The first U.S.-India Higher Education Summit, held here Thursday and attended by more than 300 academics, business leaders, and government officials, showcased plenty of good will between the two countries. But it also drew out the many challenges they face as they seek deeper, broader and more sustained collaboration.
In opening remarks on the campus of Georgetown University, Kapil Sibal, India’s minister in charge of higher education, noted that his government wants to double the college-going rate among young people, to 30 percent. To do that, it needs 1,000 more universities and 50,000 more colleges. Yet the higher-education system remains underfinanced and lacks the talent necessary to staff such institutions.
Meanwhile, American colleges are eager to develop partnerships with Indian universities focused on global research projects, joint-degree programs, and student and faculty exchanges. Whether many American institutions are interested in, or capable of, helping meet India’s vast demand for education remains to be seen. Although few concrete plans emerged from Thursday’s gathering, several participants said the discussions helped create a road maproadmap for future collaboration.
The summit itself is a culmination of several years of work between the administrations of President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Two years ago, they announced the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative and jointly committed $10-million to further academic collaboration and exchange. The governments have nearly tripled the number of Fulbright-Nehru scholars flowing between the two countries in the past three years, and encouraged American universities to visit and explore the country for partnership opportunities.
Those initiatives are part of a larger effort to align the interests of the two nations, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was among the keynote speakers Thursday.
“Educational collaboration is a driving force in this strategic dialogue,” Mrs. Clinton told the attendees, noting that both countries believe an educated citizenry is crucial to the health of their democracies. She encouraged attendees to “consider no idea off-limits, no outcome impossible.”
Seeking the $1,000-a-Year Degree
It quickly became clear, however, that collaboration held different meanings for different people — even within their own countries. Mr. Sibal, an aggressive reformer, has championed a bill that would allow foreign universities to set up shop in India. “You always ask the wrong question,” he told the Americans in the crowd. “The issue is not how many students come from India to America. The issue is how much education can you provide to Indian students in India.”
But another equally forceful figure in India, Sam Pitroda, who has led the effort to build India’s technological infrastructure, argued that traditional forms of education do not work in a global context. “The U.S. model is too expensive,” he told the crowd. “We need to create a model where you can get a degree for $1,000 a year, maybe $2,000.”
If there was a common point of agreement, it was that technology will soon allow for new forms of cooperation. “I foresee a day when an IIT student can register for a liberal-arts course at Yale, while also enrolling in an economics class at Stanford,” Mr. Sibal told the crowd, referring to the Indian Institutes of Technology.
Richard C. Levin, president of Yale, was among several high-profile American university leaders in attendance. He encouraged people to think about “less obvious” forms of engagement and mentioned two of Yale’s key India projects. The first is to build deep India expertise within Yale’s faculty, across disciplines. The other is to work with Indian universities to provide advanced leadership education.
Yale’s approach may be unusual, however. Adam J. Grotsky, executive director of the United States-India Educational Foundation, noted in another session that he has seen many American university delegations come through India looking for partners. “The problem is that they’re not teaching enough about India on their campuses,” he said, which limits their ability to understand and engage in the country.
Another point of concern was the imbalance in the number of students traveling to each country. More than 100,000 Indian students are seeking degrees in the United States, while roughly 2,700 American students travel to India each year, and then only for short periods of study.
Limits on Efforts
Money has also been a persistent roadblock. Few Indian officials seemed to expect that American universities would pony up the money for any kind of elaborate bricks-and-mortar operation, and recognized as well that study-abroad and research partnerships need external support.
In the closing session, Mr. Sibal made a focused pitch to the Americans in the audience, saying that Indian investors could supply the land and infrastructure for whatever operations they might wish to set up. And in sessions throughout the day, much discussion centered around the role Indian industry could play, whether to offer internships for American students, finance research projects, or support work-force development programs.
None of the universities represented on panels seemed to be thinking in terms of branch campuses. More representative was the model being developed by Virginia Tech. Its president, Charles W. Steger, said the university was building a small graduate-level research institute outside of Chennai, with guidance from an advisory committee that has both Indian and American members. Many institutions on both sides were eager to discuss joint-degree programs.
At the same time, new opportunities are emerging, speakers said. In addition to seeing the possibilities created by online learning and open courseware, India is just beginning to pay serious attention to vocational education. That could offer inroads for American community colleges, some of which have already been asked to serve as advisers to technical and vocational institutes in India. “Today it is India that can teach America about rapid economic growth,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “reminding us all that education is the great equalizer.”
If there were a lasting image to emerge from the summit, it was that of India as the new frontier.
“You built your universities. Now you get to build ours,” Mr. Sibal said at a reception Wednesday night. American institutions need look no farther than India if they wish to help build new cities, find solutions to environmental challenges, or design better transportation systems, he said. “In that process, we are the land of opportunity.”
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