Canadian Association
for Graduate Studies

CAGS in India

Canadian Universities India Tour 2009 (New Delhi and Bangaluru, December 15-19)

One of the most striking developments within higher education circles over the past couple of years has been increased interest in encouraging greater interaction between Canada and India. Higher education issues featured in the recent trips by Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty to India, and will also be raised in the forthcoming trip by Jean Charest. India is clearly on the radar, though there is considerable uncertainty over the exact objectives as well as the mechanisms needed to bolster academic relations between Canadian and Indian universities. In part, this uncertainty stems from the rapidly shifting university landscape – the tremendous growth in India’s university sector, the rise to international prominence of many of its institutions, and the fact that Canada has been slow to respond when compared to many European, American and Australian universities. These are all factors that we need to consider. Indian institutions are eager to partner with Canadian universities but we most remember that we are not the only players, and that India cannot be seen simply as a recruiting ground. As Sheila Embleton, President of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, recently observed in University Affairs, ‘India is looking for partnerships, not aid.’ Nowhere is this potential for collaboration more promising than at the graduate and postdoctoral level as both our countries look to strengthen their research capacity. Indian universities are keen to increase graduate education, in part because of the huge demand for new faculty members as they expand the size and number of universities. And all graduate deans in Canada can attest to the challenges we face in recruiting students in the STEM areas.

Dean Douglas Peers, (York University); Dr. Sheila Embleton, (President of the Shastri 
Indio-Canadian Institute); Dean Wade Parkhouse, (Simon Fraser University);
Dean Barbara Evans, (University of British Columbia); Ms. Pari Johnston, (AUCC);
and Dean Carolyn Watters, (Dalhousie University).

AUCC and Shastri, in association with Canada’s High Commission in New Delhi, organized a two day workshop in December to bring together graduate deans from Canada with some of our Indian counterparts. There is no Indian equivalent of CAGS, and very often there are no graduate deans per se in Indian Universities. Structural and definitional differences were among the challenges we identified and we discussed ways of making each other’s systems and practices more comprehensible to the other. For example, our Indian counterparts were not aware that many of our institutions were now accepting three-year degrees for admission into graduate school. We also discovered that what we often refer to as joint degrees are known as dual degrees in India, and vice versa. We also looked at opportunities in collaborative programming, student exchanges, membership on dissertation defences, and policies and provisions for research ethics and intellectual property.

                                           High Commissioner, Joseph Caron; Dean Carolyn Watters, (Dalhousie University)
                                           and Dr. P.P. Bhojvaid, (Vice Chancellor of TERI University).

A joint working group, which includes Carolyn Watters and myself, was struck to follow up these discussions by identifying mechanisms and programs that will facilitate mobility, producing a statement of principles intended to inform future actions, developing checklists of best practices as well as other information tools that will ensure better communications between and amongst our partners, and finally to work with other groups to lobby for enhanced links with India. I will provide regular updates of our activities and will no doubt be coming back to you with requests for feedback and information.

Douglas Peers