| It is reported that the Foreign Investment Promotion Board is not going to approve any more applications by foreign universities to set up affiliates in India, until the norms for such approval are reviewed by the human resource development ministry. It is also reported that the ministry wants to impose restrictions on the entry of foreign universities.
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| The present policy allows 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the sector. Is this good or bad? The answer is simple: unless there is some High Diplomatic Purpose that is being served, which ordinary mortals cannot fathom, the decision to restrict affiliation does not make sense.
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| It is true that there have been complaints over the last six or seven years that many of these foreign universities are “farji” (not quite fake but being so close to it as to not matter). The implication is that they are taking gullible Indian students for a ride.
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| Their modus operandi is to offer a foreign degree for about a tenth of what it costs abroad, which still works out to between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 4 lakh.
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| This price is made possible by low overheads and lower operating costs. Teachers are hired on a part-time basis from local colleges. The examinations are a farce. Ergo, the degree is worthless and Indians have to be protected.
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| This sounds like an open-and-shut case and presumably that is how it is presented on the official files. But it is not. For one, it is not clear whether the government is objecting to the price or the quality. If it is the latter, it has no case because degrees awarded by the majority of Indian universities are not worth the paper they are printed on.
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| Nor does the government have a case if it is objecting to the price, because the truth is that it has kept the price of higher education artificially low—the monthly tuition fee in Delhi University is still only Rs 18—and thereby ruined much of it.
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| Private engineering and medical colleges charge a rough equivalent of what the foreign affiliates charge and are doing much better in terms of quality.
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| The All India Council for Technical Education, which presides over all this, is a corrupt organisation and its certification means little—as should become obvious from a visit to the majority of the 900 or more business schools that have been certified by the AICTE.
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| In any case, if the government has objections, it should state all the reasons, if only to enable a proper comparison between the quality being offered by the foreign affiliates and Indian universities.
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| The correct way to view the issue is through the prism of economics. The only reason why foreign universities want to come here is because they can sense the shortage of quality education.
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| Exactly the same thing happens in the case of all other imports and we have seen in the case of goods how counter-productive bans, or excessive regulation amounting to a ban, can be.
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| The same logic holds for services, including education. Ultimately, the only thing the government should be concerned about is the bona fides of the foreign university. It should therefore insist on complete transparency.
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| The rest should be left to the market, which will soon separate the good ones from the bad—as is already happening in the southern states, where there is now no shortage of seats in private medical and engineering colleges. |
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