US seeks student exchange programmes

The United States stressed on jointly working towards increasing skills of students to face future challenges and said this can be done through exchange programmes and partnerships between India and the US. "We need to make sure that next generations of innovators and entrepreneurs have the skills and training," US Secretary of State John Kerry said at the India-US Higher Education Dialogue. HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju and Kerry co-chaired the India-US Higher Education Dialogue. During the dialogue, both sides took 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. Faced with the task of skilling 500 million youth, India said it was implementing the US concept of community colleges to make sure that its workforce is trained to meet newer challenges. Visualising skill development to be an integral part of the country's education system, HRD Minister Pallam Raju said based on the US' experience of community colleges, India has embarked to develop community colleges. Talking to reporters after the India-US Higher Education Dialogue HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju, said, "We are only borrowing the concept and not going to replicate what is happening there in the US" as the economic condition of the two nations are different. "It is a relevant model. Over 100 years, the US has fine tuned that model. It has become much more than impacting skills," Raju said about the skill development through community colleges. It will work closely with industry and business from the area to develop skill sets that are required from the local areas. In continuation of the educational partnership between the two nations, the US State Department announced eight institutional partnership projects for the second round of Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative awards. Each project will receive an award of approximately USD 250,000 that can be utilised over a three year period, with the objectives of cultivating educational reform, fostering economic growth, generating shared knowledge to address global challenges, and developing junior faculty at Indian and American institutions of higher learning.