Vedanta University, a $3.5 billion college modeled after world-class universities like Stanford and Harvard, aims to provide greater access to higher education and research in India. However, despite the hopeful presence of a university committed to excellence so close to home, Stanford students from India still prefer life on the Farm over the new option.

“Vedanta University is a very noble initiative to provide an excellent education for students in India,” said Priyata Mehra ‘09. “However, personally, I love being a part of the multi-cultural community here at Stanford and meeting so many people from across the globe that I would not trade it for a similar but less diverse education in India.”

Riah Forbes ‘10 agreed.

“Even though I would love to study in India because I know that I will want to eventually end up back there,” she said, “I would still come to Stanford because it gives me global exposure that Vedanta University would not be able to provide at this point in time.”

The university system in India is currently under financial strain, and is only able to serve about seven percent of college-age students in the country. Vedanta University, scheduled to begin accepting students in 2008, intends to educate the almost 123,000 Indian students who study abroad at elite universities each year.

Business tycoon and philanthropist Anil Agarwal made a $1 billion contribution to the school, the largest donation ever granted to a single educational institution. His goal is to create an “economic hub” in the Indian state of Orissa resembling Silicon Valley around Stanford, according to a release issued by the Anil Agarwal Foundation.

“The need for first class educational and research institutions in India is self-evident,” according to Vedanta’s Web site. Unlike many Indian universities, which focus mainly on technical skills, Vedanta will emulate comprehensive American universities like Stanford with “programs in liberal arts, science, engineering, medicine, law, business and performing arts.”

The campus will span more than 8,000 acres and is aiming to permanently house 500,000 people, including 40,000 staff and 100,000 students, at its completion in 2023. Out of this massive number, the university aims to produce tomorrow’s Olympic champions, Nobel laureates and community leaders.

Revti Gupta ‘09 was impressed by Vedanta’s high expectations.

“It is high time someone took action to establish a world class institute in India that is not just IIT and IIM,” she said, referring to the top technology and management schools in the South Asian country, home to nearly one-sixth of the world’s people.

However, like Mehra and Forbes, Gupta said she would still prefer to travel to California to study.

“I would still come to Stanford because it provides a new perspective and an immersion in a cultural experience for me that I would not have been exposed to in India.”

Despite the lack of enthusiasm from students, Linda Hess, co-director of the Center for South Asia at Stanford, emphasized the positive impact of the initiative in the long-run.

“While Indian students who are at Stanford today may not be tempted to go to a university that’s ‘like Stanford’ in India,” she said in an email to The Daily, “the creation of a place like Vedanta University is part of a much bigger picture — the picture called ‘globalization.’

“The assumptions that used to be made about the sources of economic and intellectual power, about who is ‘ahead’ and who is ‘behind,’ are being turned around,” Hess added. “If the vision of its founders is realized, Vedanta University will attract top students from across the globe to India for the same reasons that Stanford is able to do that now.”.