After years of dithering, on November 8 the University Grants Commission (UGC) published a draft of rules and regulations which detail the terms and conditions under which foreign universities will be permitted to establish campuses in India.

The primary driver behind this initiative is the large and ever increasing number of Indian school leavers and college graduates proceeding abroad for higher education year after year, despite foreign universities having raised their fees to sky-high levels.

As a result the annual expenditure of Indian students abroad at $47 billion (Rs.3.9 lakh crore) is several multiples of the total Union budget allocation for education. It is this consideration and reality that a large number of students who venture abroad never come back that’s prompted this initiative of government which for decades neglected upgradation of India’s 42,000 colleges and 1,100 universities.

The UGC draft makes the entry of FHEIs (foreign higher education institutions) into India subject to so many discretionary rules and regulations, that it’s doubtful whether any self-respecting top-ranked foreign university will risk establishing a capital-intensive campus in this country.

For a start every applicant foreign university should be ranked among the global Top 500 by agencies approved by UGC “from time to time”. Next, the applicant foreign university must give an undertaking that the degrees/qualifications it awards are “at par with that of the main campus in the country of origin” and that “the qualifications awarded to the students in the Indian campus shall be recognised and treated as equivalent to the corresponding qualifications awarded by the FHEI in the main campus located in the country of origin for all purposes, including higher education and employment”. Who decides?

There are other off-putting conditions imposed upon aspirant FHEIs. The fees structure should be “transparent and reasonable”. Who decides what’s reasonable? Moreover “the qualifications of the faculty appointed shall be at par with the main campus of the country of origin” and the FHEI “shall ensure that the foreign faculty appointed to teach at the Indian campus shall stay at the campus in India for a reasonable period”. Again who adjudicates faculty qualifications equivalence, and reasonable period?

But more discouraging are provisions stipulating that licensed FHEIs “shall not offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or standards of higher education in India” or are “contrary to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, or morality”. Certainly these provisions rule out the spirit of free enquiry and debate which are the main attraction of foreign universities. One can’t help feeling that the UGC (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations have been written to keep FHEIs out rather than to let them in.