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Sebastian D’Souza/AFP/Getty For the past five years, India has been the leading country of origin for international students studying in the United States, with over 80,000 Indians enrolled in American institutions in 2004-05. Now, American universities are trying to tap right into the country’s education market, so they’re heading to India directly. For two years, ...

Sebastian D'Souza/AFP/Getty

Sebastian D’Souza/AFP/Getty

For the past five years, India has been the leading country of origin for international students studying in the United States, with over 80,000 Indians enrolled in American institutions in 2004-05. Now, American universities are trying to tap right into the country’s education market, so they’re heading to India directly.

For two years, presidential delegations from Harvard, Yale and Stanford, to name just a few, have visited India to scope the talent. A number of top schools, including Columbia Business School and the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, collaborate on exchange programs with Ahmedabad’s famous Indian Institute of Management, while Carnegie Mellon offers a degree in partnership with the small private Shri Shiv Shankar Nadar College of Engineering in Chennai.

India’s regulations in this area are still ambiguous, but that’s changing. Proposed new laws would make it easier for foreign universities to set up campuses in the country and offer their own curriculum and degrees. This is sure to appeal to India’s growing middle class, which places considerable prestige on foreign education. And in a country where around 40 percent of the population is under 18 and quality domestic higher education is stretched to the limit (only two percent of test-takers for admission to the Indian Institutes of Management and Technology get accepted), foreign involvement may offer a practical, mutually beneficial solution.

Prerna Mankad is a researcher at Foreign Policy.

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