The prestigious Yale University is keen on growing ties with India and establish itself as a leading "university in the US for teaching of India", its president Richard Levin has said. Mr Levin, however, added that Yale was not yet "ready" to start a campus in India "at present time".
"We hope to establish Yale as a leading, if not the leading, university in the US for teaching of India," the Wall Street Journal quoted Mr Levin as saying. He said Yale wants to "grow ties with India to at least equal its ties with China".
"We were devoting pretty large resources to China," and from 2008, the Ivy League school in Connecticut "is devoting a much wider portion of intellectual activities to India".
The school is in talks to open undergraduate liberal arts college in Singapore that will explore East and West intellectual traditions. That school could be a beach head for Yale in Asia.
On whether a Yale campus would be set up in India as well, Mr Levin said, "I don't think we're ready for a campus in India," explaining that the university will not be able to deal with other similar projects while focusing on the Singapore venture.” Mr Levin added, though, that if there were to be another international college, India would be a more likely choice than China because of the predominance of English.
He added Yale is fully committed to teaching its students about India and attracting specialists on the region to the university. Yale wants access, involvement and partnerships with India because it is one of the two great growing economies in the world, Mr Levin said.
"It is 20 per cent of the worlds population," he said, "and we would be betting in the long-run a larger fraction of the world’s most talented people". The number of students at Yale from China and India has doubled in the past 10 years but China still has more overall students (350 total) at Yale than India, which sends roughly 140 total graduate and undergraduate students of Yale's 11,593 students, Mr Levin said.
Rival institutions such as Columbia University in New York, Harvard University in Massachusetts and the University of Chicago have "formidable resources and connections to India," he added. Since 2008, Yale has added India specialists to faculty ranks in economics, political science, anthropology and other fields.
It has expanded conferences, research collaborations with India-based institutions and plans to engage the Indian Diaspora with programmes and lectures in the US. The school says it has devoted $30 million to the initiative since 2008 and has raised $15 million more from donors already.