New Delhi: In a first positive feedback to HRD minister Kapil Sibal's efforts to woo Ivy League universities, Yale University has agreed to collaborate as a "small measure" by developing an India-Yale Leadership Program in areas like curriculum development, faculty development and academic planning.

In a letter to Sibal, Yale president Richard C Levin said, "The goals that you have articulated are ambitious but achievable and sorely needed if India is to achieve its full promise in the years ahead." Levin said Yale would use its experience with the Chinese education ministry as a "potential template" for collaboration.

HRD ministry will firm up a plan before a Memorandum of Understanding is signed between the ministry and Yale later this year when Levin visits India. Indirectly, Levin also told Sibal that India needs to do a lot to meet its goal. HRD's Foreign Education Providers Bill is in the final stages. However, before India puts a legislative framework in place, Levin said, the collaboration as a small measure "would publically reinforce that Yale is supportive of your efforts to reform higher education in India".

In specific terms, Levin suggested that it could help develop an India-Yale University Leadership Program for the leaders of India's educational institutions. "Such a program, our experience suggests, should be targeted to a set of current and future leaders of institutions in India. Yale and the ministry could work together to develop the program to best suit the needs of Indian higher education," he said.

Levin said building a leadership program in China helped educational leaders to the practices and conventions of American higher education. "We have been pleased to see that many of the reforms...that China has undertaken in recent years started in discussions in New Haven," Levin said.

source: TOI