India’s education system is at a crossroads, India’s Union Minister for Human Resource Development Shri Kapil Sibal said during an Oct. 30 speech at Georgetown University.
While in the United States, Sibal met with the U.S. Secretary for Education, Arne Duncan. He also met with presidents of several universities, including Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Yale, New York Academy of Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, according to a press release on the Indian Embassy’s Web site.
Universities in India face challenges but are open to possibilities for growth and international partnerships, according to Sibal.
“We are grappling with the issue of quality,” Sibal said in a press conference recorded on the Embassy of India’s Web site.
Sibal’s trip follows his meeting with U.S. Under Secretary of State William Burns in which they discussed an India-U.S. Education Council, according to a press release on the Embassy of India Web site.
“If we could actually tie up with some of these high-quality American universities and persuade them to enter into arrangements either with existing institutions or setting up new innovative universities in India ... We would then set an example of the level of excellence that we aspire for,” Sibal said at the press conference.
Many institutions — including AU — are looking to collaborate with India and its schools as equal partners.
Dr. Surjit Mansingh, an adjunct professor at AU who has both taught and studied in India, is teaching a class in the School of International Service this semester called “Evolving Triangle: United States, India and China,” exploring the relations among those states.
“The important part of that was to carry the relationship into the realm of an actual partnership,” Mansingh said of Sibal’s meeting with the American education secretary.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. provided financial assistance to India in the medical and agricultural sectors, but India is seeking a more genuine partnership in its education system, according to Mansingh.
At AU, the opportunities for India studies are expanding again after they dropped in the 1980s, according to Mansingh.
Next semester, “by request of the students,” who petitioned SIS to add this course, Mansingh said she will be teaching “Contemporary India,” a new 200-level SIS class.
Michelle Egan, director of the SIS Comparative and Regional Studies program, said the Indian Ambassador to the U.S. spoke at SIS earlier this semester. In addition, SIS International Relations Professor and Chair of the AU’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations Studies center, Amitav Acharya, will lead a student trip to India this winter break, according to Egan.
“There are a lot of interesting developments going on in this area,” Egan said in an e-mail.
Sibal’s tour of American post-secondary education precedes a state visit to the White House by India’s prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, planned for Nov. 24. This will be the first official state visit of the Obama administration and “will highlight the strong and growing partnership between the United States and India,” according to a White House press release.
You can reach this staff writer at mfowler@theeagleonline.com.
