NY Times on the proposed university in Nalanda
December 9th, 2006
In http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/opinion/09garten.html Yale University’s Dean Jeffrey E. Garten writes about the current plans for a world class university in Nalanda. Following is an excerpt.
- At the Asian summit meeting next week, a consortium led by Singapore
and including India, Japan and others will discuss raising the $500
million needed to build a new university in the vicinity of the old
site and perhaps another $500 million to develop the roads and other
infrastructure to make the institution work. The problem is that the
key Asian officials are not thinking big enough. There is more talk
about making Nalanda a cultural site or a center for philosophy than a
first-rate modern university. The financial figures being thrown
around are a fraction of the endowments of Harvard, Yale or Columbia
today. A bolder vision is in order.The rebuilt university should strive to be a great intellectual
center, as the original Nalanda once was. This will be exceedingly
difficult to achieve; even today, Asia’s best universities have a long
way to go to be in the top tier. In a recent ranking of universities
worldwide, Newsweek included only one Asian institution, the
University of Tokyo, in the world’s top 25. In a similar tally by The
Times of London, there are only three non-Western universities in the
top 25.
Entry Filed under: India,Private Universities