Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management, said, “The Tamil Nadu government’s scheme to provide ₹1,000 per month to girls from government schools pursuing higher education, has begun to show impact.” Towards addressing US Education Dialogue, organised by O.P. Jindal Global University and Seattle University here on Wednesday, he said, “The data on the number of applications for the scheme showed an increase in the enrolment of girl students for higher education after finishing school.”

According to his conversation with the Director of the National Science Foundation in the U.S., Sethuraman Panchanathan, Mr. Rajan said excellence should not require exclusivity. He highlighted how the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu strived for inclusivity.

Welcoming that there were issues related to quality that had to be addressed, he said that the ‘Naan Mudhalvan’ scheme, one of the flagship programmes of the present government in Tamil Nadu, tried to address this by providing skill development training to students.

Eduardo M. Peñalver, president, Seattle University (SU), spoke on the need and scope for increased collaboration between the U.S. and Indian higher education institutions in the fields of climate change and sustainability, and technology.

C. Raj Kumar, founding vice-chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University, highlighted how the focus of outreach of higher education institutions in the U.S. centred around China for long, and how it had changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Renowned personalities that spoke on the event were Vinod Surana, managing partner and CEO of Surana & Surana International Attorneys, A. Francis Julian, senior advocate, Supreme Court, and Anthony E. Varona, Dean, School of Law, SU, Amit Shukla, Dean, College of Science and Engineering, SU, and Madhu T. Rao, Associate Dean, Albers School of Business and Economics, SU.