EHEF New Delhi 2008
12 Mar 2009
The EHEF New Delhi 2008 took place on 13 & 14 November at the InterContinental The Grand New Delhi.
It provided a podium for Higher Education Institutions (HEI) of the 27 European Union Member States. There were a total of 91 HEI representations. The Netherlands held a strong 10-stall contingent.
The Symposium organized by the EHEF on the 12th of November addressed EU-Indian higher education policy and cooperation issues. During the opening ceremony H.E. Jerome Bonnafont, Ambassador of France to India touched upon the issue of sharing education networks, which highlighted the statement “sharing of culture and technology with collaboration”.
Accessibility to technology
Europe’s initiative in promoting higher education in India is to give accessibility to Indian students to the advance technology of Europe and not be a means for ‘brain drain’. H.E. Jan Figel nicely concluded the opening ceremony by stating that investment in education is an investment in humanity.
The plenary discussion that followed highlighted many issues of education such as the essence of knowledge in globalisation, students of this generation being prepared for global partnership and the significance international education has in cultural integration.
Creating successful partnerships
The most interesting session of the Symposium was ‘International Cooperation’ where Prof. B.N.Jain, Deputy Director of IIT(Delhi) shared his views on the possibilities of creating successful partnerships. To give an overall view the symposium was successful in providing a perspective of what Europe and India perceive from internationalization of education.
Stalls were open to public on the 13th & 14th.There was some criticism from the exhibitors regarding the selection of dates as both were weekdays, which relatively decreased the number of visitors. The 13th turned out to be an Indian holiday so the influx of students was substantial. The 14th did not receive much response. Each European contingent was scheduled for individual presentations during the day.
Attendance
The attendance at the presentations was not that thriving. There was a great deal of interaction and inquisitiveness amongst the students who attended the presentations. The major enquiries were about engineering and management courses. As per the data collected by the EHEF the intake of visitors was a total of approx. 10,000 for both the days. 53% of the visitors were students and 35% professionals.
More information
For more information on visitors data: www.oead.ac.at/_oead_about/marketing/events/ehefs-gesamt-evaluation.pdf