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India and the United Kingdom: partners of choice in higher education

India is the focus of a great deal of attention in the United Kingdom these days. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to visit the country in January, while London Mayor Ken Livingstone recently finished a series of meetings in Delhi and Mumbai.

A key theme underpinning both trips is the importance of higher education for the success of both countries. Our future prosperity lies in the development of strong knowledge economies, powered by information technology, innovation and education. To achieve that, we will need to work together, across international borders.

Both teaching and research can be delivered, and consumed, internationally. Globalisation is as big a factor in education as it is in business and finance. This creates new challenges for our higher education institutions: how to work abroad and deliver excellence, and how to work with international partners and retain a unique identity?

Partnership is the answer — at national, institutional and individual levels. That is why our two governments have launched a £23 million initiative to improve educational links between our countries. The aim is to become each other’s partner of choice in education. Known as the U.K.-India Education and Research Initiative, it is funding a wide range of research grants, teaching collaborations and professional skill development partnerships.

The export of knowledge, of course, is not new. Throughout human history, civilisations have learned from each other, fascinated by ideas and innovation. In fact, India has a longer history of higher education than the U.K. Scholars have been beating a path to your door for millennia. Alexander the Great sent envoys to Taxila, the centre of Vedic and Buddhist learning on the trade route between Kashmir and Central Asia, in fourth century BC. They spoke of a university greater than any they had seen in Greece. The famous Chinese diarist Xuanzang wrote in 636 AD that over 10,000 monks lived and studied at Nalanda in Bihar, said to be the world’s first residential university. Scholars from Korea, Japan, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey also studied there, learning science, astronomy, medicine, logic, metaphysics, philosophy and religion.

The U.K. is a relative latecomer! Oxford and Cambridge, our first universities, only got going in the 12th and 13th centuries. British universities have developed rapidly in the last 150 years and, particularly since World War II, have welcomed a growing number of students from India. I am delighted to say that the University of Greenwich is a popular choice: we are a top recruiter of Indian students in the U.K. I recently visited Delhi to join graduates and their families in order to celebrate their academic achievements and to develop alumni groups, which will cement relations for many years to come.

Our two countries have good reasons to choose each other as partners. Language is one reason but English speakers have many options: the United States has always been a major player but today Australia and New Zealand are investing heavily to attract overseas students, particularly from the Far East and South East Asia. Other European countries are targeting those students too — by delivering courses in English. English language teaching is on offer in universities in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

Despite this, the number of Indian students choosing the U.K. continues to grow, with 19,000 coming this year. They are attracted by the country’s unique combination of shared history, high academic standards and its safe, open, multi-cultural society. An Indian student said to me the other day, “I love being here: it is like meeting the world in one place.” The U.K. is already home to a large Indian-British community.

Now, for the first time, students are moving from the U.K. to India. The numbers are still small — they measure in the hundreds — but they too are growing. As India’s educational capacity develops, it will open its doors to the world. Already, exchanges, work experience placements and visits are increasing. Our young people know that India will be a major force in the future, as its economy blossoms, and they want to be at the heart of this exciting development.

The huge demand for higher education in India has led to a rapid development in private provision. This can be hard to regulate in order to keep standards high. Partnerships with U.K. institutions can help. The U.K. has an international reputation for excellence in higher education, with long experience of developing policy and practice in teaching and research, backed by a national system of quality assurance. Our institutions can share this expertise, working in partnership with colleges and universities.

We can also work together to tackle another problem: how to equip students with the practical skills needed by employers. Despite economic growth, 30 per cent of graduates in India are unemployed.

One of the reasons that international students choose the U.K. is its track record of running programmes with a large practical component. Courses are developed in consultation with local employers and use a mixture of real case studies, supervised work experience and visiting lecturers and mentors from the profession or area of study. One of the areas of collaboration supported by the U.K.-India Education and Research Initiative is the development of courses with a stronger practical base. Within the next four years, the Initiative expects to fund about 40 such courses, serving 2,000 students. On the research side, there will also be more Indian students completing research degrees in the U.K., and more U.K. researchers undertaking work in India, along with joint research projects.

This is international collaboration at its best: colleagues working together to develop the most relevant courses, the best quality standards and the most useful research. In this way, we can avoid the potential pitfalls of very rapid university expansion: shoddy education, motivated by profit, in an unregulated marketplace. Together, Britain and India can call on the best minds, organisations and facilities, to build prosperity for both our countries. Partners of choice in higher education: that is our ace card in the game of global success.

(Baroness Blackstone was Arts Minister, 2001-03, and Minister of State for Education and Employment, 1997-2001, in the U.K. government. In 1987, she was awarded a life peerage, and in 2001 she was appointed to the Privy Council. )

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