Foriegn Institutes setting shop in India

After ISB, Maha loses Georgia Tech to Andhra

Neelima Mahajan-Bansal | TNN

New Delhi: Once again, Andhra Pradesh has pipped Maharashtra as the choice destination for prestigious academic institutions. The US-based Georgia Institute of Technology has signed up with the southern state to set up two campuses at an estimated investment of $100 million over the next few years.
A decade ago, Mumbai lost is chance to play host to ISB, now an acclaimed business school in Asia, after politicians demanded quotas for locals. Now, despite a personal invitation from CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, the state could not find enough land quickly to accommodate Georgia Tech. Deshmukh had invited the university during a state visit to the US in 2005.
Georgia Tech will set up a campus in Hyderabad and later at Visakhapatnam by 2009-’10 on land purchased from the AP government. The institute will initially start with a faculty of 10 and 200 doctoral students. There are further plans to set up an SEZ that will ensure industry-university interaction. Experiences elsewhere, like Harvard and Wales in the UK, suggest that such an interaction acts as a catalyst for research, economic development and technology commercialization.
Says Vijay Madisetti, executive director of Georgia Tech’s India initiative and professor in its School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, “The campus is expected to grow over 10 years to about 100 faculty and 2,000 students co-located with a universityindustry research park. We expect to work with private donors and the US and Indian industry to raise the necessary funding (approximately $100 million).’’ Indians to get degrees given to US students
New Delhi: Georgia Tech, which has signed up with Andhra Pradesh to set up campuses at Hyderabad and Vizakhapatanam, will offer degrees recognized in the US, identical to those offered by its US collegiate counterparts.
This will make Georgia Tech the first global university to do so in India.
The initial set of master’s and doctoral programmes will be in the areas of information technology and hardware systems; biotechnology and healthcare; infrastructure research; and energy systems.
Says Madisetti, “The degree programmes will be taught by tenure-track and tenured Georgia Tech faculty, who are expected to possess the advantage of having study and research time spent on both US and Indian campuses.’’
While most students are expected to come from India, some will be from the US as well. Just as in the US, most students are likely to support through graduate research assistantships, bringing the cost of education down.