In a 30-minute high level meeting between officials from the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) and their counterparts in the US, a first of its type ?joint working group? in education has been set up between the US and India.
The meeting was attended by Kapil Sibal, Union minister of human resource development, and William J Burns, visiting under secretary (political affairs) from the US state department, along with Meera Shankar, Indian ambassador to the US, and senior officials from the MHRD and the ministry of external affairs.
The ?joint working group? will have a set of academia and government representatives from both countries and will focus on joint initiatives in the field of secondary, higher and vocational education. The group will meet once every year, alternately in India and USA.
The immediate next steps would be to work out a ?concrete plan of action? in terms of focus areas within secondary, higher and vocational education that will be finalised at the next delegate meeting to take place before the end of the year. ?While the US education sector has clearly been looking for entry into the Indian market, India would be interested to work with the US in enhancing its vocational education which is not very strong,? said an MHRD official who attended the meeting.
Additionally, the intent to learn from the US? ability in establishing world-class universities was expressed. The President of India, Pratibha Patil, had recently laid the objective of adding 14 Indian universities to the rankings of world-class universities. US is home to six of the top 10 world-class universities as per the academic ranking of world universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Although the Foreign Education Bill was not mentioned during the discussion, Sibal said foreign institutes ?will not be allowed to profit in India?. The minister underlined that his focus areas would be to bring up the gross enrolment ratio beyond 15 from the current level of 11.