Edu-leaders

The United States Under Secretary of State William Burns on his trip to India in October paid a rare visit to the minister for human resource development Kapil Sibal, to express his keen interest in setting up an India-US Education Council.

The proposed council will include people from industry and academia and will collaborate on areas like distance education, research, vocational education, faculty exchange, skill development, private public partnership and setting up of new universities.

Kapil Sibal is expected to advance the concept during his visit to the US. Sibal is travelling with a delegation that includes representatives from the industry as well as universities. They will be meeting American policymakers as well as academicians at universities like Harvard, Yale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is visiting the US in November, and education is expected to be an agenda on his visit as well.

“There are many private players and US universities that are keen on investing in India and there are a lot of people here who are keen on collaborating with the US,” said Sibal.

Burns said that the universities in America are keen to enter India and want the road map for their entry into the country to be expedited. He also conveyed that American universities would be interested in getting involved with the proposed 14 innovation universities in India.

India’s higher education system is one of the biggest in the world with around 13 million students and 150,000 teachers. With the Foreign Education Providers Bill on the anvil many foreign players are trying to forge agreements with India’s higher education institutes.