Historically, India is a nation that places a significant cultural value on quality education. A post secondary education is generally viewed as a necessity in urban centers, with a premium placed on foreign education. There is an unrecognized market in rural areas as well, with significant cash resources, increasing literacy, and access to primary education and, most important, an inherent desire for one’s child to achieve the best.

Indian education system has been evolving both at secondary and post secondary level.

In the Indian Education system, higher education includes the education imparted after the 10+2 stage i.e., 10 years of primary and secondary education followed by 2 years of higher secondary education. The first degree, the Bachelors degree/s is obtained after 3 years study in the case of liberal arts, science, commerce and 4 years in case of most of the professional degrees like engineering, pharmacy (4 and a half in case of medicine and 5-6 in case of law). The Masters program is usually of 2 years duration. The research degrees (M.Phil & Ph.D) take variable time depending upon the individual student.

Secondary school education in India has managed to cope in terms of managing the demand of both, the private and the public sectors. At the post secondary it is a very different scenario. There is a huge deficit of good Universities and colleges. There is still a gap of finding institutions which offers good infrastructure, faculty, student services etc.

On the contrary Canada spends more per capita on education than any other country in the Organizational for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED). In Canada education falls under the jurisdiction of the provincial government, though the federal government plays an important role in providing additional financial support for education, student assistance, funding for research and support of international education. Canadian institutions have the latest in research labs, wired classrooms and Internet access in many of the residence rooms. To maintain high standards and current programmes, provincial bodies and government departments review and appraise all new programmes and monitor existing programmes, usually on a five to seven year cycle.

Recently India and Canada has seen opportunities of collaborating especially in the research areas, through twinning programs in various fields like Business, Information Technology, Sciences, Engineering, and some programs like Animation and related programs are being completed and delivered here in India by Canadian colleges. Each year several thousands of Indian students choose Canada their education destination after their 12th grade or at their postgraduate level.

There is still huge room to grow in furthering and augmenting opportunities of collaborating in the areas of curriculum, people to people exchanges, research etc.