Dual degrees with foreign universities get nod

Country's higher education regulator, the University Grants Commission, on Saturday opened doors for world top 500 universities to start dual degree or twining courses with Indian higher education institutions. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 3, 2012, 07:48:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Doing a course from global top universities such as Harvard, Peking or Oxford, while being in India, will soon be a reality.

Country’s higher education regulator, the University Grants Commission, on Saturday opened doors for world top 500 universities to start dual degree or twining courses with Indian higher education institutions.

The commission approved regulations also gave six months to higher education institutions in India running courses of foreign universities to meet the new regulatory framework.

“The institutions failing to meet the regulations will face action,” UGC’s acting chairperson Ved Prakash told HT, after the commissions’ meeting where the regulations were approved.

The new rules stipulate de-recognition of private institutions and stopping of government funds to the public sector institutions, which fail to meet the regulatory provisions. Many educational institutions such as Delhi University offer courses where part of the syllabus is taught in India and remaining in the foreign university.

In a bid to ensure excellence, the commission has decided that only those Indian educational institutions, who receive highest accreditation rating from National Board for Accreditation or National Assessment and Accreditation Council, will be allowed to start a dual degree courses.

They would be able to tie-up with any of the world’s top 500 foreign education providers listed in the Time Higher Education Supplement or Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. “The Indian educations providers will be free to choose their foreign partners,” Prakash said.

The decision comes a few weeks before HRD minister Kapil Sibal is expected to participate in Indo-US Higher Education Summit, where heads of top Indian and Foreign universities are expected to participate.

The Indian government has promised a regulatory framework to allow quality foreign education to offer courses to Indian students. As the foreign education providers bill is still pending, the new UGC regulations will help the well known foreign universities to offer courses locally.

Prakash said before approving the tie-up the UGC will check the academic standards of the institutions singing an agreement. “Only the best to ensure academic excellence will be allowed,” he said.

The new regulations does not stipulate fee or course structure which would be domain of the two collaborating universities.

The UGC, however, deferred decision on allowing foreign education providers to set campuses in India as it required consultation with other stakeholders such as health and law ministries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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