New initiatives likely to be announced on US-India education cooperation

Washington, July 9 (ANI): India and the United States are likely to announce fresh initiatives to boost cooperation in the education sector during the second US-India Strategic Dialogue to be held in New Delhi in the third week of July.

Announcing this here, Robert O. Blake, Jr., Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, said: "Education cooperation, I think, is going to be one of the most important pillars of our future cooperation in the next 10 or 20 years.

American educational institutions of all kinds are very interested in expanding their collaboration with their Indian counterparts."

"We hope to have the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit this fall. I don't yet have a date, but we may be able to announce it on the margins of the Strategic Dialogue. That will provide a tremendous opportunity for Minister Sibal and the Indian educational establishment to come to the United States and speak to a broad range of higher educational institution representatives on their plans for offering opportunities for American universities in India and also listening to where American universities see those opportunities," he added.

" I think from their perspective American universities would like to expand their presence in India. They'd like to expand the collaborative research and development activities that are already underway. They would like to learn more about how we can work on things like faculty development in India which is going to be a critical part of ensuring that all of the young Indians that are now entering into the higher education market in India will get a proper education so they can compete in the 21st Century," Blake said.

Referring to the Obama-Singh Initiative of November 2010, Blake said that both Washington and New Delhi were focused on fostering more research and development and faculty development.

"So, we expect some announcements on that as well on the margins of the Strategic Dialogue," he said.

Asked whether the Indo-U.S. Higher Education Summit would focus more on an exchange program wherein U.S. students get a chance to study in India, Blake said: It's something that we've always wanted to do more on, which is to try to increase the number of American students going to India which are still relatively modest, I think between 2,000 and 3,000 right now compared to the more than 100,000 Indian students that are studying in the United States."

"So, we are looking at new initiatives to increase the number of students going to India, both for longer term study, but also for shorter term internships and semester abroad and a whole variety of other programs that our universities offer," he added. (ANI)