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Pradhan-Clare Trophy has two winners always

Canada tops the global chart in hosting international students with a share of 30 per cent of its total student strength and Indians contributing a lion’s share in this.
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The recent drubbing handed over to the Indian cricket team by the visiting Kiwis has come as a rude shock to cricketing fans who have historically had a crackling Diwali. For cricketers and their immediate ecosystem, it is a moment to introspect. In another parallel development, the Kangaroo nation of Australia delivered a huge gain for academics and their immediate ecosystem in the form of a learning experience that accrued during a delegation visit to Australia last week under the leadership of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. As a member of this delegation, I feel the ‘Kangaroo delivered gains’ overwhelming the ‘Kiwi delivered loss’. Here is why?

In my previous article on the global hunt for Indian talent, I had highlighted the growing dominance of Indians in the global university education landscape. The share of Indians in the international student enrolment in the top 5 destinations—US, UK, Canada, Australia and France—has been significant. With almost all popular destination-nations clamouring for Indian talent in their university campuses, there is no question on the growing relevance and dominance of Indian students abroad.

Canada tops the global chart in hosting international students with a share of 30 per cent of its total student strength and Indians contributing a lion’s share in this. Australia follows second with almost 25 per cent of its student population being international with India being one of its largest contributors. The recent Indo-Canada diplomatic tensions and the questionable quality of life in Canada coupled with the growing education relationship with Australia provide policy insights worth pondering. Minister Pradhan’s visit to Australia is the second with his counterpart Jason Clare also visiting India twice. With four meeting between them there seems to be a bonhomie in the making at an unprecedented scale that spans school, skills and higher education.

With India and Australia signing a historic agreement providing mutual recognition of qualifications and Australia’s education strategy for India as a published document of the state, the relationship between these two QUAD nations can only get better. The Australian government’s strategy document (2023) for promoting partnership with India is a clear second coming of Australia’s Colombo plan with an Indian touch.

Minister Pradhan while addressing a huge gathering in Australia emphatically recognised the growing importance of collaborations, the fourth ‘C’ that transcends beyond Commonwealth, Curry and Cricket. Collaborations between universities in India and Australia have the potency to manifest in different forms considering the diversity and variety of demands between India and Australia. Here is a doctoral pathway that can form a launchpad for Indo-Australia educational partnership to soar into new heights.

The opening up of campuses of Deakin and Wollongong in GIFT City and the possibility of Innovative Research Universities (group of eight leading Australian universities) opening up a campus in India besides individual collaboration between Indian and Australian universities are signals of progress. The dominating presence of Indians in various graduate degree programmes in Australia is also symptomatic of the return on investment that Indians provide to Australian ecosystem.

The annual Research Block Grants for 2024 (equivalent to India’s newly created Anusandhan National Research Foundation) is AUSD 2.3 billion and shall provide research training and support to all leading universities of Australia. During the visit, I could see that the research grants distributed to universities is significantly influenced by universities’ research outcome which is in turn is based on the PhD programme outcome which in turn is dominated by Indian students’ input.

In a luncheon conversation with select-PhD students in Australian universities who graduated from various Indian higher education institutions (predominantly non-IITs/IISc/NITs), I could notice the quality of their contribution and high levels of energetic preparedness to take up challenging PhD assignments.

This is probably one of the success factors of the existing PhD collaborative programmes between IIT Bombay and Monash University, IIT Delhi and University of Queensland and IIT Madras and Deakin University. Such a uniquely successful model of engagement has the propensity to be democratised to rope in more higher educational institutions and its students and put in place a scaled up version of the existing mini-model.

With Australian universities needing more Indian students for their PhD programmes and Indian universities and colleges (non-IITs/IISc/NITs) having potential scholars in abundance who can be spared for a year in Australia for a joint-PhD programme, the existing issue of faculty quality can be adequately addressed and so shall the rate of returning Indians to India be significantly accelerated. In short: Pradhan-Clare Trophy has two winners always, India and Australia.

S Vaidhyasubramaniam

Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University

vaidhya@sastra.edu

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