US State Dept Designs Courses for Indians in Line With New Education Policy

These courses consist of the subject matters of STEM disciplines and will commence in the fall semester of 2024.

The move would allow Indians living in the US to pursue a 1-year professional master’s degree with an industrial specialisation in American universities.

Image used for representational purposes only 

(Photo: iStock/Altered by The Quint)

In cooperation with India, the United States has inaugurated a new educational programme in line with India’s new National Education Policy (NEP).

This would allow Indians living in the US to pursue a 1-year professional master’s degree with an industrial specialisation in American universities.

These courses consist of the subject matters of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines and will commence in the fall semester of 2024.

After successfully completing their courses, students are permitted to stay in the US for up to three years, in accordance with existing visa and travel rules, to then work to pay off their student loans and attain work experience.

15 Indian institutions are already in joint collaboration with more than 20 US universities in talks of how to improve on this scheme, with the US State Department acting as a mediator in this cooperation.

The architect in charge of this programme and the first to come up with the idea is Akhilesh Lakhtakia, a Jefferson Science Fellow at the State Department’s South and Central Asia (SCA) bureau.

Lakhtakia was asked to step away from his job as an engineering wisdom and mechanics professor at Penn State University to help create the programme by researching India’s NEP. 

In an interview, Lakhtakia voiced his opinion regarding how he felt that the NEP was a fresh take on the rather traditional Indian educational system, and seems to share many qualities with the American education system.

“What was proposed was very much to my liking. It is student-centred, flexible, multidisciplinary, futuristic, and international. If this can be implemented, it will simply revolutionise school and higher education. The State Department brought me in to understand how, in line with NEP, the two countries can work together. The objective was to create a win-win, but in my mind, my client was the Indian student.”

Lakhtakia who studied electronics engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Banaras Hindu University before moving to the US in 1980.

India introduced the NEP after nearly two decades in 2020.

Its aims are: 

• To be available to all Indians.

• To be global in scope and focus on Indian cultures and educational systems.

• Create a cordial partnership between teachers and students. Its primary vision is to provide an education system consisting of Indian roots but also American modernisation and to transform Indian learners’ lives into a more knowledgeable society as a whole.