Duke University plans to set up campus in India

The institute will start with a business school that will offer a diploma programme.

US-based Duke University – ranked 14th in the QS World University Rankings – is planning to set up a campus in India. However, the university management is yet to decide on the location. According to sources, it is looking for around 25 acres to set up its campus either in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh or Pune.

“We will start with a business school in the campus that will offer a diploma programme. This is a part of our plans of having a globally dispersed campus. We are looking at China and India and the campus in China is already underway,” said Jaivir Singh, advisor to the dean of the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.

The expansion is part of the varsity’s plans of setting up its global campuses in Dubai, Russia, China and India.

Duke university is one of the first international institutes to announce its plans of establishing its India campus after the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) gave its approval to allow foreign universities to setup their campuses in India in March.

However, the Foreign Education Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010 is still pending in Parliament. The bill, which was to be taken up during the monsoon session of Parliament, would now be taken up during the winter session.

According to the bill, any foreign varsity entering India will have to create a $12-million corpus fund and profits will not be allowed to be expatriated to shareholders. The universities would also have to reinvest 75 per cent of profit in the school or university and the rest would become a part of the corpus fund.

Foreign universities, however, will have the right to form their own fee structure and admission rules.

Duke University said investment will not be an issue as it already satisfies the criteria set by the proposed bill.

In fact, Duke university is also looking at setting up a campus in South Africa and South America by the end of this calendar year. Like Yale, Brown and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it is also in talks with the MHRD on partnering the upcoming 14 innovation universities. Yale and Brown, however, are not looking at setting up an India campus.

“We would like to partner the innovation universities in the space of information technology, science and the qualitative side of engineering that will make the youth employable. However, our immediate plans are to consolidate all our programmes in the country under one roof,” Singh added.

It has a collaborative arrangement with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to develop and deliver customised corporate education programmes besides its Talent Identification Programme (TIP) that offers a summer educational model in either Java for Video Games or Engineering Problem Solving.

The varsity plans to restart its programme with IIM-A in May 2011 in New Delhi.

Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Higher Colleges of Technology of the United Arab Emirates and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) to create a new international Master of Environmental Management (MEM) degree programme.