India, US education partnership to meet challenges ahead

October 13th, 2011 - 10:27 pm ICT by IANS  

Washington, Oct 13 (IANS) India and the United States Thursday set out to forge a new collaborative relationship in education with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling it a “driving force” in the India-US strategic partnership.

“For those of you watching the great rise of India, I hope you share our excitement,” she said inaugurating a daylong education summit she is co-chairing with India’s Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal.

“This largest democracy, this wildly pluralistic nation is on the path to providing greater benefit to their citizens within the context of freedom and opposition,” Clinton told over 300 higher education leaders, government and private sector representatives participating in the summit.

Noting that the US and India have a long history of exchanges with over 100,000 Indian students coming to the US last year, she said the US wanted much greater exchanges and “particularly we want to see more American students enrolling for academic credit in Indian institutions.”

Clinton also assured potential Indian students that the United States would do everything possible to help them sort out real and sham institutions in the country. “We have expanded our advisory services for Indian students and their families to help sort out misleading offers that come over the internet.”

The US was also encouraging local officials in the states to engage with their counterparts in India to support education collaboration and connection at every level, she said.

Agreeing with Clinton, Sibal said: “It’s only through education that we hope to involve populations across the globe to confront the challenges of the 21st century.”

“Without doubt you define the milestone of the 20th century while India, as Secretary Clinton described recently, is a ‘defining story line of early 21st century’,” he said.

Sibal told the gathered educationists that they must create an appropriate environment to help the young “face the challenges of tomorrow to reshape the world in a globally inter-connected, mutually inter-dependent world.”

“The way forward is partnerships,” he said. “This historic summit will forge a new collaborative structure in which our young can draw inspiration from your benchmarks of excellence in education.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

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