Niti Aayog tasked to devise rules for foreign universities

Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale could set up campuses in India soon with the government asking its policy think tank, Niti Aayog, to prepare a framework for opening doors to foreign universities.

Updated on: Sep 9, 2015, 12:02:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale could set up campuses in India soon with the government asking its policy think tank, Niti Aayog, to prepare a framework for opening doors to foreign universities.

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The initiative, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign that seeks to draw foreign investment, can potentially fetch millions of dollars and revolutionise the country’s higher education sector.

Sources say the National Institution for Transforming India (Niti) Aayog will hold consultations with various stakeholders, including the ministry of human resource development (HRD) and state governments, on new regulations like leaving foreign institutes out of higher education regulator University Grants Commission (UGC)’s purview.

“We are working on different models for the government to adopt. Very soon we will submit a report to the Prime Minister’s office,” a senior Niti Aayog official said.

This includes a draft bill that aims to provide transparent and single-window clearance for foreign education providers and a set of regulations to ensure their academic and administrative independence is not jeopardised.

Thousands of students from India head to institutes in the US, UK and Australia every year in search of quality education with the country on the cusp of a surge in its working-age population.

Some foreign schools run programmes in India through local partners but are yet to build bricks-and-mortar facilities here, objecting to being governed by the UGC.

Officials said the proposed legislation will provide a central policy guideline for such institutes and will be a mix of seven models available across the world.

“We will also delve into whether for-profit education institutions can be allowed entry or not,” an official said.

According to the HRD ministry’s data, 631 foreign education providers were operating in India in 2010. Of them, 440 were functioning from their home campuses and 137 had collaboration with Indian institutes. The number of foreign education providers in India saw a fivefold increase between 2000 and 2010. Around 75% of the courses offered by these schools were of business and hotel management.

Modi held a meeting with officials from the Niti Aayog, HRD ministry, UGC and commerce ministry in early June on the possibility of transforming India into an Asian higher education hub with several foreign universities expressing interest in setting up campuses here.

Foreign universities can bring an investment of $11 million in the first year, the commerce ministry has estimated. The UPA government twice tried to allow such institutes to open campuses with minimal government regulation.

In UPA-1, there was a major push to allow foreign universities in India and a bill was also drafted on recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission headed by Sam Pitroda, who served as an advisor to the PM. But the initiative did not see the light of day because of opposition by Left parties that were part of the ruling coalition.

After the UPA returned to power, HRD minister Kapil Sibal introduced the Foreign Education Providers Bill in the Lok Sabha allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in partnership with domestic education providers.

Only foreign universities of excellence from across the globe were to be permitted to open independent campuses as per the bill. However, the term “excellence” was not defined. The legislation amended on the basis of recommendations from a parliamentary standing committee in 2013 could not be introduced because of continued logjam in both Houses over the coal and 2G spectrum scams. Sibal’s successor, MM Pallam Raju, also felt the bill might not be passed because of the Left’s continued opposition and the government issued an executive order to pave the way for foreign education providers. But it could not come up with a long-term policy.

Sources say the NDA government believes getting the bill ratified in Parliament is possible as the Congress is in principle agreeable to the idea of allowing “reputed” foreign universities to set up campuses in India. This would boost the PM’s flagship “Make in India” campaign in higher education and ensure competition between high-cost private education providers and quality foreign universities.

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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