Cornell courts the Indian subcontinent

[Harold F. Schiffman]

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i26/26a03801.htm
>>From the issue dated March 2, 2007


Cornell Courts a Subcontinent

A whirlwind tour of India highlights U.S. institutions' haste to find
global partners

By JEFFREY SELINGO

Mumbai, India

In this packed city of 16 million people, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is a
sought-after man. At least once a month, a delegation of academic bigwigs
from the United States will speed through town wanting a sit-down with the
director of one of India's leading universities, the Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research. His list of recent visitors includes Purdue and Rice
Universities and Virginia Tech, to name just a few. Their goal? To learn
more about the Indian higher-education system and discuss possible
partnerships. The result? Not much, as least as far as Mr. Bhattacharya is
concerned. "Little happens beyond the first step," says the director, a
short, burly man with thick white hair and a matching beard who earned his
Ph.D. at Northwestern University. "Talking is fine, but someone needs a
few things to happen."

Yet here he is on a sunny Wednesday morning in early January welcoming yet
another American contingent, this one from Cornell University. Sitting at
a long conference table, flanked by a half-dozen faculty members and Ph.D.
students, Mr. Bhattacharya sips tea as he recites his well-practiced
history of the institute to a group of five Cornell administrators, led by
its new president, David J. Skorton. For the next hour, the two sides
trade ideas on how they might help each other. As the meeting ends, Mr.
Bhattacharya suggests that they "go slow." He tells the group about the
visits by other American institutions, expressing frustration that they
often do not follow up, and politely reminds Dr. Skorton that his
predecessor at Cornell was here just two years ago. "We are not well
funded," says Mr. Bhattacharya, "so these relationships put an enormous
strain on us."

Dr. Skorton promises to follow up, although he is careful to avoid
specifics. "We are going to share with our faculty the opportunities and
see what they might want to do," he tells Mr. Bhattacharya. "At this
particular juncture at our university, there is an emphasis on India."
India is increasingly showing up on the travel schedules of college
presidents nationwide. Like American corporations that began coming to
India more than a decade ago to tap the brain power of its millions of
inexpensive, well-educated engineers, software writers, and medical
technicians, American higher-education institutions are flocking here to
recruit Indian students, set up academic and research ventures, and raise
money, largely through their rapidly expanding alumni bases. The most
ambitious among them are considering joint-degree programs or full-fledged
campuses.

But as Mr. Bhattacharya's perpetual disappointments suggest, it is much
easier to strike business deals in India than to set up university
partnerships. The reasons are varied, and include both the challenges of
steering a democratically led institution, in which the faculty must
support any deal for it to succeed, and the obstacles presented by the
country's notoriously bureaucratic and underfinanced higher-education
system. As Cornell's delegation quickly discovers, India looks quite
different up close than it does from thousands of miles away.

'An Eye-Opening Experience'

"This is my first time in India, and it's been an eye-opening experience,"
Dr. Skorton tells a reporter from The Hindu Business Line, a daily Indian
newspaper. The two are clutching the top of the back seat of a Toyota
Highlander as it zigzags through the traffic-clogged streets of Hyderabad,
the driver steadily tapping the car's horn. Thanks to a lengthy flight
delay in Bangalore, Dr. Skorton and his team are running late to meet a
group of Cornell students who are here on a two-week study trip. "The
challenges here are great," the president continues, as they drive by tent
cities that sit alongside gleaming glass office buildings, "but I'm in awe
of how India is addressing those challenges. We're here willing to do
whatever we can do to be partners with higher education in solving our
common problems."

The interview is just one of a half-dozen press events featuring the
president in his seven-day tour of India, during which a Chronicle
reporter tagged along. In a country where admission to a top American
research university is considered by many families the highest
achievement, Dr. Skorton and other visiting presidents enjoy a
celebritylike status. He lands on an Indian television news special in
Bangalore and attracts clusters of newspaper and television reporters to
news conferences in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The following day, glowing
stories appear in the local press with eye-catching headlines like
"Cornell Woos Indian Minds." American university presidents can open
plenty of doors here. During their four-city tour, the Cornell delegation
secures separate audiences with both the country's president and its prime
minister. It is hard to imagine George W. Bush carving out time in his
schedule to meet, say, with the president of the University of Delhi.

