In line with India’s New Education Policy (NEP), and to deepen data partnership, the United States (US) State Department has initiated an academic programme that may create a brand new pathway for Indian college students to pursue a one-year skilled grasp’s diploma with an industrial specialisation in American universities.

The programs are confined to science, know-how, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. They will start within the fall semester of 2024. Twenty American and over 15 Indian universities are in dialogue about methods to benefit from the initiative, with the State Department appearing as a facilitator. Once the programs are full, college students can keep within the US for as much as three years, as per current and relevant visa guidelines, to achieve work expertise in trade and repay scholar loans.

Also Read: NEP offering flexibility, choice of subjects to students: Edu expert

The programme has been designed by Akhilesh Lakhtakia, a Jefferson Science Fellow on the State Department’s South and Central Asia (SCA) bureau, who was introduced in from his tutorial place as a professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State University to the US authorities for a yr to check India’s NEP. His mandate was easy — provide you with a programme useful to the US and Indian governments, in addition to US universities and Indian college students.

The rationale

In an interview, Lakhtakia stated that when he learn the NEP, he felt it was a departure from the standard Indian training system and appeared to come back out of the pedagogical strategies of American universities.

Also Read: NEP to be scrapped in state from next academic year says Karnataka CM

“What was proposed was very much to my liking. It is student-centered, flexible, multidisciplinary, futuristic, and international. If this can be implemented, it will simply revolutionise school and higher education. The State Department brought me in to understand how, in line with NEP, the two countries can work together. The objective was to create a win-win, but in my mind, my client was the Indian student,” stated Lakhtakia who studied electronics engineering on the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Banaras Hindu University earlier than shifting to the US in 1980.

The emphasis on the data partnership within the wider bilateral relationship helped. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state go to to the US, his first engagement was in Washington on the National Science Foundation with First Lady Jill Biden, with college students and faculty directors current.

In April 2022, exterior affairs minister S Jaishankar and secretary of state Antony J Blinken launched the working group on training and talent coaching. The group has met as soon as and arrange 4 committees, two headed by India and two by the US. One of the teams is the US-India larger training partnership committee, chaired by Lakhtakia on the American aspect.

For the State Department, that is a part of its public diplomacy, enhancing comfortable energy, and deepening people-to-people linkages. For the Commerce Department, that is a part of its goal of getting extra international college students to the US as a key income. For the broader American financial system, this infusion helps add a key pool of expertise in an financial system that wants high-tech expert employees. For Indian college students, there’s a particular addition in abilities, data, and incomes potential. And for the Indian authorities, the deepening data partnership has the potential to construct constituencies that may add to the financial and tech partnership between the 2 nations.

The construction

Lakhtakia stated that there have been 280,000 Indian college students within the US, out of which 32,000 are pursuing their bachelor’s levels and 25,000 are pursuing their PhDs. “The bulk of them are masters students. As the numbers show, many are not going to do a PhD, and neither should they. There are many other ways to be productive members of society.” He added that Indian college students are eager to enter the workforce and earn, and a grasp’s course in specialised programmes which might be arduous to search out in any other case was seen as the best choice that governments might facilitate for them.

Over the previous six months, Lakhtakia labored with American universities to slim down on a set of specialized programs. This spans a variety of areas, together with wi-fi know-how, satellite tv for pc steerage and management, semiconductor processing, nano-technology, photonics, 5G and 7G communication programs, show know-how, synthetic intelligence (AI) purposes, quantum engineering, generic medication, unmanned micro autos, telemedicine, cybersecurity, amongst others.

“A usual master’s degree in the US is for two years. But we thought that over 12 months, students can get a master’s degree with 30 credits. The idea is also to have a strong experimental component so that graduates when they go into industry, can become effective fairly quickly,” Lakhtakia stated.

The benefit of such a specialised programme is that it’ll allow college students to be eligible to remain for 3 years within the US after learning underneath the elective sensible coaching (OPT) mechanism. It can even assist them earn sufficient to pay again a big portion, if not everything, of scholar loans that they might have taken to pursue the programme.

Working in observe

One progressive component of the programme is a provision to boost university-to-university collaboration, which can assist Indian universities improve their programs and support Indian college students in constructing a set of abilities even earlier than they arrive for his or her masters.

Giving an instance, Lakhtakia laid out how this cooperation can work in observe. “Assume an American university says we can offer a programme in wireless technologies to your students to its Indian counterpart. This Indian university asks its students who are pursuing their bachelor’s in electrical engineering, at the end of their third year, whether they are interested in such a master’s course in the US. A joint committee of faculties of both universities then come together and create an application form and select students.”

For this cohort of scholars, the college in India itself then affords two electives in wi-fi tech of their last semester yr which may construct their data base within the area. This yr may also give them time to rearrange loans, and the college itself can tie up with native banks to assist discover them one of the best charges. With the readability in admission, college students may also apply for a visa one yr upfront as part of a cohort to keep away from delays and enhance their prospects of getting a visa.

University-to-university collaboration may also assist resolve different sensible challenges. Given the truth that an American grasp’s requires 16 years of training, whereas the tip of a bachelor’s in sciences diploma in India leaves a scholar with 15 years of training, Lakhtakia has been chatting with universities to discover a solution to handle the problem. “This is completely up to universities and there can be no government ruling on this. If an American university accepts a student after 15 years, fantastic. But in most cases, it would not. So one option is for students to enroll in a master’s degree in India, study for a year there, and then move to the US and finish the course here. And students can get degrees from both universities,” he stated.

Envisaging the position of governments as enablers, facilitators, and the connective tissue meant to take away impediments, Lakhtakia stated that he acquired enthusiastic responses from universities at each ends they usually have been at totally different phases of collaboration. “But we encourage others to get in touch as well and become a part of this new initiative.”