THE HAGUE, 17/07/08 - The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) yesterday signed a bilateral agreement with its Indian sister organisation Association of Indian Universities (AIU). The two organisations agreed to encourage the partnership in the area of education and scientific research.

India has 415 universities, of which 285 are members of the AIU. "India is an interesting partner for the Dutch universities, due to the strongly growing economy and the big investments in India in higher education and scientific research. Meanwhile, reputable universities in India have insufficient places to enable all the talent to be educated, offering opportunities for Dutch scientific areas suffering from a shortage of talented students," stated VSNU.

VSNU and AIU will work together under The Student Research Convention. Under this, AIU will select a number of talented students in a national Indian competition, who will be offered a promotion place at a Dutch university. Additionally, there are partnership activities with Indian universities at various Dutch universities.

Maastricht University will shortly open an office in Bangalore to recruit talented students and researchers. Eindhoven University has a joint master's programme in Computer Science and Engineering in partnership with Manipal University, with the first academic year underway in Manipal and the second in Eindhoven.

Utrecht University is offering 14 'short stay fellowships' this year to Indian PhD students. They can use this fellowship to do research in Utrecht for three months. In this period, student and university can explore the options for further partnership.