Red tape tangles US institutes’ entry into India

United States has cited Indian bureaucracy and uncertainty over Foreign Education Providers Bill as two major bottlenecks for setting up campuses of its foreign universities in India. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 7, 2011, 24:10:26 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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United States has cited Indian bureaucracy and uncertainty over Foreign Education Providers Bill as two major bottlenecks for setting up campuses of its foreign universities in India.

A guide prepared by the Institute of International Education for the US government's department of state says that the US institutions should be aware that Indian bureaucracy may present a "significant challenge" for setting up study abroad programmes in India and building partnerships with Indian institutions.

The report prepared by Parricia Chow and Kimberly Cho with the help of US-India Education Foundation also says that a legislation -- Foreign Education Providers' Bill -- to alleviate bureaucratic hurdles has an "uncertain future" even though it has been introduced in Parliament.

The bill was first drafted in 1995 and its latest version was approved by the Union Cabinet in March 2010. A parliamentary standing committee has submitted its report to the HRD ministry and minister in-charge Kapil Sibal expects to introduce the bill in Parliament in winter session starting from November end.

"Disputes within the Indian government, as well as with private (education) providers has slowed down passage of the bill," the guide named Expanding US Study Abroad to India, said. The report suggested that that US institutes interests in initiating large scale operations in India may want to focus on joint and dual degree programmes in partnership with Indian institutions, rather than wait for future opportunities to establish brick-and-mortar branch campuses in India.

US is eyeing India as the next destination for its universities considering the Central government's ambitious target of achieving up to 30% of gross enrollment ratio in higher education by 2017, end of the 12th five year plan.

The report, however, projects Indian higher education system in a bad light saying it lacks quality control standards and national-level assessments. It also says that there are only few effective strategies to address issues of quality and accreditation and only IITs and IIMs are quality institutions of international reputation. "With over 21,000 colleges, creating national standards has been an arduous task, rife with political and social implications," the report said.

Its consequence had been obvious with Indian universities attracting just 2,690 US students in 2008-09, a decline of 15% from the pervious year, whereas over 1.04 lakh Indian students joined American universities that year, witnessing an increase of 37% since 2005-06.

Speaking on rich-poor educational divide, the report said, the increase in fees by IITs and IIMs and private institutions has made higher education "prohibitively" expensive for the nation's poor. "As a result, entrance examinations for top universities tend to favour the nation's rich, who are often from large urban centers," the report said.

The guide has advised of not eyeing India as a big market unless the government brings in structural changes in its higher education system.

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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