US to help Indian students make informed choice: Hillary Clinton

The US is expanding its advising services for Indian students to make sure they do not fall for “misleading offers” from dubious institutions and is also keen to encourage more American students to enroll in varsities in India, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today.

Addressing the first ever India-US Higher Education Summit at the prestigious Georgetown University here, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US wants the relationship between the two “great democracies” to be as interconnected as possible at every level and not just at the government to government level, which is just the beginning and “clearly not the most important and lasting collaboration that we seek.”

While 100,000 Indians are currently studying at various US universities, “we want to see more American students enrolling for academic credit at Indian institutions. The US government is fully committed to enhancing this academic cooperation,” she said.

Clinton said the US is also expanding its EducationUSA advising services for Indians and families to provide accurate information about opportunities to study here and help students “sort out misleading offers that come over the Internet.”

She said those offers flood into homes across India giving young Indian students the idea that certain approaches will work for them when in fact it is a “dead end”. “We don’t want to see that happen. We want to see real exchanges with credible institutions and we will do everything we can to support that.”

Early this year, the Tri Valley University in California shut down after an alleged immigration scam, putting the future of a large number of Indian students in jeopardy.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), October 13, 2011