Arundhati Gohain
New Delhi/ Educationonline Bureau
Come September, India and China are all set to make a new start in the education sector by giving mutual recognition to each other's degrees. According to senior officials of the Ministery for Human Resource Development, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal is expected to sign a long-awaited pact during his China visit from September 10 to 16, 2010.
Sibal will be attending the World Economic Forum in Tianjin between September 13 and 16, 2010. So far India and China's cooperation in education has been restricted to exchange programmes following signing of an agreement in 2006. The new pact will come as a relief to thousands of Indian students studying in Chinese institutions, as they would no longer need to worry about the validity of their degrees on returning home.
But, medicine which is the most popular subject for Indians along with pharmacy programmes, will however, may not be covered by the pact.
According to MHRD officials, as per the new pact, both the neighbouring countries will treat each other's degrees as equivalent under the agreement, which the HRD Minister is going to take with his Chinese counterpart next month.
In last half a decade China emerged as a major higher education destination for South Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan primarily because of its competitive pricing of the programmes coupled with world-class facilities. China institutions became a major attraction because of the low fees structure compared to the West or Australia.
Although there are around estimated 7,000 Indian students pursuing undergraduate degrees in China, so far unlike most degrees offered in the US, UK and Australia, Chinese programmes are not recognized in India and the students are not eligible to apply for higher studies or their degrees are not treated at par with Indian qualifications. The new cooperation is expected to bolster Chinese engineering and liberal art education.
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