International Education Week (IEW 2008)

Chennai: On Thursday November 20, the American Consulate General, Chennai and the United States India Educational Foundation (USIEF) organized a panel discussion at Anna University to celebrate International Education Week (IEW 2008). IEW, a joint initiative of the U.S. Departments of State and Education is an opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchanges worldwide. The panelists were Mr Andrew Simkin Consul General American Consulate, Mr Roland Herrmann Consul General, German Consulate, Mr Kiran Bhandari Regional Director Singapore Tourism Board and Mr Loganathan Dhanasekaran Head Education UK, British Council, Chennai.

Dr P Mannar Jawahar Vice Chancellor Anna University welcomed the gathering and emphasized the need for global partnerships and educational linkages. He said that Anna University has been consistently coordinating bilateral research and academic programs with overseas institutions and universities. Some of the countries that the University has linkages with include USA, U.K. Russia, Japan, Italy, Australia, Germany, Singapore and France. Janaka Pushpanathan, Regional Head South India, USIEF offered opening remarks and said that in 2007-08 USIEF Chennai had reached out 133,000 students in South India to promote higher education opportunities in the United States. She added that these outreach efforts by The Foundation in collaboration with the American Consulate have played a significant role in increasing the numbers of Indian students pursuing higher education in the United States. She said that according to the Open Doors 2008 Report released on November 17, 2008, India remains the leading sending place of origin for the seventh consecutive year and the numbers of Indian students in the United States totals to 94,563, 15% of the world total and up by 13% from the previous year.

Education beyond Boundaries

Dr LS Ganesh, Professor, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras introduced the panelists and moderated the panel discussion. Andrew Simkin Consul General U.S. Consulate General, Chennai reiterated that the Consulate has always given top priority to students, ‘to put them in front of the line’ for visas, and he said that this was an ‘important activity of the Consulate’s operations.’ He then drew form his personal experiences of education in the United States and spoke of his semester abroad in Jerusalem as ‘an intense and life changing experience.’ Addressing some of the students in the audience he said ‘You will never understand your own country unless you live in another country.’ Mr Roland Herrmann, Consul General German Consulate, said that the focal point was to better people to people relations as this was the key to ‘borderless education.’ ‘Making friends and good robust world peace,’ he said was the larger context of education. Kiran Bhandari, Singapore Tourism Board, highlighted the seamless nature of the ‘global school house’ concept and added that Singapore has come a long way from being just a tourist destination to emerging as one of the key players in the international higher education scene. He owed this development to the cutting edge technology, state of the art infrastructure and the politically stable scenario that prevailed in Singapore. L Dhanasekaran, Head Education UK, British Council, Chennai said that ‘mutuality’ was the key to sustain global partnerships and he highlighted some of the projects that British Council was focusing on, like Climate Change, Intercultural Dialogue and Project English.

Issues and Challenges

The panel fielded several questions from the audience ranging from standardization, campus safety, quality assurance to financial assistance, the language barrier and semester abroad programs. Responding to ‘If education has to be globalised, is standardization not important?,’ Andrew Simkin said that across the United States, there are regional accrediting bodies; adding that ‘diversity is a good thing,’ he added that what perhaps drew scores of students to U.S. higher education is its amazing diversity. Both Mr Herrmann and Kiran Bhandari agreed that this was a global problem and Mr Bhandari said that all agencies should look to develop scalable solutions. When asked about the recent crimes against Indian students in the U.S., Mr Simkin said that it was most unfortunate, more so when the people affected are students. He added that the overall crime rate was dropping steadily over the last 20 years and the Consulate was doing its best to help affected families.

Way forward

Panelists responded positively to the final question on ‘Reverse Flow’ posed by Dr Ganesh in his summary and conclusions. The UK is looking to expand its semester abroad program and in 2009, India will host many more British students, said Dhanasekaran. While Bhandari remarked that the line of Singapore schools waiting to collaborate with Indian schools was just growing, Mr Herrmann said that this was something that he will take away with him, with a promise to bridge the gap, as currently there are more professors from Germany who are visiting than students. Andrew Simkin said that “South India with its diversity and immense hospitality is a great destination for American students who wish to spend time in India.” He added that it was heartening to note that the number of Americans studying in India has grown by 24% from the previous year and he would make this positive trend in Americans coming to study in India one of his priorities as Consul General.