Autar Nehru (Delhi) The UGC (setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023, notified on November 7 by the apex Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC), has evoked disappointment and skepticism within academia. Long in the works, the Regulations are unlikely to enthuse foreign universities to establish branch campuses in India. Certainly not universities top-ranked by the London-based QS and THE (Times Higher Education) which annually publish their highly-respected global universities league tables ranking the world’s 3,000 best universities on several parameters of higher education excellence (faculty competence, research output, infrastructure etc). The urge to invite foreign universities to establish campuses in India has become pressing because the demand for foreign education is rising exponentially despite universities abroad continuously raising tuition and residential accommodation fees for international students. With the great majority of India’s 42,000 undergrad colleges and 1,100 universities — the majority run by state governments — providing low grade, poor quality education and relatively superior Central universities admitting only a small percentage of school leavers and graduate students, the outflow of students streaming abroad for superior qualifications has become a torrent. An estimated 1.3 million students are signing up with varsities abroad every year spending an aggregate $80 billion (Rs.6.64 lakh crore) which is several multiples of the total annual budgetary outlay for education of the Central government. Currently, Indian students comprise the largest cohort of foreign students in the US and UK and are flooding the Anglosphere (Canada, Australia). They are also becoming increasingly visible in Germany, France, and East European countries and even China which is becoming a popular destination for the study of medicine, a popular middle class vocation for which India’s 704 medical colleges are totally inadequate. With the Central and state governments which run large fiscal deficits unable to meet the demand for quality higher education of the fast-expanding middle class whose number has risen to an estimated 430 million, the next best option that has been in the works since the landmark liberalisation of the self-reliant Indian economy in 1991, is to invite foreign universities to establish campuses in India. The idea of attracting foreign universities to India was first mooted by the National Knowledge Commission in the early years of the new millennium. In 2007, the Foreign Higher Educational Institutions (Regulations of Entry, Operation of Quality and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill was presented in Parliament but scuttled at the last moment by leftie HRD minister Arjun Singh. Again in 2010, after the Congress-led UPA-II government was voted to power at the Centre for a second term, a revised Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010 was tabled in Parliament. But it was vehemently opposed by the BJP and communist parties leading to a stalemate and eventually killed. However with the high-powered Kasturirangan Committee endorsing this proposal, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 reflects a BJP about turn. Except this time round instead of legislation enacted by Parliament, the proposal is routed through…