That fact is not lost on U.S. universities, which is one reason why
American University, the University of California, and Columbia University
have sent similarly high-powered delegations to travel around the country
in the last two months. Their trips are not cheap: Cornell's bill will
ultimately come to about $50,000. But the high-profile visits also raise
high expectations among Indian academics. They assume that if a president
is visiting their campus, they will soon see action. It is not always
clear that ideas hashed out in India must then go through the usual
university bureaucracy back home.  Proposals often die or are delayed in
academic departments without anyone in India ever knowing. Presidents also
come and go, as do their priorities for the institution. Cornell's
previous president, Jeffrey S. Lehman, wanted it to become a more
"transnational university," but he abruptly left in 2005 without putting
his plans fully in place. On this trip, Cornell administrators avoid
making specific commitments, taking a longer view of the relationships
they are building. Their discussions with bureaucrats at national planning
and scientific-development agencies, with university presidents, and with
political leaders are all quite broad, touching on possible partnerships
in agricultural research, biotechnology, entrepreneurship education, and
cybersecurity.

A few meetings are more detailed. At the Tata Institute, Mr. Bhattacharya,
the director, suggests that Cornell help him recruit faculty members by
advertising the institute on the university's Web site and provide
technical help on a nanoscale-technology facility that Tata plans to
build. However specific the conversation, no promises are made at any
stop. "We have to be careful not to create expectations we can't meet,"
says David Wippman, Cornell's vice provost for international relations,
who traveled to India last year to lay the foundation for this trip.
"There's a lot of complimentary language spoken by both sides, and
sometimes that leads to misunderstandings." Making things more complex,
presidential delegations typically enter India unclear on exactly what
form, or forms, their universities' presence here might take. While such
caution is often necessary, given that the Americans are still trying to
figure out India's higher-education system, it also speaks to how much
pressure U.S. universities feel to simply be here.

"It's the country-du-jour syndrome," says Madeleine F. Green, vice
president of the Center for International Initiatives at the American
Council on Education. "In the early 1990s it was Eastern Europe. Then they
all ran to South Africa, ... then they moved on to China, and now to
India." With the parade of American visitors showing no signs of letting
up, Indian academics are beginning to wonder if these high-profile tours
are anything more than publicity stunts designed to siphon off students
rather than hammer out real partnerships. "There's a lot of ceremony to
these visits," says K. Muniyappa, chairman of the biochemistry department
at the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore, after a meeting with Dr.
Skorton. While he and Dr. Skorton discussed several specific ideas, such
as a six-month rotation in India for Cornell postdocs, some universities
come with empty agendas, Mr.  Muniyappa says. One visiting American
university simply came to ask for a list of the institute's students so it
could recruit them.

Although Dr. Skorton shows no interest in the institute's student roster,
he admits in the car afterward that foreign students, and those from India
in particular, are the lifeblood of any American research university. "We
depend on international students as research assistants and teaching
assistants," he says.

Roadblocks Ahead

As the week speeds on, Cornell's trip begins to have the feel of the final
leg of an American presidential campaign: late-night arrivals at hotels,
last-minute scheduling changes, and energy bars for dinner. In the first
five days, the delegation travels some 1,500 miles by plane and car, never
idling too long. So it comes as a bit of a respite when the group stops
for almost half a day at Infosys, the giant technology company co-founded
by a Cornell trustee, N.R. Narayana Murthy, one of the richest men in
India. The company's success has been profiled in virtually every major
American newspaper and magazine, probably contributing to the image of
India as the next great economic superpower. Its leafy 80-acre campus has
the feel of an American office park, except that its young employees of
18,000 workers here, the average age is 26 bike between the campus's 47
buildings rather than drive. On this Saturday afternoon, workers and their
families take advantage of the campus's putting green, basketball courts,
state-of-the-art gym, and game room outfitted with ping-pong and pool
tables.

