Covid-19: A New U.S.-India Higher Education Infrastructure
June 10, 2020
By Yatin JainThe Covid-19 pandemic has triggered global lockdowns, including school and university closures. Indian students, a group that marks the second largest international student population in the United States, face intense challenges regarding the fate of their education and overall career prospects due to school and border closures. While Covid-19 will likely reduce international students coming into the United States in the short-term, the need for higher education cooperation—and a quick evolution of operating models—becomes especially important.
The CSIS Wadhwani Chair is actively participating in efforts to support U.S-India higher education partnerships. In collaboration with the University of Nebraska, Omaha, “Partnership 2020” is a two-year old project funded by the U.S. Department of State. As a part of the grant, the managing team funds new and existing higher education partnerships, and is simultaneously cataloging existing higher education partnerships in an online database. This database currently contains over 200 partnerships. We produce a quarterly Partnership 2020 Newsletter highlighting U.S.-India higher education updates. Currently, CSIS Wadhwani Chair is working on two reports that outline best practices to maintain partnerships and policy recommendations to the U.S. and Indian governments. These reports are based on our interviews with higher education administrators from U.S. universities who have led partnerships and are meant to highlight the best steps that administrators and governments can take to increase the quality and frequency of these partnerships.
The Covid-19 pandemic has raised challenges to some of the partnership models we have researched in our project. These challenges will impact international students, universities, and the future of traditional global education. Universities are undergoing a financial crisis marked by declining revenues, budget cuts, and limited resources. In such an environment, it is understandable that existing and prospective foreign students are beginning to question if an education in the United States can deliver the same value. This is because an education includes more than classes. For international students, the networking opportunities, study abroad experiences, and campus activities are as valuable as the general classroom experience. Further, as job prospects decline in the United States with rising unemployment, stricter immigration policies have been implemented. These policies have strongly impacted work visas for those already sponsored and are discouraging prospective international students from pursuing an education or career in the United States.
Although coronavirus is changing the structure of higher education, U.S.-India higher education partnerships can still be salvaged. Despite constraints adopted around Covid-19, international partnerships between the United States and India can look to new models such as e-learning, classroom to classroom e-exchange, e-faculty exchanges, and joint research projects. Covid-19 has already served as an exceptional example for global collaboration in the quest for a vaccine. University research centers can use this as an opportunity to extend global scientific collaboration and research sharing by participating in these partnerships. Further, to ensure that universities are still maintaining partnerships and participating in dialogue, U.S.-India higher education administrators must adapt to research and faculty collaboration online. Similar to the efforts and attention France is taking to support Indian international students, the United States can initiate and continue virtual academic research collaborations with India.
A Covid-19 higher education environment does not have to mean the end of partnerships. If administrators from both universities take creative steps to salvage these partnerships during crisis times, it demonstrates a clear effort to increase engagement. As education is adapting to a new environment, U.S.-India partnerships must follow suit in sustaining higher education relationships during Covid-19.
The architecture of the U.S.-India higher education relationship is undergoing major challenges during the Covid-19 era. Universities are dealing with funding challenges, and international students are undergoing difficult choices about the future of their education. Maintaining partnerships and continuing effective collaboration will require higher education administrators to adapt virtually to a Covid-19 educational infrastructure. In these crisis times, maintaining international partnerships is crucial to the U.S.-India higher education relationship.
Yatin Jain is an intern with the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies
