With its approximately 14 million students, India is the world’s third-largest higher education market after the USA and China. The Indian government wants to raise the number of students from the current 13 % to 30 % of each year group by 2020. If successful, this will increase the number of students to more than 40million,meaning that up to 800 new universities and 45,000 colleges will have to be established in India in coming years. There will also be an increasing demand for qualified academic staff. At the same time, it will be important to improve the quality of education. This offers new opportunities for German universities in particular. India is considering the admission of foreign education providers as a step towards reaching the goals it has set itself. A law allowing free competition on the Indian education market would enable foreign universities to award state-recognized diplomas and certificates.

The Indian education market is of great interest to Germany not just because of its size, but also because of its performance. Scientific and technological cooperation with India has traditionally been one of the most important and promising areas of Indo-German relations. India and Germany have been partners in research and development for more than 30 years. Cooperation agreements between the two countries are moving beyond exchange programmes for students and researchers and focusing increasingly on the development of joint study modules or entire university courses, including the awarding of joint degrees.

The numerous individual agreements between German and Indian research establishments, successful collaborative projects, and knowledge transfer are further signs of the close ties between our two countries. They include bilateral research projects, but also German-Indian research centres, such as the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS) at IIT Madras, which is financed through funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the DAAD programme “A New Passage to India”. Many of the joint projects are interdisciplinary in nature and address global topics such as climate change, environmental protection, energy supply or the conservation of natural resources.

The close cooperation between German and Indian universities and research establishments helps to meet the rising demand for multilingual staff with multicultural skills which is a result of business activities on international markets, particularly the Indian market. The DAAD programme mentioned above also includes a component that makes it possible for qualified German graduates to go on internships at Indian companies for several months after completing an intensive country-specific preparation programme. The number and quality of the applications submitted for this scholarship programme shows that highly-qualified young men and women in Germany are becoming increasingly interested in India. In turn, the practical relevance of German courses and the opportunities for application-oriented research are valued in India as special strengths of the German higher education system.

Germany is also an important partner for India in the National Skill Development Initiative to reform the Indian vocational training system. Because the shortage of skilled staff is severely hampering the growth of India’s emerging economy, the Indian government wants to reform its vocational training system with the aim of enabling half a billion people to obtain vocational qualifications by 2022, which will also improve the productivity and competitiveness of the Indian economy. This is a great opportunity for private providers of initial and continuing vocational training in Germany, as the Indian government wants the private sector to be involved in vocational training and relies on privately run programmes.

There is great demand for German vocational training expertise in India. German vocational training is renowned throughout the world for its relevance to the labour market and the employment situation. In particular, dual vocational training in companies and at part-time vocational schools or vocational academies has been recognized in India as a special strength of the German system because of the way it combines theory and practice.

The Indo-German partnership in vocational training can look back on a history of more than 40 years. In the first decades of cooperation, the Federal Government supported the development of vocational training centres such as the “Central Staff Training and Research Institute” (CSTARI), the “National Instructional Media Institute” (NIMI) and the “Indo-German Tool Rooms” as part of its development cooperation. As a result of India’s rapid economic growth, the heads of government of both countries reached an agreement in 2007 to intensify cooperation between India and Germany.

The Indian Minister of Labour Mallikarjun Kharge and I signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the expansion of bilateral cooperation in vocational training during the Indo-German intergovernmental consultations at the end of May 2011. As a further result of the intergovernmental consultations, the BMBF initiative for the International Marketing of Vocational Education (iMOVE) will soon open a liaison office for “Training made in Germany” in New Delhi, which will serve as a contact point for Indian businesses in particular.

India’s economy can benefit from our expertise in initial and continuing vocational training. At the same time, cooperation with India offers significant potential for German vocational training providers. A partnership in vocational training would be a logical complement to our existing cooperation in higher education, in which we have been applying the principle of equal, mutually beneficial cooperation very successfully for many years.