Larry D. Lauer

India is eager for partnerships with US universities. I attended a meeting in Pune (three hours northwest of Mumbai) where politicians and educators came together from the US and India to explore the feasibility of  institutional collaboration. Pune was chosen because it is considered to be India’s “education city,” and the Indian educators atending were quite eager about approaching the US delegation with their needs. What seemed to be  productive conversations at first quickly became almost overwhelming.

India is facing a major challenge.  In the next 10 to 15 years it will need at least 1000 new universities to meet its needs. Its educators obviously believe that partnerships with US institutions can help. But while the benefit to India is clear, finding an obvious win-win proposition for many US institutions could be a bit more challenging.

I was a presenter at the meeting, and outlined the problems I was seeing:

The globalization of our industry, coupled with the world’s economic realties and the changing roles of governments, will mean that global partnerships will be more carefully considered.  Most of us see globalization compelling more international involvement, but the form of that involvement will have to be based on current realities and past experiences.

We learn from our mistakes.  In the past many universities signed agreements with institutions in other countries that resulted in very little activity.  Getting faculty and student exchanges to work, and projects established, depends on each academic area, and the interest  its faculty and staff may or may not have in doing it. In addition, government regulations often became insurmountable obstacles, costs were higher than predicted, revenues were disappointing, language and culture barriers were more serious than anticipated, major academic freedom and internet issues emerged, relocating faculty families became complicated, and travel costs were much higher than realized.

And so I explained in my talk that while internationalization is inevitable, each institution will have to assess how it will respond in light of its mission and objectives. That will no doubt mean that more care will be taken about where and how to engage in partnerships. I suggested that for most of us partnerships in the future will be more at the academic program level, than between insitutions. I argued that mutual benefit will have to be clearly understood, and not based on the obvious serious needs of one of the partners. Cost certainly matters, and too much government regulation will be a deal breaker for many. I explained that academic freedom issues are critical to US institutions and they should be discussed and clarified up front. And then I also added that I think many institutions will be thinking much more about curriculum and cross-cultural experience enhancements as primary concerns. 

The potential of international higher education to play a role in world and social problem-solving is immense, or so I believe.  I therefore added that I think many of us will be looking for global partnerships that also address these larger problems, and aim to improve overall quality of life.

While I presented the problems I saw, I must quickly add that the Indian people we met were wonderful hosts and perfectly sincere about wanting to have honest collaborations. Indeed, there are many opportunites in India for US institutions to find good partners. For example, with the current growth in the Indian economy, there are clearly business school collaborations that could be exciting.  Likewise, I saw real possibilities in global health, nursing, teacher education, engineering, and more.  The challenge will be to get the right academic people together with the right institutions. And most of all, it will be critical to make sure that the specific needs of both partners are clearly met and carefully articulated in any agreement signed.