BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University Provost Beth Cunningham was chosen to travel this semester to India as part of a special program of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which is known for the Fulbright Program.
Cunningham’s special program, known as the India Higher Education Administrators Seminar, sent 10 administrators to establish international connections with universities in India.
“The colleges and universities we visited really wanted to build collaborations,” said Cunningham, who spent two weeks in India this March. “This trip was to help us think about ways we could work together in the future as institutions of higher education.”
According to Cunningham’s studies, only about 11 percent of the eligible Indian population go on to higher education, a stark difference to the estimated 56 percent in developed nations. “The goal of India’s government is to raise that level to 20 percent within the next few years,” said Cunningham. “One challenge to that is the lack of faculty and trained administrators, which is what makes these trips so important.”