The Hindu Business Line : US students keen on studying in India

An increasing number of American students are interested in studying in India and this is putting pressure on the universities in the US to partner with Indian universities for exchange programmes, the US Ambassador in India, Mr David Mulford, said on Monday.

Addressing newspersons of The Hindu Group of Publications, Mr Mulford noted that awareness of India in the US was growing, thanks partly to the strong Indian community in the US. “Young people (in particular) are fascinated by India” and this is putting pressure on the American universities to have more exchange programmes with universities in India, the Ambassador said.

Mr Mulford noted that there were 84,000 Indian students in the US, but only 1,700 American students in India. “We have a trade imbalance here,” he said, noting that student visa applications from India were growing by 30 per cent each year.

He said that the American universities were interested in expanding their relationship with India.

This is not just in terms of getting more Indian students to the US, but also in other ways such as exchange of students and professors.

Some American universities are also thinking about investing in India.

“Down the road, US universities are going to be looking at many models of co-operation including joint award of degrees,” Mr Mulford said.

Strong ties

The Ambassador stressed that Indo-US relations were “very comprehensive, touching all areas of activity”.

He said that even if there were some areas in official bilateral issues that the two governments did not see eye to eye on, they have little impact on the overall relationship between the two countries.

Later, answering a question, he said that the Indo-US relations were too strong to be impacted by any change in administration in either country.

He noted that the Indian community in the US — some 3 million Indians live in the US — was “very popular and highly respected”. Americans have been “deeply impressed” by the lobbying that the Indian community there does on various issues, such as the nuclear deal.

Sub-prime crisis

On the sub-prime crisis, Mr Mulford, a finance professional, who previously held very senior positions in Credit Suisse, said that innovations in the financial market had got ahead of regulations.

He noted that there were many regulators, who are political people, who feel that they should tighten controls and put everybody back in the regulator box and punish people.

“I don’t see that as particularly useful,” Mr Mulford said.

He said that improvements in regulations ought to be made, “but the pain and the penalties and the suffering is going to be done by the banks themselves”.

He noted that they were already doing it. “When you see these big write-offs that Citibank and JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley and everybody are taking — this is painful stuff. They’re letting people go, they’re suffering in their stock price, the wealth creation prospects of the people who work there have been completely demolished for the time being.”

The way to solve the problem, according to Ambassador Mulford is “total transparency and people owning up and taking the accounting consequences and that is happening”.