Dr. Skorton grabs a cue and shoots a few balls as Mr. Murthy watches and
smiles. "It's good that David made India his first international trip as
president," Mr. Murthy says. "He can now see for himself that India has
used technology to create economic capital, but not social capital.
Universities that help us solve the social problems will succeed here, and
Cornell has the capacity to do that." Even though the billionaire
financier and philanthropist George Soros is visiting the same day, Mr.
Murthy, who himself is worth an estimated $1.3-billion, remains with the
Cornell group and joins them again later that evening for a reception for
45 alumni in Bangalore that kicks off the founding of a new club there.

Mr. Murthy's allegiance especially pleases one member of the delegation,
Cornell's vice president for alumni affairs and development, Charles D.
Phlegar. In addition to opening a few doors for the delegation, the
unassuming billionaire also secured a big donation from his friend, the
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for a new building on Cornell's campus. Mr.
Murthy's presence here and on the Board of Trustees speaks to the
interconnectedness of each of Cornell's overseas projects, in which fund
raising, student recruitment, academic programs, research, and public
service often overlap. It is a strategy used by many of the United States'
most international universities.

When the group leaves the Infosys campus, the reality of India sets in
again. The delegation's two vans slow to a crawl along Bangalore's dusty
streets. As cows roam in between, scores of buses, trucks, cars, and
motorcycles all maneuver to create their own lanes on the dirt roads,
which are lined with homeless migrants and crowds of people trying to
cross through the heavy traffic. The 15-mile drive back to the hotel takes
an hour and a half. "It's like we moved backwards a century," Mr. Phlegar
says of the contrasts between the Infosys campus and the rest of India.
With a medical-school campus in Qatar, a joint hospitality-degree program
in Singapore, and a summer law institute in Paris, Cornell is no novice in
overseas operations. But India is not quite like any country the
university has worked in. For all its famed economic gains, India visibly
remains a developing nation. Nearly 380 million Indians survive on less
than a $1 a day, 40 percent of India's one billion citizens are
illiterate, and 700 million people lack adequate sanitation.

India's higher-education system is equally challenged. The 350
universities here serve 9.3 million students, about 7 percent of the
country's 18- to 24-year-old population. (The United States, by contrast,
has 4,200 institutions serving 17 million students.) Those institutions
vary widely in quality. The seven Indian Institutes of Technology and six
Indian Institutes of Management can hold their own against some of the
world's best universities. But many others are grossly underfinanced and
suffer from serious shortages of faculty members and resources. Local
engineering colleges, for example, often churn out graduates with skills
akin to low-level technicians. "You probably can count the number of
world-class, serious research universities in India on one hand," says
Philip G. Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher
Education at Boston College. "Given that India is hot, there are more
foreign partners looking for linkages than there are Indian universities
to go around. It's a little bit like musical chairs."

A Mismatch of Resources

In a report released in January, a government advisory committee concluded
that India needs 1,500 universities by 2015 in order to raise its
college-going rate to 15 percent, the average for Asian countries. It is
unlikely that the country can build so many, which is one reason Indian
academics as well as the president and prime minister are so eager to form
partnerships with American universities. But finding common ground can be
difficult. Because their basic needs are so great, Indian universities are
most interested in learning how to copy the research prowess of American
universities, partly to sustain the country's red-hot economy and to
market inventions for new sources of revenue. As a result, Indian
academics are particularly eager to join with large research universities,
which can provide them with access to foundation grants, technical
expertise, and top-notch facilities.

Many of India's research facilities are decades behind those of top
American institutions. In a report last year, the Scientific Advisory
Council to India's prime minister blamed the country's sharp decline in
science research in recent years on the "poor investment in people and
infrastructure" at its universities. Even the best institutions in the
country, the study noted, are "not performing well in terms of research
papers and the number of research students they train." India's largest
supplier of Ph.D.'s, the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore,
produces only 165 graduates a year in science and engineering. By
contrast, the University of California at Berkeley confers twice as many
Ph.D.'s in those fields.

