Clinton at U.S.-India Higher Education Dialogue
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesperson
June 12, 2012
REMARKS
Secretary of State
At the U.S.-India Higher Education Dialogue
June 12, 2012
George C. Marshall Center
Washington, D.C.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, that was such a nice introduction. It's all downhill
from here. (Laughter.)
It's really a pleasure to be with all of you for what I think of as one of
the most important partnerships, not only and obviously between the United
States and India, but in particular, the U.S.-India dialogue on higher
education. This is a commitment by both our governments, but more importantly,
our societies, our people, to helping make the most of all of our young people's
talents. And as Minister Sibal said, we're living in a fast-changing world, a
tumultuous time. And those of us in positions of responsibility, whether it be
in government or in academia or in the private sector, we have an obligation to
do more to try to assist those young people achieve their aspirations.
I want to thank Sam Pitroda for his continuing support and commitment to
this. Secretary Thakur, thank you very much. It's wonderful to have our two
ambassadors, both of whom are really exemplars of the very best our countries
have to offer. I also want to thank Assistant Secretary Bob Blake, who has
really nurtured this relationship and has been a great leader and voice about
its importance. I want to thank Tara Sonenshine, who has brought to the position
of Under Secretary a great deal of experience and expertise in how to create
partnerships and then how to tell the story that they represent. And to all of
the representatives and leaders from other agencies, higher education, and the
private sectors in both countries, thank you all for being here.
As you can see from this week's Strategic Dialogue meetings, our ties have
never been stronger. And it's not just that we are the oldest and the largest
democracies. It's that the strategic fundamentals of our relationship - our
shared values, our economic systems, our diplomatic imperatives - are drawing
our interests into closer convergence in the 21st century. And that means we are
working together like never before to build an open, free, transparent, and fair
global economic system, to promote peace and prosperity in South Asia and the
Asia-Pacific, to coordinate international responses to violent extremism, and so
much else.
And that is the context for today's discussion and tomorrow's Strategic
Dialogue and for the work that we are doing every day. Because at the root of
it, we believe - both the United States and India - that extending the benefits
of higher education to as many people as possible is not only the right thing to
do, but it is the smart thing as well, to help better equip our people to
compete in today's global economy.
At last year's Higher Education Summit, we demonstrated our commitment to
this mission. And I think, as Minister Sibal said, we have already made a great
deal of progress. But we're not satisfied, which is why we are here today for
this dialogue to continue the exchange of views and the planning and processes
necessary to take us even further.
Today, we are announcing the first round of eight awardees from the
Obama-Singh, Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative. I'm very excited
about the four American-led projects. One, directed by Cornell University, will
create a public-private partnership to improve agricultural education in
Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. Another, with the University of Michigan at the
helm, will raise the quality of training for healthcare professionals throughout
India. Rutgers University will run a project to build the capacity of India's
institutions of higher learning. And the University of Montana and its partners
will examine climate change and its effect on agriculture in India. I
congratulate all the awardees and encourage more partners to apply when the next
round opens in July.
We've also taken steps forward with the U.S. Passport to India program, an
effort to enlist the private sector and nonprofit groups in creating more
options for American students who want to learn in India. And I'm pleased to
announce today that seven companies have agreed to support internships or
service-learning projects for 225 American students over the next three years.
American students will soon be doing cutting-edge research with Microsoft in
Bangalore, developing new energy solutions at Honeywell UOP, and working on
service projects with local NGOs.
I also want to applaud the Government of India for your commitment to send
junior faculty to the United States for post-doctorial research, as well as for
the Higher Education web portal you are launching to foster collaboration and
exchanges.
Everyone here has a chance to build on the progress during your meetings
and conversations today. I want to emphasize three areas that I think deserve
particular attention.
The first is workforce development. I think this is a challenge, albeit in
different ways, for both of our countries. India's economy is growing fast, its
middle class flourishing. But, as the minister has said, India is struggling to
train enough workers to keep the economic engine going. In the coming years,
India will need to send tens of millions more students to colleges and
universities, while improving the quality of education and keeping the cost
affordable.
