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Stage set for entry of top foreign varsities
Aditi Tandon/TNS

New Delhi, September 10
Bypassing the Foreign Education Providers Bill pending for discussions in Parliament since three years, the government has gone ahead and sent proposals to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) to permit foreign universities to open campuses in India as companies under the Companies Act.

These proposals include close to 10 requests for campus openings from Canadian, American and Australian universities.

The move follows positive remarks from the DIPP and the DEA on the UGC (Established and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Educational Institutions) Rules which are being finalised to allow top ranked foreign universities to establish campuses in India and issue foreign degrees.

The Central Government has the power to make rules under the UGC Act and it’s this executive power it has used to go ahead with allowing foreign education providers to enter India where the demand for western education is huge.

“The ministry had sought comments and observations of the DIPP and the DEA on the new rules and both supported the proposal,” HRD Ministry sources said.

Under the proposed rules, Foreign Educational Institutions (FEIs) can set up campuses in India once the FEIs have been notified as Foreign Education Provider (FEP) by the UGC.

The FEIs, however, have to fulfill certain eligibility conditions such as any FEI which intends to set up a campus in India would do so through an association to be registered as a company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956. Also it must be ranked among the top 400 universities of the world as per the ranking published by Times Higher Education, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) or the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

HRD Ministry sources said all FEIs intending to apply under the rules shall be not-for-profit legal entities, which have been in existence for at least 20 years and accredited by an accrediting agency of that country or in the absence of its accreditation in that country by an internationally accepted system of accreditation.

The FEP will offer programmes of study or courses to be of quality comparable to those offered to students in its main campus abroad, as per new UGC rules.

Each FEI before being notified as an FEP would be required to maintain a corpus of not less than Rs 25 crore. The rules also provide for penalties ranging from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore for FEPs who contravene any provision of these rules or the UGC Act and the forfeit of corpus fund.

Degrees awarded by these FEPs would be treated as foreign degrees only and the same shall be subject to the equivalence accorded by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) as per their system.

Eligibility for foreign players

Must have 20 years standing; `25 crore corpus

Must be ranked among the top 400 globally

Must offer same quality of courses as offered abroad

Must register as a Company under companies Act and not be for profit