Cornell University President says "India Leads in Education"

The American Cornell University President, David J Skorton says "India is leading in Education. It has some finest educational institutions". He also described the drop in the number of Indian Students joining the US varsities.

President David, who was on a meeting in Cornell Club said "I call it as a brain circulation and in the past it was going in one direction. We see that discoveries are improving in the fields of medicine, agriculture, technology from places that we did not think of in the past."

"India has some of the finest and world class institutions such as IIT's and Indian Institute of Science and there is no scarcity of world-class quality education and is leading the world in cutting edge outsourcing technology and technological revolution," he said.

He also highlighted Infosys which has done a whole new concept of outsourcing inventions in medicines and agriculture to make India a proud nation.

Cornell University is the most educationally diverse member of the Ivy League. On the Ithaca campus in New York alone nearly 20,000 students representing every state of the US and 120 countries choose from among 4,000 courses in 11 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools.

There are more than 100,000 Indian students studying in various universities across the US and according to one survey in the 1970s about 80 per cent of the IIT graduates migrated to the US then and now the number has fallen to less than five percent. The number of Indian students studying in the US has dropped for the second consecutive year, according to the annual Open Doors Report released by the Institute of International Education in the US.

In 2011-12, there were 1, 00,270 Indians at American universities, down from 1, 03,895 in the previous year and 1, 04,897 the year before that. In 2009-10, China overtook India for the top spot in terms of students at US universities. Though India is still number two, the number of Indian students is down by about four per cent. Issues such as visa restrictions, slowdown of US economy and tough job market have been cited as reasons.

Indians make up for 13 per cent of the total international student population in the US, second to China's 25 percent. Of the 1, 00,270 Indians, 13 per cent are undergraduates, 59 per cent graduate students and 27 per cent pursuing practical training programs. The report, which annually surveys international students in the US, is published in partnership with the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Cornell University has received an endowment of $50 million from the Tata Education and Development Trust, a philanthropic entity of India's Tata Group.

With the Tata Scholarship Fund for Students from India, Cornell will be able to welcome many more of the best and brightest Indian students in a manner that would make Ezra Cornell proud, that is regardless of their financial circumstances. And, building on the remarkable achievements in India throughout the better part of the past century, the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition will increase collaboration among Indian and Cornell scientists and students in nutrition and agriculture to improve the livelihoods and nutritional status of the rural poor in India.

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