India leads in education, says Cornell University President

A top American academician has described the drop in number of Indian students joining US universities as brain circulation rather than as reverse brain drain."I call it as a brain circulation and in the past it was going in one direction. We see discoveries are coming in the field of medicine, agriculture, technology from places that we did not think of in the past. "India has some of the finest and world class institutions such as IITs and Indian Institute of Science and there is no dearth of world-class quality education there," President of Cornell University, David J Skorton said. Skorton said India is leading the world in cutting edge outsourcing technology and technological revolution of sorts is happening there. "Look at some of the inventions in medicine and agriculture. Infosys has done whole new concept of outsourcing to make India feel proud. It had mastered the technology," he said. The number of Indian students studying in the US has dropped, according to the annual Open Doors Report released by the Institute of International Education in the US. In 2011-12, there were 1, 00,270 Indians at American universities, down from 1, 03,895 in the previous year and 1, 04,897 the year before that. In 2009-10, China overtook India for the top spot in terms of students at US universities. Though India is still number two, the number of Indian students is down by about four per cent. Issues such as visa restrictions, slowdown of US economy and tough job market have been cited as reasons.