Opinion: Foreign Campuses In India - Storm In A Teacup

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has just unleashed another round of theatrics. This time, it is about new rules to enable foreign universities to set up campuses in India. As usual, the grand announcement is accompanied by numerous half-truths.

Like how Indian students have a great appetite for education abroad because so many are now joining foreign universities (fact check: "so many" is actually very few Indian students as only a fraction of students is entering higher education. They are those who can afford to satisfy this appetite). Then, there are statements that suggest how these proposed regulations will allow Indian students to get "foreign qualifications at affordable cost", and that this will "internationalise the Indian higher education system".

A simple reality check will tell us that a vast majority of Indian students struggle to raise resources to be able to study in domestic institutions, including many public funded ones that have relatively low fees or are reasonably subsidised. Therefore, this "affordable" tag for potential foreign universities in India is just plain nonsense; the obvious fact is that the fees and costs for studying in these campuses will be high, perhaps marginally less than what they charge in their native countries. Real tuition costs are likely to not be very different, given the cost of establishing a full version of a research or even a quality teaching institution.

It is worth pondering why and how policymakers have all the time in the world to spend on such elitist concerns rather than focusing on repairing a badly broken domestic higher education system.

It is ironic that normally, internationalisation of one's own education system should mean we develop the systems - and the excellence - that will attract students from other countries to come to our institutions; the UGC has neatly inverted the meaning so that now, seeking education in foreign institutions somehow embellishes our own education system as international!

A glaring issue is the freedom and autonomy being offered to foreign universities while our domestic institutions stay trapped in a bureaucratic morass, with very little autonomy - except, perhaps, the elite institutions that enjoy it in a limited measure. Public funded institutions are treated as being under the thumb of regulatory bodies like the UGC or the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in matters relating to the syllabus and often in non-academic matters as well.

Only a slavish, colonial mentality can suggest that we turn our Indian institutions into second class "citizens" by promising all kinds of autonomy - operational and academic - only to foreign universities. This is not the way to establish "Make in India" institutions.

An expected - and profound - consequence of setting up such unequal systems is the likely migration of the best, most qualified talent to the greener pastures of the foreign campus that offers autonomy, creative freedom and of course, more money. This would imply that a condition for "setting up" such foreign institutions is a level playing field across the higher education landscape by strengthening what we have and setting our own house in order.

It should also be a matter of common knowledge, from a student's perspective, that a very large majority of students go abroad not just for the educational experience, but to find employment there, and eventually to migrate to a more affluent country. None of these objectives are likely to be served by a foreign university campus in India. Most prospective customers of these campuses can possibly also afford the "real thing" abroad. Most such customers will also be aware that the India campus will be a much "downgraded" and lean version of the real thing. Yet, there might be a thin socio-economic layer that will not be able to provide for these extra costs.

No institution of repute - except the teaching shop types who are unlikely to be in the "top 500" - will be interested in this proposition. The government is not giving them a land grant or any other subsidy to set up a campus here. It is hard to understand why a Stanford or an MIT or a Dartmouth will spend so much money to set up first-rate laboratories, expensive classrooms, and a "full" campus in India. They have no dearth of applicants, so for them it is just fine to continue doing what they are doing now. Look around the world to see how few good institutions have campuses abroad, the kind that the draft rules aim for.

Lastly, there are forbidding clauses in the draft - potentially ripe for misuse and bureaucratic dadagiri. For example, fees must be "reasonable" (who decides what is reasonable and how?), quality of facilities/faculty must be on par with native campuses (again, who assesses quality and how?). The important thing to note is that this enabling ethos for foreign universities to come in is being created via rules and not legislation. (Some of the good private institutions in the country have been created - e.g. Ashoka - under the auspices of state legislation) This approach is dangerous and creates persistent uncertainty about the "permanence" of the rules. Who knows, in the future the rules may be tweaked by those in power in unpredictable and dictatorial ways. In contrast, a framework based on legislation is far harder to change arbitrarily.

The clauses that forbid anything which is against "national interest" are too wide. The first question, of course, is who decides what is national interest? Then, historically, universities are the places where dissent and ideas contradicting the mainstream have been discussed and studied. No university from those parts of the world from where we desire to "replicate" higher education institutions here will accept such clauses.

Therefore, perhaps, all this may just be a storm in a teacup. 

(Anurag Mehra is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Faculty at the Center for Policy Studies, at IIT Bombay.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.