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Global Reach
PanIIT, an umbrella organization of IIT alumni organizations, has hosted two of its three
biennial global conferences in the Bay Area. The first, in 2003, drew 2,200 people and featured
Microsoft founder Bill Gates as keynote speaker. The CBS News program “60 Minutes” covered
the conference, referring to IIT as “the most important university you’ve never heard of.” A July
2007 Santa Clara conference entitled “Transforming the World through Technology” attracted
an attendance of 4,000 over three days. PanIIT’s annual Diwali celebration in Los Altos Hills
draws some 1,400 attendees.
IIS alumni hosted their own three-day global conference in Santa Clara in June 2007, featuring
Government of India principal scientific advisor Dr. R. Chidambaram, Applied Materials
chairman Jim Morgan, Boeing chief technology officer Dr. Robert Krieger and UC Berkeley
chancellor Robert Birgeneau.
A Frontier Market for Education
The challenges faced by the founders of the Indian School of Business (as recounted in Chapter
3) point to the difficulties encountered by foreign educational institutions in entering the Indian
market. Despite its considerable pool of human resources, India faces a shortage of educated
workers. India therefore presents an emerging market for California and U.S. educational institutions
seeking to deliver programs abroad. While almost 100 foreign institutions offer programs in
India, at present they can only offer courses as extensions of programs based abroad and may
not be located in India as distinct degree-granting institutions. Institutions with a presence in
India must offer limited courses in partnership with recognized Indian institutions—a requirement
that subjects them to inflexible restrictions on curricula, salaries and fees.
Those same restrictions have arguably limited educational innovation, impacted teacher quality,
and unnecessarily inhibited economic growth. To meet growing demand and the government’s
target of 15% enrollment, the scale of university education in India needs to grow faster.
Recognizing the urgency of this gap, educational reforms that would open the educational
market to foreign degree-granting institutions have been proposed, but at this writing the
outcome remains uncertain.
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