'China ahead of India in creating world class institutions'

Unlike its counterpart, India has focused on increasing the number of institutions, rather than creating world-class educational institutions, says Richard C Levin, President of Yale University.

Updated on: Nov 10, 2011, 17:46:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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China is ahead of India in creating world class institutions, said Richard C Levin, President of Yale University.

Unlike its counterpart, India has focused on increasing the number of institutions, rather than creating world-class educational institutions.

The Chinese government had focused on 10 universities including Peking and Tsinghua to compete in global arena as compared to none by India, which has focused on setting up new higher education institutions to cater to growing demand for higher education.

"China's Peking University would be among top 25 universities in the world in a decade. And, India has opted for egalitarian tendency for setting more universities," Levin told Hindustan Times on Wednesday.

Levin also finds popular US sentiment in favour of China than India primarily because of size of the Chinese economy and its focus on the US market. Recent US data have shown that the number of US students taking admission in Chinese universities is increasing at a much higher rate than in India.

But, he believes that India has an advantage over China because of its free society but it needs to invest more for research in its universities as done in the developed world.

Levin is in India to explore more research partnership for Yale University and would be discussing future of foreign education providers in India with HRD minister Kapil Sibal.

Yale like many US universities such as Harvard and MIT has ruled out setting up a campus in India in near future.

Levin, however, found delay in enactment of Foreign Education Providers Bill and Innovation University Bill as an impediment in attracting foreign universities in India.

"Quite of them (US universities) will be interest for independent entry into the Indian market, if the (Foreign Education Providers) bill is passed," he said, while referring to heads of some US universities during Indo-US Education Summit in Washington last month.

Sibal has already held a couple of meeting with MPs belonging to UPA in his bid to get the bills passed in winter session of Parliament.

US-based universities had shown interest in India with President of Columbia University Lee C Bollinger meeting HRD minister Sibal earlier this week. Bollinder is believed to have discussed the possibility of Columbia University initiating a partnership with an Indian University in 2012.

HRD ministry officials said that the partnership between India and US universities are likely to strengthen when US secretary for state Hillary Clinton visits India in December to participate in Indo-US Education Summit. The first part of the summit was held in Washington in October this year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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