A crucial step for education

In a market with a dearth of quality colleges, foreign universities can make a difference.

India opened the door to foreign universities on Thursday, with the University Grants Commission (UGC) issuing draft regulations. UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said foreign universities offering full-time, offline programmes will be granted 10-year-long approvals, the freedom to devise admission processes, fee structures and faculty recruitment, subject to transparency and quality benchmarks. The draft rules also made it contingent on the institution to ensure students are not affected if a particular programme is discontinued, faculty stay in the Indian campus for a reasonable period of time and no programme jeopardises national interest, the sovereignty and integrity of India, security, foreign relations, public order, decency, or morality.

UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said foreign universities offering full-time, offline programmes will be granted 10-year-long approvals, the freedom to devise admission processes, fee structures and faculty recruitment, subject to transparency and quality benchmarks. (Twitter)

The higher education market in India is crowded and chaotic, with a handful of world-class institutions struggling to cater to a burgeoning class of young students. Despite more than 1,000 universities, the quality of teaching is uneven and abysmal, especially in the hinterland, where instructors and infrastructure remain inadequate. Against this backdrop, the competition for entry into quality institutions is only slated to get more fierce as a young country pushes more students through high school and into college, and aspirations transition from first-generation subsistence needs to second- and third-generation dreams of a better life. Foreign universities can ease some of this pressure, and inject true, world-class competition into the higher education sector. To be sure, it is not going to be cheap — after all, many American and European universities that have opened foreign campuses also see them as revenue-generating streams — but the country has plenty of well-to-do families who will jump at the chance of sending their children to a marque university. The government, of course, will need to ensure that foreign players remain transparent, and only genuine institutions with a solid standing are allowed to enrol students. It will be also interesting to see whether science streams attract more students than humanities, and the ramifications of stipulations of national interest and public decency.

The entry of foreign universities is not going to be a silver bullet for higher education woes. And it’s absurd to expect it to be so. Public institutions will continue to bear the weight of imparting quality and accessible education for the largest chunk of the population, and, therefore, the government must safeguard and support their autonomy, quality and legacy. But the entry of foreign universities can broaden the field, propel more quality research, and ultimately, germinate more world-class, home-grown scholars.