By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JUNE 23, 2013: THE HRD Minister, Dr. M.M. Pallam Raju, and visiting US Secretary of State, Mr. John F. Kerry, are to co-chair India-US Higher Education Dialogue on 25th June, 2013 in New Delhi. During the dialogue, the two sides will take up Research and Innovation Partnership under Singh-Obama Knowledge Initiative, Institutional Partnership and Skill Development as well as Promotion of Community Colleges in India and Technology Enabled Education including massive Open Online Courses. IIT - Bombay is entering into an MoU with edx. The intended outcome also includes two-way students' mobility from India to USA and vice-versa. India and US will also take up linkage between industry and academia and faculty development. They are also expected to take up issues like post Doctoral Research and co-operation in training for the school teachers.

The HRD Minister had visited USA last month for forging linkages and collaborations in the field of Higher Education. The educational relations have intensified between India and USA after the visit of the Prime Minister of India to USA in 2009 and reciprocal visit of the President of USA Mr. Barack Obama to India in 2010. The first India-US Higher Education summit was convened at Washington DC in October, 2011.

During the dialogue, major announcements are expected. This includes Second Round of Singh-Obama Knowledge Initiative Awards which have 8 joint research programmes under it, first batch of 126 Raman Fellows, who are being sponsored by UGC to take up Post-Doctoral research in US institutions and “Connect India” Programme for US students to come to India.

To promote community colleges in India, a framework has been developed by the HRD Ministry after the first India-US Higher Education Summit and International Conference on Community Colleges. It was organized in February this year in the Indian capital. Following un-precedented response from both academia and the industry, five community college principals/leaders will be sponsored for a visit to community colleges in US for the leadership development. The two sides may also agree to promote cyber networks through IIT Delhi and University of Nebraska.

The Plenary session will be followed by three working session on students mobilities and research collaborations, community colleges and technology enabled education. The working sessions would be co-chaired by Secretary (HE) Mr. Ashok Thakur and US Under Secretary of State Ms. Tara Sonenshine.