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Yesterday, in addition to getting an overview of the healthcare system, participants in the Study Mission to India also heard from a few speakers from the world of education. One was Dr. Misra, a director and professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, which might be considered the equivalent of MIT.

Some interesting facts:

- The role of education and its globalization is assuming an increased role and significance
In India. People with a high school certificate number 250 million, with 10 million getting a BS degree.

- IIT receives 300,000 applicants and accepts only 5,000. However, 400,000 graduate each year with degrees in engineering and science (more than the population of New Zealand). There has been a much greater focus in the last few years on research and on innovation and creativity.

- Lots of technology incubation. They expect that before long a "Microsoft" will be coming out of India.

- Indian universities are attracting many foreign students and are losing fewer students to U.S. institutions.

- Industries are becoming proponents of partnerships with universities; universities are also working to build international collaborations with exchange of faculty and students, research centers, and joint degree programs.

In summary, India is at a point where it can produce a high number of knowledge workers. This offers an enormous opportunity for the globalization of higher technical education.

- India will need a large base of knowledge workers to play its role as a leading knowledge economy.

- India will need to gear up for meeting the challenges by revitalizing its institutions of higher learning with greater freedom and momentum.

- Clearly, globalization has had an effect and will continue to impact higher technical education, offering enormous opportunities.

I have to say that after listening to all of the speakers over the past few days, there is an enormous sense of optimism. You can just feel the opportunities of growth--I think that India is really on the cusp of greatness!