Those disparities become apparent during the delegation's visit to the
Bangalore institute, whose serene campus sits in the middle of the
sprawling city, known as the Silicon Valley of India for its booming IT
industry. With its low Spanish-colonial-style buildings and shade trees,
the institute reminds Dr. Skorton of Stanford University, where his son
attends college. But inside, signs of neglect 1950s-era lecture halls,
peeling paint, and aging computers are "constant reminders that our
government has failed to invest in us," says Mr. Muniyappa, the
biochemistry-department chairman. Exactly what universities like the
Indian Institute of Science can offer any top American institution, beyond
a potential supply of students, remains unclear. Despite the
higher-education system's shortfalls, however, many American academics
believe their universities have an important role to play in India, noting
that the country provides a unique environment for conducting research,
particularly in public health and agriculture.

"There's an advantage to researching in other cultures and other systems
of government," says Frederick M. Lawrence, dean of the George Washington
University Law School, which holds an annual conference in India that
brings together scholars from the two countries who debate an issue using
both legal systems. Dr. Skorton frames Cornell's interest in India in
terms of public diplomacy, arguing that the United States, through its
universities, should share its knowledge to improve the lives of others.
Throughout the trip, he often refers to Cornell, New York State's
land-grant institution, as "the land-grant university to the world." "The
world is turning to higher education to solve its most vexing problems,"
he says, "and these problems know no disciplinary or national boundaries."

Taking Small Steps

American higher education's interest in India is nothing new, of course.
Faculty members in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, for
instance, have been conducting research experiments and exchanging
scientific information with their counterparts here for more than 50
years. (As India's president tells the Cornell delegation, maintaining an
adequate food supply is a problem that is only going to get worse because
the country's middle class is expected to double by 2020.) One of
Cornell's most prominent existing partnerships in India, in fact, was
developed by faculty members in the agriculture college. It brings about
35 Cornell students here for two weeks every January, where they are
joined by their counterparts from three Indian universities to gain a
better understanding of the problems of agricultural and rural development
in India.

The Cornell delegation takes a daylong detour, on its way from Bangalore
to Delhi, to visit the students in Hyderabad, along with the university
partners. "It's humbling to see how many people here appreciate Cornell's
efforts," Dr. Skorton tells a crowd of students and university officials
who greet him. A cardiologist by training, Dr. Skorton points out that the
two countries share common problems, such as high rates of diabetes, and
says that higher-education institutions can help solve such problems by
working more closely together. As successful as this exchange program has
been, though, this was the first year that the Indian students had the
funds they needed to visit Ithaca.

That is thanks to a donation from a Cornell graduate and trustee, Ratan N.
Tata, who is chairman of the Tata Group, a $22-billion Indian business
conglomerate, and whose family foundation financed the Tata Institute.
(Mr. Tata also serves on the Board of Trustees at University of Southern
California.) For many U.S.-Indian partnerships, money is often the
sticking point. The costs of travel, salaries, and housing are usually
vastly different for institutions in the two countries. Andy L. Ruina, a
Cornell professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, who is a visiting
professor at the Institute of Science in Bangalore, where his housing
costs only $90 for the month, agrees that one hurdle to additional Indian
relationships "is that they tend to grow and shrink on finances." That's
one area where Dr. Skorton says he can help, by redirecting dollars from
other Cornell programs. But even so, he admits that much of what comes
from this trip will be up to Cornell's faculty members. "They will pick
and choose, like they do in the U.S., who they want to work with," he says
as the group leaves the Institute of Science's campus. "Sometimes the best
relationships are those forged faculty to faculty." Then pointing to his
light-gray pinstriped suit, he adds, "Not the ones set up by people
dressed like me."

A few weeks after he returns home, Dr. Skorton moves forward on the one
concrete plan to result from the trip: a joint academic conference that he
proposed to the prime minister. It would bring top scholars from both
countries together to set out a blueprint for how university research
could help them solve universal problems. Beyond that, the university's
next major step in India is unclear. But Dr.  Skorton knows he has to act
fast. Administrators are already planning their next trip back.

http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 53, Issue 26, Page A38

***********************************************************************************

N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.

***********************************************************************************