A New University in India, Ashoka University, Partners with Yale
A group of successful professionals and entrepreneurs have joined hands to establish a new educational institution in India. The goal is to open Ashoka University, a 1.3 billion rupee ($20.8 million) project described as the first private Ivy League-caliber liberal arts institution in India. Construction of its residential campus in Kundli, Haryana, is already under way. Classes, which will be almost exclusively in the humanities and social sciences, are slated to begin in August 2014.
Ashoka has partnered with a number of Western universities, including Yale University, Oxford University, Sciences Po in Paris, Universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania, and Carleton College. The partnerships are aimed at forming credit-sharing and exchange programs. Kalyanakrishnan (Shivi) Sivaramakrishnan, Dinakar Singh Professor of India and South Asian Studies Professor of Anthropology and Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale, will serve on the Academic Council of the University.
The University describes itself as “a philanthropic initiative founded by eminent scholars and visionaries of our time. We offer a liberal education at par with the best in the world. Taking our inspiration as much from Emperor Ashoka’s commitment to knowledge and peace to the Ivy League’s emphasis on rigour and breadth, we offer multidisciplinary courses of thought and socially-conscious modes of study. Ashoka is a place where the most inspiring teachers and brightest learners come together in a uniquely holistic model of higher education. We will nurture, not only the best students in the world, but the best students for the world.” The University recently began its admissions process for its first batch.
Because the concept of a liberal arts college in the Indian education landscape is new and parents are concerned about a university’s responsibility to produce employable students, Ashoka’s founders have focused most of their efforts in this pre-launch stage on selling the benefits of multidisciplinary education in the humanities and social sciences to prospective applicants and their parents. Awareness of the importance of a liberal arts education has been slowly spreading in India, and in January, Pomona College and Yale co-sponsored a conference in Bangalore on the future of liberal arts in India.