Mumbai summit to push Indo-US educational ties

In an attempt to rope in American universities and encourage foreign students to study in India, the Indo-American Society will hold an Indo-US summit in the city from July 30 to August 1.

With 900 American colleges and 23 speakers participating, the summit aims to create collaborations between institutions, faculty and researchers from both India and the US and encourage student exchange programmes. 

“More than 10,000 Indian students choose to go to the US to pursue higher education, but almost four times as many students who want to study there cannot do so for various reasons. Thus lays a huge opportunity for the US institutions to bring in their brand of education to India,” said V Rangaraj, president, Indo-American Society.  

Not only will the summit act as a platform for debate and discussion, but through B2B sessions it will also arrange for meetings between institutions interested to set shop in India with the Indian authorities.

“Most of the times, institutions interested in coming to India do not know how to go about it. We hope that by creating a platform we can help them interact with each other,” said Dr Indu Shahani, principal of HR College, Churchgate, and convenor of the summit.

The summit hopes to encourage American students to study in India. “We do not have dorms to accommodate, or a suitable atmosphere to attract foreign students. But we hope that through the summit, these issues will come to light and action can be taken in the right direction,” said Shahani.

Vibha Puri Das, secretary of higher education, will speak on emerging directions in higher education through an Indo-US perspective. Former vice chancellor of Pune University Narendra Jadhav will expound on the policy framing and regulations in higher education.

Through discourses on community colleges in the US, Vijay Khole, former vice chancellor of Mumbai University, will talk about the scope for community colleges in India. “Community colleges are very popular in the US. They offer technical and vocational courses and it is a model Indian colleges can think of adopting,” said Shahani.

In documenting the summit, Jairaj Purandare will prepare a position paper looking at the state of higher education in India and likely outcome of the direction in which it is headed. It will be released by Kapil Sibal on the first day of the summit.