Background
The Australian Government is committed to supporting existing cooperation and creating new engagement opportunities between Australian and Indian Universities. In April 2010, the then Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Julia Gillard MP and the Minister for Human Resources, the Hon Kapil Sibal, signed a joint ministerial statement reaffirming ongoing bilateral cooperation in the fields of education and training. They announced a number of collaborative activities to further the relationship between India and Australia aimed at developing methods for facilitating mutual recognition of qualifications and credit transfer arrangements.
On 1 August 2011, the annual India-Australia Ministerial Dialogue was held in New Delhi. Minister the Hon Chris Evans, Minster for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations and the Hon Kapil Sibal, co-chaired the inaugural Australia-India Education Council (AIEC) as part of this Ministerial Dialogue.
India-Australia University Shadowing Program: Pilot 2012
In 2011 Minister Evans during his visit to India announced further cooperation initiatives to foster educational links, including a new India-Australia University Shadowing Pilot Program. This Program will be managed by Universities Australia. The Program encourages two-way knowledge transfer between Indian and Australian universities, providing the opportunity for knowledge sharing and establishing future cooperation.
Five senior Indian university leaders will visit Australia for ten days, and each Australian participating University will host one Indian visitor. Later in 2012, the Australian university leaders will visit their partner universities in India.
Vice-Chancellors & Senior University Executives Workshop 2012
Prior to the 2011 Ministerial visit to India, the `Conference of Indian and Australian Vice-Chancellors and Senior University Executives', also called the Vice-Chancellor and Senior University Executive Workshop, took place, organised by the Indian University Grants Commission (UGC). At the workshop, four working group identified four areas of greater collaboration possibilities, which were presented to the Ministers on 1 August during the Inaugural Meeting of the AIEC. Five working groups and five projects were established taking the VC Workshop outcomes into consideration, to report back at the 2012 AIEC in Australia. The five working groups are: Skills Agenda Project, Institutional Collaboration in Higher Education Project, Student Mobility Project, Mutual recognition of quality assurance project and a Research Project.
Universities Australia is hosting the 2012 workshop.
Workshop Details
The workshop scheduled for the 5 October has been postponed. We will keep you informed of a new date for the workshop.
For further information about the workshop, please contact the secretariat.
For information about UA's engagement with India, please contact the Universities Australia secretariat.
