme. It is a matter of immense institutional pride for us that 7 of them are NALSAR graduates. Best wishes to Rahul Mohanty (BALLB-2017), Srimukundan Rajaram (BALLB-2017), Pranahita Srinivas (BALLB-2017), Karan Gupta (BALLB-2018), Abhijeet Rawaley (BALLB-2020), Aishwarya Birla (BALLB-2020) and Priyamvadha Shivaji (BALLB-2020) for the next stage in their careers.
I also want to commend the other Indian Law Schools whose graduates attended the BCL programme this year. In the attached document, I could find students who have completed their bachelor's degrees from NLIU Bhopal (2), JGLS Sonepat (2), NLU Jodhpur (1), GNLU Gandhinagar (1) and NUALS Kochi (1). This just goes to show that there is promising talent in all corners of our country. We have to do much more to ensure that Indian law schools can deliver a globally competitive standard of legal education to a much larger number of our students. I hope that some of these students who have had the opportunity to study abroad will eventually return and contribute to the development of Indian law schools."
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/faculty_of_law_-_bclmjur_profile_-_feb2021.pdf
Based on this information, I have the following questions for LI readers.
(1) Has any Indian Law School sent 7 students to the Oxford BCL in previous years? Some of my college alumni are telling me that places like NLS, GLC, ILS and DU-CLC have sent 2-3 students to this programme in the past. No one seems to have come close to the numbers managed by NALSAR for 2020-2021.
(2) If this has happened, how come there are no students from NLSIU, WBNUJS and NLU Delhi who went for the Oxford BCL in 2020-2021? Is it because nobody from these institutions applied?
(3) If this becomes a consistent trend, NLSIU and NLU Delhi need to seriously watch out for NALSAR in the NIRF rankings for the coming years? Since the NIRF rankings are based on the data for the previous three academic years, I am sure that this is going to reflect in NALSARs' scores for graduation outcomes.
(4) Lastly, people were worried about how other law schools would compete with the recent rounds of faculty hiring at JGLS and NLSIU. On the other hand, I regularly see LI comments trashing NALSAR for failing to attract and retain good faculty. If we go by this update, it appears that they are doing something right. Is it just that the students are that good?
Irrespective of the actual reasons, this reflects very well on the institutional leadership provided by FM and Dhanda in recent years. I hope that they will have the good sense to continue giving younger people a platform to flourish.
All in all, even if this is last year's news, it is a great moment for their institution.
Quote: You could’ve clearly omitted JGLS from this list but you chose not to, in this process you provided credibility and acknowledgment to JGLS. Now do you think the two Jindal graduates at Oxford faced the same kind of struggles (both financial and academic) to get there when compared with their NLU counterparts? This is something that me and you as law students would comprehend but not amateur law aspirants. They’d think Jindal is great.
NLS, the so called Gold Standard by comparison charges Rs 2,75,100 which is 138 times Hazra's fees. JGLS on the other hand charges 3 times NLS's fees and JGLS makes no noise being about accessible and is a private institution funded by a billionaire out of his own pocket. NLUs on other hand are state funded and have a mandate to be accessible. So amateur, stop downplaying JGLS, stop this obsession with law school and go work on your own self.
But anon people on legally india gotta rage I guess
Your premise is also wrong: Tons of people who get into OxBridge are from non-privileged backgrounds, as you may have noticed from the numerous people trying to crowdfund their education. 5 of these 7 at least were on multiple scholarships that they earned (unsure about the other two), did part time jobs, and worked for a few years to fund their education from a place that is so exclusive and with such great faculty and infrastructure, people across the world dream their whole lives to be educated in it. Not everyone wants or gets a free ride on their parents' money.
We don’t know if any nls kids applied or not. Maybe they didn’t send in applications this year because of uncertainty about whether they’d get the campus experience given Covid. We also don’t know how many of these students are funded. It’s quite easy to get these admissions when you don’t ask for funding. Big programmes like this often serve as a cash cow for universities. We also don’t know if this is a trend or a one off. As far as I can see - the students admitted come from different batches- so whether or not you’ll have the same number of people applying next year or the year after that- is honestly unpredictable. I think we should wait and watch- see if there is consistency here or just an anamolous peak. We should also keep track of how many of these students then manage to get employment there/ transition to mphil/phd programmes.
It’s also unfair to project a trend and deem FM and dhanda an unequivocal success- especially when we don’t know exactly who supported these students/ what made their applications decent. However given that they have been in charge for so long. I will concede that they might have done something right. Whether that outweighs all the other stuff they’ve been up to - it’s too soon to tell.
Having said that- I do wonder if there is a more sinister reason for this spike- is there grade inflation at nalsar? Are standards for the BCL at ox changing? It is odd that they wouldn’t care about diversity enough to admit so many students from the same programme.
Regarding faculty at nalsar- I don’t think anyone would dispute that nalsar by itself could attract back alumni who want to teach. The question remains whether the institution can retain them for a significant period of time. There is a faculty attrition problem at justice city and as much as nalsar may want to ignore it or distract away from it- sooner or later it will be apparent to the whole world- not just those in the know.
Regarding grades - as a student, I can assure you that grade averages are declining with each new batch. There have been many new hires in the past few years with fancy LLM degrees and NLU backgrounds (not equating NLU teachers to better personally, but that's what a lot of legally india comments say) with very high standards. Especially since the students are from different batches, your point doesn't even hold weight. If it were true, then 7 students from 2017 onwards would be getting in every year, no?
Regarding Faizan and Dhanda - they have been very active in getting foreign visiting faculty and great electives in recent years, which is resulting in an increasing non-corporate sway (so, more LLM applicants rather than corp folx). Prof. Chauhan (especially) and the new LLM hires actively help students perfect their applications through a lot of their own hard work.
Regarding faculty - most left for their PHDs abroad or other personal reasons. No faculty has left from being so annoyed with the students or the administration (except one alum in 2020 who was hated by students for not knowing how to teach anyway, no big loss). As a student, I've had fantastic faculty in the past few years, including foreign faculty and well known Supreme Court lawyers. You can say it's denial or whatever, but this "massive faculty attrition" is not actively affecting me or other students. People should really learn to stop forming conspiracy theories and focus on their own work, wow
This does not, however, mean that I agree with the fantasy that OP has written in their post about NLS and NLUD being scared and other shit.