Mumbai, Nov 2 (IANS): Mumbai's Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thakersey (SNDT) Women's University on Wedneday signed an agreement of academic collaboration and exchange of students and faculty with the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), New York.

The initiative was signed by BMCC-City University of New York President Dr Anthony Munroe and SNDT Women's University Vice-Chancellor Prof Ujwala Chakradeo in the presence of Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.

SNDT is India's and South-Asia's first ever all-women university, founded in 1916 by legendary academician, Maharishi Dr. Dhondu Keshav Karve, to give a fillip to higher education for women in the pre-Independence era.

"We live in an era of collaboration and cooperation, not confrontation. This partnership will bring new light in the students' work-life," said Koshyari on the occasion.

He said that the collaborative venture of exchange of students and faculty will produce goodwill and good results for both the academic institutions in Mumbai and New York.

Dr. Munroe said that the BMCC is the largest community college in the US offering affordable education to students from 140 countries, and has 60 percent women students on its rolls, with the fees charged being around 1/6th of private colleges.

Ranked among the Top 5 Community Colleges in the US, it also has collaborations with renowned financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Zurich, CitiBank, Moodys and others, while the students can pursue higher education in the best of Ivy League institutions like New York, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley and MIT, he added.

Chakradeo said that MoU was signed at an appropriate time when India is on the verge of implementing the New Education Policy-2020, and the diverse courses offered by the two institutions would open up many avenues of academic collaboration for the students on both sides.

The two institutions have identified areas like internship, joint degrees, entrepreneurship and girls from India can get the best of higher education opportunities in the US through the BMCC, she pointed out.

The signing ceremony also saw a conclave on 'Internationalisation of Higher Education: Opportunities & Challenges' with discussions on a wide range of topics.