Two of the country’s prestigious institutes on Thursday joined hands with Yale University for an academic leadership programme exposing vice- chancellors and deans to best practices of institutional management in the US.

The partnership of IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Kozikhode with Yale is part of the knowledge initiative launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama during Singh’s visit to the US in November 2009.

The partnership is aimed at advancing the cause of higher eduction in the country and “addressing the problem of leadership vacuum” in higher eduction sector, said Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.

The initiative was launched with the singing of an MoU between president of Yale University Richard Levin, director of IIM Kozhikode Debashish Chatterjee and director of IIT Kanpur Sanjay Dhande in the presence of Sibal.

The partnership will take effect from January 2011, with provision for two new centres of excellence for academic leadership at IIM-Kozhikode and at IIT-Kanpur.

The partnership will begin with a term of five years.

Levin said the programme would be launched on a modest scale in the initial phase with the training of 30 to 40 vice chancellors at their campus.

Yale has also been working closely with China on similar efforts to advance higher education reforms in that country.

Levin, on the occasion, praised the government’s efforts in introducing the Foreign Universities Bill but said Yale had no plans to set up campus in India.

He also supported efforts for bringing in reforms in the higher education sector.

“The combination of opening to foreign universities, creating innovation universities, reforming the accredition… all of these I think will help for talent advance in higher education sector in India. I am very supportive of Mr Sibal’s vision and I hope he is successful in his legislative agenda,” he said.

He felt allowing foreign institutes to operate in the country would ultimately benefit students.

“It will drive competition and competition drives creative change and creative change will benefit students,” he said.

Sibal expressed confidence that the country will certainly attract top class universities if not global brands like Yale and Harvard.