India to implement US concept of community colleges

Wednesday, 26/06/2013

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130626/main5.htm

New Delhi : The India-US relations are set to graduate to the education sector. India today drew the contours of a course for collaboration with educational institutions in the United States, with particular accent on developing skills through tie-ups between technical institutes and community colleges.

At the India-United States Higher Education Dialogue co-chaired by Human Resource Development Minister MM Pallam Raju and US Secretary of State John Kerry, the minister said besides institutional ties, deepening co-operation in research and development, encouraging faculty exchange, and development of teachers is the way forward. The roadmap also includes promoting a student exchange, skill development and thrust on online education such as Massive Open On-Line Courses (MOOCs). Sharing the HRD Ministry’s vision of the education system, he said: “We wish to make skill development an integral part of the country’s education system.”

Raju said he visualised skill development as an integral part of Indian education and hoped to learn from the US experience of community colleges, which work with the industry to provide training and impart skills that will meet the requirement of the end user.

Raju said while a tie-up with 200 community colleges was being discussed, there was scope for 20,000 such colleges. Today, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the All-India Council of Technical Education and the American Association of Community Colleges to establish these institutes.

Kerry appreciated India’s efforts to make education a right. Describing the goal set by the ministry in the education sector as challenging, he said the US was willing to forge partnership in various fields. He said community colleges were the lifeline of education in the USA and stressed the need for people-to-people exchange. Highlighting the role of technology in promoting education, Kerry underlined the need to further promote research by the two countries.

Besides community colleges, three MoUs were signed today -- one between IIT- Delhi and the University of Nebraska on collaboration on Cyber System, another between IIT-Bombay and edX (a leading provider of Massive Open On-Line Courses) and the third between the ITM Group of Institutions and Montgomery College on capacity development.

Eight awards of joint research projects under the Singh-Obama Knowledge Initiative were also announced. Under it, both India and the US committed $5 million each for projects through faculty exchanges and research and innovation collaboration in areas of food security, climate change, sustainable health and public health.

The first 126 CV Raman Fellows, who will conduct post-doctoral research in different institutions in the fields of pharmacy medicine, agriculture, biotechnology, microbiology, pure sciences, bio chemistry, engineering and arts from the Fall Season was also announced.