Two articles and a slide show on Vedanta University in the Chronicles of Higher Education
Chronicles of Higher Education has two premium articles ( one needs a subscription to read the full article) and a slide show. Following are links to those articles and excerpts from them.
- Slide show with 11 nice pictures
- Article 1: For Planners, the Opportunity of a Lifetime
By LAWRENCE BIEMILLERBaltimore
In an office a few feet from the chop of the Baltimore harbor, architects are drawing plans for a vast university campus on the east coast of India that would be shaped like twin blossoms, bordered by a lake, and entered through any of 34 gates, each with its own name and symbolism. As beautiful as a mandala and as intricate as a postgraduate mathematics problem, it’s almost certainly the most ambitious campus plan ever conceived.
On more than 7,500 acres, Vedanta University and its environs would accommodate a liberal-arts program, an engineering school, an agriculture college, a medical campus, Olympics-grade sports facilities, townships for faculty and staff members, parklands, a resort, and even its own airport. At the behest of Anil Agarwal, an industrialist who has pledged $1-billion toward its construction, the campus is being designed to house 100,000 students and to fulfill the donor’s dream of creating an institution that is Indian and world-class at the same time. … MORE
- Article 2: In Rural India, an Ambitious Academic Vision:
A mining mogul with big ideas is determined to build an elite, American-style university for 100,000 students in Orissa. Farmers, who own the land he wants to develop, plan to resist.
By SHAILAJA NEELAKANTANBhubaneshwar, IndiaA few miles outside the town of Puri, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, lies Beladala, a farming village of thatch-roofed homes. One recent afternoon a group of farmers sat on the porch of the village’s small school eating a lunch of rice, lentils, and vegetables on plates made of broad leaves. … MORE
1 comment July 9th, 2007