By SS Mantha and Ashok Thakur
The draft regulation on Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions (FHEI) in India, released last week by the University Grants Commission, is most enabling and as open-ended as possible. That these follow the recommendations of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) is evidence of action in motion. It opens up newer opportunities for collaboration and challenges existing systems. However, like any other regulation, this one, too, has its share of concerns.
The regulation to conduct programmes—from the UG to post-doctoral levels—and award degrees, diplomas, and certificates in all disciplines, seeks to provide a special dispensation to FHEIs on regulatory, governance, and content norms. This is a great move, considering that these FHEIs must be in the top 500 of overall/subject-wise global rankings.
The regulation allows the establishment of a campus through the Companies Act or through the Limited Liability Partnership Act, which allows a joint venture with an established institute, and then the opening of a branch in India. Whatever the mode, it will enable Indian students to obtain an FHEI degree at a fraction of the present cost as opposed to studying in those institutions in their parent countries, though two unequal entities on a single campus could pose problems.
Whether this will make India an attractive global education destination depends on which foreign universities set base here and which programmes they offer, whether they source faculty locally or internationally, what metric they use for student admissions, whether the new campuses become mere profit centres or conform to the belief that education is not for profit, among other factors. Setting up a campus in a foreign land costs that much more. This must be seen in the light of an undertaking to be given—that the quality of education by the FHEI in its Indian campus will be on a par with that of the main campus in the country of origin. Though the regulation allows for the foreign campus to decide its fee structure, its transparency and the reasonableness of the fees set can always be questioned. Even as the Foreign Exchange Management Act is the guide, non-quantifiable sums that accrue can always be fudged. Mandating a credit-based fee structure would have been a more credible option.
The first of the general conditions requires that the foreign HEI shall not admit students and collect fees unless duly approved under the present Regulations to set up its campus in India. However, the present regulations are restrictive. Further, the condition that the programmes offered shall not be allowed in the online and open & distance learning (ODL) modes is also restrictive. MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, all at the top of global rankings, have excellent online programmes. Why deny them to our students, especially when UGC has relaxed several ODL norms for our own institutions?
Another condition stipulates that FHEI shall not act as a representative office of the Parent Entity to undertake promotional activities for their programmes in their home jurisdiction or any other jurisdiction outside India. This could be construed as a restrictive practice.
It is often argued that the entry of FHEI’s would facilitate internationalisation. Two important parameters considered by branded rankings of universities around the world are international character and research. International character would concern the composition of the student body and the faculty on Indian campuses. Research looks at patents, citations, and connect with the industry. Newspaper editorials in the country were on an emotive overdrive recently, as the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings dealt India a double whammy. First, the Indian Institute of Science, the star in India’s higher education firmament, was placed in the 251–300 band, and second, none of the big-boys IITs (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, or Kharagpur) figured in the top 500.
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The three most important global ranking agencies among the 20 in the world, which measure quality, have at least a 50% weightage for research and 10-15% for international character. THE assigns 30% to research, another 30% to research citations, 7.5% to international character, and 2.5% to knowledge transfer/industry income. The metrics are similar for other agencies as well. One must not discount the boundary conditions that our institutions operate in.
Fundamentally, internationalisation must happen within our existing institutions, which means foreign faculty must teach for at least a semester, and foreign students must learn for at least three months on our campuses. An eminent faculty would consider one or a combination of the following before deciding to teach at an HEI in India: a chance to make more money, work for better research facilities, explore possibilities of interaction with the best in his/her domain, or be privy to industry consultancy that can lead to new products, processes, thereby adding patents and IPRs to his/her repertoire. None would venture to teach here, except for a week at most, if the above are not perceived as available.
Expansion has always helped cross-migration. When institutions came up in the private sector, we did see students who would have otherwise joined a good government-run institute choose these HEIs. Would we see such cross-migration now—students who would have joined second-tier or even top-tier IITs joining the new FHEI campuses? Would that have a bearing on the quality of our own institutions?
Complete autonomy in the appointment of faculty and staff is the most enabling and important part of the regulations. However, the best faculty from our existing institutions migrating to the FHEIs could be the flip side. Probably, a new normal would set in eventually. If that normal enhances quality within our institutions, it must be welcomed.
‘Level playing field’ is a norm on which democracies thrive and on which quality should be measured. As much as the FHEI regulation is enabling, does it change the rules of the game for our existing institutions? Our own institutions have to adhere to fee committee recommendations, the state or central norms for admissions, and so on. Why can’t complete autonomy—be it in choosing faculty, or fixing fees, or setting admission rules—be similarly extended to our own institutions? After all, they are all expected to compete on the same metrics for a spot in the top global rankings.
Writers are respectively, former chairman, AICTE, and former secretary, Union HRD ministry