Chandigarh: The Punjab government on Friday announced that it would develop an educational city near Chandigarh.

The educational city would be spread over an area of 2,000 acres near Chandigarh, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said here and asked the state's education department to prepare a comprehensive plan for the project.

The state government also announced that it is collaborating with a US-based university to set up an international university near the industrial city of Ludhiana, 110 km from here.

The Punjab International University will be set up on 35 acres near Ludhiana in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

The decision was taken on Friday by Badal at a meeting with the university's chief executive officer Gil Taran.

Giving in-principle approval to the proposal, Badal assured Taran that the state government within two weeks would clear the entire project.

Taran said that the initial proposal is to have five schools in the university, including engineering and technology, education and teachers' training, applied sciences, humanities and languages and management and business studies.

"The courses to be run would be fully at par with the courses being run on its US campus. Efforts would be made to have degrees awarded by this university to be recognized in the US," he said.

He added that the cost of education would be a fraction of the cost, which an international student has to pay in the US. Technical courses would be developed keeping in mind needs of the local industry.

Taran said that Carnegie Mellon University was rated amongst the top ten universities of US and its robotics department was ranked as the best amongst similar departments.

The US University has set up state-of-the-art educational institutions in China, Doha (Qatar) and Kazakhstan. IANS