India’s minister in charge of higher education said last week that he would continue to push to free Indian universities from government red tape and to change rules so that foreign institutions can open campuses in the country.
Speaking during the Emerging Directions in Global Education conference here, the minister, Kapil Sibal, said the much-debated legislation to make the reforms possible would be approved by Parliament by the end of the year.
“We must make sure as we move forward that we give access to everybody,” said the minister, referring to non-Indian education providers.
While his pledges were well received by the 400 or so Indian and foreign higher-education leaders at the meeting, he also cautioned that the way forward requires “collaboration, not conquest” — a message that was seen as a warning to private and foreign colleges that might exploit India’s potential new openness for profit.
“We should not be looking at it as a battle,” Mr. Sibal said.
His plans have been criticized by some academics and politicians in India, who argue that allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India would lead to increases in tuition, making higher education less affordable for many students.
Access to education, quality, and fruitful partnerships were among the subjects discussed at the conference. India wants to raise the college-going rate of its young people to 30 percent by 2020, up from 14 percent, which means increasing the number of students from 17 million to 45 million. To accommodate that goal, university administrators and academics said, it will need to shed bureaucratic controls that limit innovation, and to provide better oversight to weed out shoddy colleges.
Mr. Sibal said higher-education institutions in India want freedom but are not prepared to maintain quality. For example, he said, engineering colleges have mushroomed, thanks in part to the backing of private investors who see them as money-making opportunities.
“I know of such colleges who rent faculty and furniture during inspection” by regulators, Mr. Sibal said, acknowledging that there is weak oversight and corruption in the regulatory system. There needs to be “a churning in the [academic] community,” he said, or else the future of Indian higher education will be imperiled.
Conference participants from India included administrators from public institutions like Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Management and the Indira Gandhi National Open University, and private institutions like Symbiosis International University and Manipal University. Non-Indian attendees included administrators from Michigan State University, George Washington University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Britain’s University of Warwick, the Institute of Political Studies of Paris (better known as Sciences Po), and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore.
‘Cusp of a New Revolution’
Topics of discussion among the diverse group of administrators included how information-communication technology can help broaden higher-education access, and the need to expand and improve distance and vocational education.
In India, both distance- and vocational-education degrees are generally given short shrift; a college degree from even a poor-quality traditional institution is still considered of more value. That stigma doesn’t plague distance education in Australia, said Allan Layton, dean of the faculty of business at Australia’s University of Southern Queensland.
Last September the university signed an agreement with India’s Centurion University of Technology and Management to offer graduate programs in India. Centurion “is regional and focused on the lower economic class, like us,” Mr. Layton said. “We believe in access.”
Mr. Sibal echoed Mr. Layton’s sentiment. “We are at the cusp of a new revolution [in higher education], and it will take place in India before anywhere else in the world,” he said. “The information-technology industry is poised to deliver education like never before.” Already, through India’s National Knowledge Network, more than 1,500 institutions will be connected over a high-speed network.
Still, India has a large need for skilled workers, said Amit Khare, an official in the government’s department of higher education. “There are a lot of opportunities in vocational education,” he said adding that foreign interest in working in that field was low.
Finding Good Partners
Last year’s conference was abuzz about the possibilities of foreign higher-education providers’ getting into India’s higher-education system. At the time, Mr. Sibal was on the verge of getting the cabinet approval for the bill to allow foreign players in. This year such sentiment was tempered, as the government’s proposal has been stalled in Parliament.
Participants last week talked more about international research collaborations and partnerships—which are already allowed—between foreign and Indian universities. Several sessions were about how foreign universities could find good partners among Indian institutions and build sustainable collaborations with them.
“Everybody wants to come to India,” said Duleep C. Deosthale, vice president for international education at India’s Manipal Education group, who was speaking about interest in America. “Ten to 15 years ago, U.S. [university] presidents while visiting India would come back with all these signed memorandums of understanding,” Mr. Deosthale said. “The presidents always came back with these grand illusions,” but they would leave it to others to make the collaborations work, and eventually the agreements fell apart.
Part of the problem, he said, is that for most U.S. universities, India is absent from their curricula, and they lack qualified people to teach about India’s history and culture and its changing society and economy. “The U.S. has not introduced India [into the curriculum] like China has been introduced,” he said. Understanding India, said Mr. Deosthale, is the first and most important step to make any partnership with Indian universities work.
What’s more, he said, partnerships don’t need to be big and splashy: “You can start small. You don’t have to start with everything.”
In another session, Koen Lamberts, pro vice chancellor for research, science, and medicine at Britain’s University of Warwick, stressed the importance of a clear understanding of what a potential partnership is about. “This allows a focus of resources,” he said, drawing on Warwick’s successful work with Australia’s Monash University and the Indian Institute of Technology’s Kharagpur branch. Both partners must invest money, he said, and the partnership must be mutually beneficial, he said.
‘India’s Moment’
While there was more talk about partnerships this year, as opposed to setting up branch campuses, foreign interest in Indian higher education has hardly waned. In addition to foreign-university administrators, attending the conference were representatives of the College Board, in the United States; Nafsa: Association of International Educators; and the Dubai Knowledge Village, in the United Arab Emirates.
“This is India’s moment, and American universities would be remiss in not considering that,” said C. Peter Magrath, interim president of Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York, in a speech. “India’s higher-education needs can be fulfilled by partnerships with American universities.”
Later, over coffee on the sprawling green lawn of the India Habitat Centre, where the conference was held, Mr. Magrath spoke even more effusively about his admiration for India. He said he was attracted to the country because of its vibrant democracy, in which cultural and religious diversity thrive.
“India is hot! It’s hot!” Mr. Magrath said. He wasn’t talking about the weather.
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