Digital Guide on Internationalization: Simplifying U.S.-India HEI Collaboration

Higher education partnerships between the U.S. and India have grown rapidly in recent years with a clear interest amongst both Indian and US institutions to expand their engagement. However, the significant diversity of both U.S. and Indian higher education institutions and lack of comprehensive understanding poses a barrier to developing a shared understanding and knowledge base of regulations, mechanisms, and best practices for collaboration that can ultimately help enhance and scale U.S.-India partnerships. Standardization across the concepts and structures of internationalization approaches between the two countries have been disparate and lacks cohesion. The result is a field of considerable activity (yet lack of data), poor coordination and inconsistent standards and practices, with limited sharing of knowledge and best practices. The University of Denver (DU) aims to develop a model digital guide on internationalization to forge further understanding on U.S.-India higher education collaborations and partnerships. The overarching goal of the project is to develop partnerships between Indian and U.S. higher education institutions to build education connections and capacity. India may benefit from U.S. expertise in integrating vocational skills, multi-disciplinary education, and research within its higher education system. Indian higher education institutions (HEI) are currently working with U.S. counterparts in a limited manner and need support to engage, host, and build collaborations with their U.S. counterparts. Developing the capacity of Indian HEIs to internationalize their campuses and follow a strong model for developing new partnerships will increase the number of partnerships and reinforce the contribution of American institutions in higher education.