Hello!
I was Googling things and I came across an op-ed on the Brookings website: “Strengthening India-U.S. Relations through Higher Education.” If you’re interested in higher education in India, take a look if you want!
2 thoughts on “If you’re interested in India…”
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It’s interesting that you raised the point about the difficulty faced by South Asian universities in establishing ties with the US. I found this article recently, and it’s about the rise of liberal arts programmes in private universities in India. One of these universities is Shiv Nadar University (S.N.U), and the spokesperson/ dean of studies of SNU testifies to the large presence of faculty members who are from universities in the US/UK, or they have studied abroad before in those universities before and are teaching in SNU now. Do you think it’s possible that the presence of a diverse and overseas-educated faculty in HE institutions in India can go some way in attracting greater partnership and exchange of teaching and research practices between India and the US?
Here is the link to the article:
https://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/in-india-a-rise-of-private-universities-and-liberal-arts-programs/?_r=0
Thanks for posting this article Kendall! I have always found this part of the US diplomatic outreach interesting. Sadly, in my experience, these collaborations between US and India have not benefited more than a few institutions and professors in the country. I was a part of one of the grants mentioned in the article (21st Century Knowledge Initiative), and the results were disappointing. Unless high quality institutions keenly mentor or nurture long-term partnerships with multiple South Asian universities, they cannot substantially contribute to their quality. At the South Asian end, we can’t truly collaborate with US universities unless we train our students in critical thinking and problem solving instead of rote learning. This requires a fundamental overhaul of the school and higher education system which cannot sustain unless its internally fueled, no foreign country can precipitate this change.