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IAU 4th Global Meeting of Associations of Universities
(GMA IV)
Internationalization of Higher Education:
New Players, New Approaches
New Delhi (India) ‐ April 11‐12, 2011
Opening Remarks by Prof. Juan Ramon de la Fuente, IAU President
Prof. Chande, Vice Chancellor, Kavikulguru Kalidas Sanskrit Vishwavidyalya University,
and President of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), Prof. Tiwari, Director of IIIT,
and immediate past president of AIU, thank you for inviting IAU to hold its 4th Global
Meeting of Associations here in India and thank you for your collaboration. I also wish
to thank the Vice Chancellors of all of the partner universities who have joined in this
effort. Prof. Arora, Vice Chancellor, Punjab Technical University, Prof. Gajbhiye, Vice
Chancellor Dr. Hari Singh Gour University, Prof. Darlando Thanmi Khathing, Vice
Chancellor, Central University of Jharkhand and Prof. Sathyanarayanan, Vice Chancellor
of SRM University. Professor Beena Shah, Secretary General of AIU and dear
participants.
It is a pleasure for me to welcome all of you to this 4th edition of the Global Meeting of
Associations organized by the International Association of Universities in partnership
with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and with support from all the partner
institutions of higher education in India.
This is the first time since 1995 that IAU meets in New Delhi. In 1995, the IAU held its
General Conference here and let me just remind all of us of the theme that was
discussed at that time: Global Civilization and Cultural Roots: Bridging the Gap – the
Place of International University Cooperation.
Even though it has been a long time since we last met here, our Association has
benefited tremendously from Indian higher education experts in leadership positions in
our governance structure. For example, Prof. Deepak Nayyar, former VC of the
University of Delhi and a member of the National Knowledge Commission was a Vice
President of IAU from 2004 to 2008. Our task force on equitable access and success
enjoys the input from an Indian expert, Prof. Shyam Menon while Prof. Beena Shah is a
deputy board member of the IAU.
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Today, we thank the leadership of the AIU and particularly Prof. Tiwari, the immediate
past president of AIU, who attended the last Global Meeting of Associations in
Guadalajara, Mexico in 2009 and invited us to hold this Meeting here. We are pleased
that the AIU team agreed to focus on higher education internationalization and
specifically on the role we, as associations can play in this area.
This theme has long been an important one for the International Association of
Universities but today, we can safely say, everyone is catching up with us. No university
leader, policy maker or researcher can ignore the extent to which and the ways in which
internationalization is changing higher education.
India is a highly appropriate place to hold a Global meeting of university associations to
discuss internationalization: the number of delegations of university leaders that have
traveled to India just in the past year are an example of how important this nation is in
the global higher education field. The press coverage of the reforms being proposed in
Indian legislation with regard to the establishment of branch campuses in India, among
other changes, is another example of how important India is in the development of
international outreach by many universities worldwide. Furthermore, India’s
demographic dividend of a huge young population makes the nation highly attractive to
more countries with an aging population and lots of higher education capacity. Indian
students, about 170,000 of them , already represent the second largest group in the 3.4
million students studying outside their nation, yet their number remains relatively low
as a proportion of the overall number of students enrolled, thus attracting much
attention from overseas institutions.
The stated commitment to raise the rate of young people attending higher education in
India from about 14% where it is today to 30% by 2020 and the investment in higher
education (up by 34% for 2011‐20121) provide good reasons for the tremendous
interest in collaborating with India that we see everywhere. Likewise, and as the
Knowledge Commission suggested in its report, India will seek to increase the number of
international students attending the higher education institutions in this country. Many
of the associations represented in this Global Meeting have expertise on how to go
about achieving this goal.
However, as Minister Kapil Sibal is reported as saying recently at another international
conference, the implementation of these changes, still being debated in Parliament, is
not about conquest but about collaboration2.
In this, the IAU agrees completely with the Minister. It is this same sentiment and our
commitment to promoting collaboration that underpins this forum where we hope the
associations working at the national, regional and international level come to discuss
how best to cooperate to serve their members better and, find ways in which we can
move forward collectively for the overall benefit of higher education.
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India, budget hikes spending on higher education, March 12, 2011, UWN issue 162
2
The Chronicle of HE, March 13, 2011 India Prepares a welcome Mat for students and foreign universities
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It is in this spirit that I am particularly pleased to welcome leaders from three Haitian
universities who have been able to join us here. IAU has been particularly sensitive to
the plight of this small country hit so hard by a devastating earthquake now more than a
year ago.
Since the tragedy, we have been seeking ways to offer assistance and witnessing how
much our Members elsewhere wanted to help. The IAU grants programme, made
possible by support from the Swedish development agency Sida, allowed us to fund 4
modest projects which started some new and consolidated so previous relationships
between universities in Haiti and places such as the West Indies, Malaysia and France.
Furthermore, one of our members in Africa, University of Ilorin collected funds to help
Haiti and asked IAU to determine how best to use these funds.
Later this morning, during a lunch session, we will hear from our colleagues in Haiti how
we may be of service as they rebuild the higher education system.
As university associations, we exist to serve our Members, to represent their interests
and to assist them to meet their goals. In this new century, and in this era which may
one day be known to historians as the Globalization Era, it is our responsibility to
understand how higher education fits into this process that touches on every aspect of
our life.
For many in higher education, internationalization is the proactive and dynamic
response that universities and other higher education institutions adopt to meet the
challenges of globalization. Of course, they do so differently around the world, but that
too, is something we must study and examine all the time. In part this Global Meeting is
designed to help us do so.
The ways to educate students, conduct research, grant degrees, lead and manage a
university in the Globalization Era are all radically different from the ways these roles
were performed in the past, even as recently as 3‐4 decades ago. As associations, it is
our responsibility to monitor and understand these trends and advocate for
internationalization that improves the quality of higher education and offers more
opportunities for positive change.
The IAU takes this responsibility seriously. It conducts regular surveys and disseminates
findings about the trends in internationalization of higher education and offers an
advisory service to universities worldwide as they develop their institutional
internationalization strategy.
You will hear more about the results of the latest survey and the ISAS Service
throughout the two days of this meeting as I will have the opportunity to introduce the
theme of this Meeting more thoroughly later this morning.
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4. I am also pleased to welcome the winners of the 2010 IAU/Palgrave Research Essay
prize: Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser, both from the University of the State of New York, in
Albany. Their paper will be published in the June issue of our journal Higher Education
Policy and they will be making a presentation here.
Finally, I do wish to express our thanks to all of you whose associations provided
information about your association or network and the role it plays in promoting
internationalization among your members and how you see the future unfolding in this
area. 23 associations provided their views, including some which are unable to be with
us. These responses are included in the GMA Primer which also includes information
about IAU work.
The next GMA, the fifth after Egypt, France, Mexico and India, will be held in 2013. Do
not hesitate to make suggestions for the theme that we might consider and a venue for
this next and Global Meeting of Associations. All suggestions will be welcome.
So let me only repeat how pleased we are to meet here in India, to have so many
different organizations taking part in this meeting and to thank our hosts for ensuring as
well, that we will learn about the reforms underway in Indian Higher Education now and
into the future.
Internationalization is first and foremost about learning about, learning from and with
each other. That is the purpose of this meeting and I hope that you will find it of
interest.
Thank you.
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