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U.S. Ambassador Says India Should
Welcome Foreign Colleges
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELHI
Issue
cover-dated July 8, 2008
New Delhi -- The U.S. ambassador to
India, in an interview with The Chronicle on Monday, criticized
the opposition of some Indian government officials and politicians
to legislation that would allow American and other foreign universities
to establish campuses or programs in the country.
He spoke favorably, however, about
India's willingness to take on half of the financial and administrative
responsibility in running the Fulbright educational-exchange
program.
The new Fulbright agreement, signed
by the two governments on Friday, doubles the total amount of
scholarships awarded annually to Indians and Americans, to $5-million,
said David C. Mulford, U.S. ambassador to India since 2004.
The numbers of students awarded scholarships in India and the
United States, about 100 each, will double as well, effective
immediately.
For the first time, India will make
a financial contribution to the scholarships, which have been
renamed the Fulbright-Jawaharlal Nehru Scholarships and Grants.
The new agreement also allows both countries to raise funds
from private sources to expand the student-exchange program.
Mr. Mulford also said that, following
his complaint to India's foreign ministry about lengthy delays
in approving dozens of projects proposed by American Fulbright
scholars in 2006-7, the government swiftly resolved the issue.
"I think that problem is cured," he said, as he knocked
on a wooden table.
Perplexing Reluctance
The ambassador said he was perplexed
by the reluctance of some Indians to allow good foreign universities
to operate here. A draft bill that would enable foreign institutions
to set up campuses in India has been in limbo for more than
a year. The country's Communist parties, a few ruling politicians,
and some academics have insisted that the government would do
better to put more money into higher education than to farm
out the task to foreigners.
Mr. Mulford called it "a very
strange situation" that the institutions to which many
Indians want to send their children are not allowed to come
into India.
"If you make a list of the top 100 universities [abroad]
that young Indians go to, why aren't they acceptable counterparties
to come here and make a direct and larger contribution?"
he asked.
Mr. Mulford said he has talked to a
lot of government officials who are eager to welcome foreign
universities. "I would say there is a wave of interest
building," he said. "That says it is extraordinary
that we don't open.... We should open to the outside world."
The problem, he said, is that a few
key people in the government remain opposed to such a move.
India's minister in charge of higher education, Arjun Singh,
recently told a local newspaper that foreign universities "certainly
were not very favorable to complying with our regulations."
Mr. Mulford said he has urged American
universities to build other relationships, such as academic-program
linkages and faculty and student exchanges, with good universities
in India. "Without breaking or violating any laws at the
federal level" in India, he said, "there's a lot a
lot you can do to establish relationships."
The ambassador also cited an urgent
need for more scholarly ties between India and the United States.
It is "extraordinary," he said, that there are 84,000
Indian students in the United States but only 1,700 American
students in India.
"There seems to be a trade imbalance in the education field
that is even more severe than in the projects-and-services field,"
he joked.
Mr. Mulford was a Treasury Department
official during the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush, and he was international chairman of Credit
Suisse First Boston from 1992 to 2003.
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