This is a challenge we face here in the United States as well. President
Obama has made it clear that we need to help more of our young people pursue a
degree after high school. And we look to our community colleges to help, and I
very much applaud India's examination of this model. I'm a great proponent of
and fan for community colleges. I have worked with them on the state level when
my husband was governor of Arkansas. I've worked with them on the national
level, both as a first lady, as a senator. And I believe community colleges are
one of the reasons, often unheralded, that the United States has been so
successful. Yes, we have great, wonderful, world-class higher education
institutions; I went to two of them. I'm very grateful for that, but we have so
many jobs that go unfilled because of the lack of linkage between the skills
needed in the jobs and the training and education of the workforce.
You can go to any place in America today, even where our unemployment rate
is higher than the national average; you can look in the newspaper or log on to
the computer and you will see jobs begging to be filled. And what will employers
tell you? We don't have the right mix of skills. And very honestly, degrees from
Wellesley and Yale are not what they're looking for. They're looking for people
who know how to do the work that builds and maintains a modern economy. And our
answer to that has been community colleges.
Across the country, community colleges work with local businesses to
prepare millions of students to compete and innovate. In fact, our businesses go
to our community colleges and our community colleges go to our businesses and
say let's design a program so that we prepare workers for the jobs you want to
bring and keep in this community. So it's a synergy of the most economic
importance. And we were very happy to welcome the Indian delegation that came to
the United States earlier this year to learn more about our model. And today, we
have a number of leaders from around our country who will share insights as
India considers the best way forward.
Now I have to tell you, I have made this pitch for about 20 years in
different places, in different audiences. And I think all too frequently there
is a picture of higher education in people's heads, here in my country and
around the world, that our four-year, degree-granting institutions, often
research institutions that are really dominant in imagining what higher
education can and should look like. There is a critically important role for
such institutions.
But then there is all the rest. And there is a huge vacuum that exists in
too many places around the world that community colleges, comparable models, can
help fill.
This brings me to the second area that I hope you will focus on today. If
our students are going to solve global challenges, they need to understand those
global challenges. Now, U.S. institutions in particular are seeking to broaden
their curricula and provide more opportunities for their students and scholars
to gain international experience. And thanks to support from both governments,
we're exchanging more students and scholars through the Fulbright-Nehru program
than ever before. Today, I hope you'll explore ways to increase partnerships in
fields like food and water security, climate change, sustainable energy, and
public health. These are areas that are ripe for new ideas.
Finally, I hope you'll discuss ways to make the world's best teaching
materials available to everyone, no matter where they live or how much money
they have. Minister Sibal talked about cloud computing and the need to use
modern technology in order to bring to the doorstep or to the screen of students
who would otherwise not have the opportunity. All that is available today.
And this new technology makes it possible to revolutionize higher
education, even in some of the world's poorest places. The United States is
investing nearly $2 billion in the creation of open educational resources, and
India has also made impressive progress on its own.
I think we have to be very thoughtful about how to make the most of these
efforts, because, to be very frank, some of what passes for distance learning
and computerized instructions is really bogus. It doesn't add up. It doesn't
make a difference. Some of it is brilliant and effective. How do we begin
separating the wheat from the chaff? How do we have standards that move us in
the right direction and don't leave open a broad field for the exploitation of
students because we don't have the right standards and expectations in
place?
Now these conversations and connections are going on in each of our
countries as we both search for the best ways to improve education to meet the
needs of today's students. But what I really am excited about is that these are
also now going on between us, because I think we both can contribute to the
other, and frankly, learn from each other. And I think if we are determined to
make these conversations and connections more purposeful and more focused, then
we will each benefit from what is a very important strategic part of our
partnership.
So I thank everyone who has worked so hard to bring us to this point. I
welcome all of our participants from India. I thank the minister, who has been
my partner and colleague as we have tried to forge this way forward, and I look
forward to learning of the results of the work that you all will do today and
into the future. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State.)
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