Inviting foreign universities to India is part of the dream of the National Education Policy to turn the nation into a ‘knowledge hub’. Southampton University has already opened a campus; Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, had said during his recent visit to India that eight other British universities will open campuses in this country. This could have been a good thing but for the discriminatory approach of the University Grants Commission. The University Grants Commission (Setting Up and Operation of Campus of Foreign Higher Education Institutions in India) Regulations allow foreign universities to decide on their course syllabus, duration, fees and salary. They need not have reservations like Indian educational institutions. Reservations are intended to bring healthy social change and also ground higher educational institutions in the socio-economic realities of the country. Without quotas, foreign institutions will be free to admit students who will be able to afford the fees they decide on, and there will be no concession for less privileged candidates. This is a divisive principle, and will move the universities away from the needs of the country. Not only that, they are allowed by the regulations to make a profit and repatriate the funds; it is likely then that the universities will become commercial propositions.
A group of academics in Delhi are opposing the UGC Regulations. Besides some of these objections, they also say that in case a foreign institution fails, the UGC has no way to safeguard its students. That makes it possible for fly-by-night institutions to make money quickly and disappear. There is another worry. With the salary to be decided by the institutions themselves, they may find it possible to recruit the best teachers from Indian universities to the latter’s serious disadvantage. These objections would not have arisen if the UGC Regulations had some parity with the regulations that govern Indian HEIs. There the thrust is towards centralisation, regimentation, and over-regulation, which damage free inquiry into and exploration of all forms of knowledge. The foreign universities are not only being given full autonomy at every level, but there are also no policies for quality checks. The politics of this is puzzling. It seems blind to the fact that these regulations — or their lack — will not help the country either educationally or economically. That is not the best way to build a knowledge hub.