India, Oz for new student credit mobility system

India and Australia are looking for a new mechanism for credit transfer to ensure better mobility between of students the two countries.

Updated on: Aug 2, 2011, 01:57:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India and Australia are looking for a new mechanism for credit transfer to ensure better mobility between of students the two countries.

It will mean that a student in an Indian university or a college will be able to do part of his course in an Australian university and vice-versa for Australian students.

"We want our students to be exposed to India," said Australian minister for tertiary education Chris Evans.

There was an agreement between the vice-chancellor of the universities of the two countries at the first meeting of India Australia Education Forum constituted in 2008. Fifty vice-chancellors from Australia and 14 from Australia participated in the discussion on Sunday.

HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Monday said although the vice-chancellors were on the same page, the modalities needed to be worked out on the credit-transfer system.

"Student mobility could be ensured only if there was assurance regarding quality of education and if qualifications were recognised," he said.

The two countries also agreed to explore the possibility of sharing of students in area of vocational education.

Sibal said the national vocational education qualification framework would be ready by end of this year which would help in mobility of students.

The collaboration comes at the time when Australia has witnessed a fall in foreign students of about 9.1% in May 2011, as compared to same period in 2010.

It was mainly because of new visa regime where financial support for a student to pursue education in Australia was introduced. "We don't want students to come for work rather than education," Evans said.

Evans also belied the fears about security of Indian students saying that they have put a system in place for proactive action in case of any attack. He also said that all colleges have been asked to re-register to close down fake educational institutions attracting foreign students.

"Survey among Indian students show they are satisfied with the facilities available."

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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