Blogs:

According to a press release from the US Embassy, US and Foreign Commercial Service Director General Suresh Kumar who is also the Assistant Secretary of Commerce will set rolling a landmark initiative. A trade mission focused on education will be in India between October 10th and 15th.

A variety of educational opportunities will be explored by a mission that will comprise of representatives from at least twenty one US higher education institutions. This mission is being organized in conjunction with USIEF or the US India Educational Foundation.

According to Kumar, relationship between the two countries in the field of education is strongly reinforced by this trade mission that also helps enhance recent shared agenda through the 21st Century Knowledge Initiative.

Kumar says that private-public partnerships between higher learning institutions in America as well as in India will be promoted by this initiative. This will further lead to strengthening of economy thereby fostering opportunity and growth.

The mission will include a comprehensive cross section of higher education institutions in America. Representing state study consortia, four year undergraduate programs and graduate programs that are regionally accredited from at least 15 states, there will be a total of 21 schools on this mission.

A lot of networking events and student fairs will be conducted by this mission in prominent metros in India such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. These are the top cities from where thousands of Indian students are recruited to universities in the United States every year.

October 13th, 2011 will see a US-India Higher Education Summit being held in Washington even as the trade mission will be operating simultaneously. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State and Kapil Sibal, India’s Human Resource Development minister will chair this summit.

Through this summit, ways of creating sustained and innovative partnerships in the higher education field between the two countries will be explored. This summit will also act as a forum to deepen cooperation and linkages between India and our country.

Totaling to 105,000 in 2010, the second largest student population studying in American universities come from India. High quality education access can be granted to students in a range of different fields by our country where the number of higher education institutions that are accredited is over 4000.

Some of the prominent universities and colleges that are a part of this initiative include the Georgia Southern University, Dickinson State University, Ball State University, Dowling  College, Columbus State University, University of Houston-Clear Lake, Stevens Institute of Technology, Southern New Hampshire University, Savannah College of Art and Design, Montana State University, Long Island University, Life University, Le Tourneau University, Hofstra University, University of the Incarnate Word, West Virginia University, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, University of Oregon and University of Illinois at Springfield.

More numbers of initiatives like this could have a great impact on the growth and globalization of our education that is suffering from a damaged reputation and image of late. These types of initiatives should be extended to many more countries.