The highlights were: The two sides endorsed the resolve of the stakeholders from academia, government, and industry to take forward the following areas of consensus arrived at during the Summit:
1. A continued expanded U.S.-India Higher Education Dialogue with representatives from government, academia, and business that would interact on a periodic basis to inform and underpin the Dialogue. 2. Support for the following goals: ---Promoting strategic institutional partnerships for further strengthening and expansion of collaboration in the priority areas of higher education, including science and engineering, social sciences, and humanities, and addressing societal challenges in areas such as cyber security, energy, environment, health and agriculture; ---Encouraging expansion and deepened collaboration in research and development in the above areas between academic institutions of the two countries through existing initiatives; ---Fostering partnerships in the areas of vocational education and skills enhancement to meet the needs of today’s world; ---Exploration of models for ‘educational institutions for the 21st Century’ (such as ‘meta’ universities); ---Further strengthening programs for student and faculty enrichment and exchange, and development of leadership in academia at all levels; ---Welcoming the involvement of the private sector in the two countries to support and deepen collaboration with the higher education community, faculty exchanges, skills development, and institutional partnerships. 3. India announced its intention to set up an India-U.S. higher education platform as a means to pursue these goals. 4. Strengthening educator enrichment and exchange programs (with the Government of India indicating its intention to sponsor initially up to 1,500 faculty and junior scholars to leading universities and research institutes in the United States) to promote development of human resources while also enhancing broader interaction between the two countries. The following views were also expressed: US model too expensive While Sibal made a strong case for American universities to go to India, Sam Pitroda, chair of the Indian government's policy think-tank the National Knowledge Commission, who has championed new forms of education delivery and expansion of the higher education system, argued that the US model of education was too expensive for the country Professor BB Bhattacharya, former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a professor of business environment at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur's Noida campus, agreed. "US universities have private sources of funds, large endowments and charge high fees from students. If we want to provide education to the non-elite, especially the poor, this model would not work," said Bhattacharya. "The Obama-Singh initiative has the potential to play an important role in shaping the 'innovation' and new central universities in terms of research capabilities and faculty training. But care should be taken [in adapting] the US way of functioning to the Indian context," he said. The summit, hosted by Georgetown University in Washington DC, was attended by more than 300 academics, business leaders and government officials from both countries. In a joint statement issued at the end of the one-day event on 13 October, the US and India agreed to hold a Higher Education Dialogue as an annual event alternating between the two countries. "The dialogue should identify areas for mutually beneficial exchanges and provide a platform for intense and meaningful collaboration among academia, the private sector and government on both sides," the statement said. Priority areas for strengthening collaboration include science and engineering, social sciences and humanities, and "addressing societal challenges in areas such as cyber security, energy, environment, health and agriculture." These are all areas that the US state department had already earmarked for broader international research collaboration, according to analysts. In light of all these : 1. OER Relevance needs to be mentioned in backdrop of the summit in the area of " Collabrative staff development of India with US Universities" If we wish to take up this cause how should we proceed. Wikieducator has the platform, US universities have the content which can be chosen customised and launched and Indian academicians can collabrate to build this up. Ravi Limaye -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
