Indian leaders at UC3M

On May 28th recently passed, a meeting took place between representatives of Indian higher education, universities from Madrid such as UC3M and the UAM and representatives from the Madrid Regional Government. The visit was carried out within the framework of the ‘III Program for Indian Leaders’ led by the Spain-India Council Foundation, in which the Alliance4Universities (A4U) is a patron.  This initiative aims to introduce a group of Indian professionals to the educative, socioeconomic and cultural reality of Spain with the goal of fostering and maintaining links between Spain and this country.

The meeting, held on the Getafe campus of UC3M to discuss higher education and among other representatives, was attended by Álvaro Escribano (to the left of the photograph on the home page), Vice-Chancellor of International Relations at UC3M, Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio, Vice-Chancellor of the UAM; Miguel Herrero, Deputy Director General of Universities and Research of the Madrid Regional Government; Maitrey Kulkarni,  Education and Culture Adviser of the Indian Embassy in Spain  and Alonso Dezcallar, Secretary General of the Spain-India Council Foundation.  The Indian delegation was comprised of: Pawan Agarwal,  Higher Education and Culture Adviser to  the Indian government; Ayesha Banerjee, Education Editor of the Hindustan Times; Anustup Nayak, Vice President of XSEED Education; Ajay Pandey, Dean of the Indian Institute of Management; R K Shevgaonkar, Director of the Indian Institute of Technology; Vidya Yeravdekar, Principal Director of the Symbiosis Society; Rajiv Yeravdekar, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Bio Medical Sciences of the  Symbiosis International University.

During the meeting, Álvaro Escribano was responsible for presenting the objectives of the A4U within this framework, among which he highlighted the need to collaborate together on research projects, to develop double degrees and post-graduate degrees in this Asian nation. This would thus allow an exchange of students and teachers between Spain and India as well as the organization of joint seminars. In addition, he pointed out the importance of promoting Spanish courses for foreigners within the universities as well as communicating the possibility, opened up in the admission process of Spanish public universities in academic year 2014/15, which would allow final year secondary students from India to study a full Degree in Spain without having to sit the PAU (university entrance exams).

For his part, Maitrey Kulkarni, Education and Culture Adviser of the Indian Embassy in Spain, made reference to Indians’ desire to develop academically and professionally overseas: “Indians increasingly want to go abroad and Spain is a great option for them” and added that with the new exchange proposals Spaniards would be able to discover the potential of Indian education in areas such as pharmaceutics, technology or engineering. The talk given by the Indian representatives went along similar lines: “we should work on joint programs between our institutions that are organized according to the needs of the student, since Indians still do not see Spain as a priority place” , remarked Ajay Pandey, Dean of the  Indian Institute of Management.

See more pictures here