UGC allows top universities to set up campuses abroad

 

India’s top ranked universities with Institute of Eminence status, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science, can now set up branch campuses abroad after India’s higher education regulator the University Grants Commission (UGC) this month amended its regulations to allow them to set up offshore campuses.

Public or private ‘Institutes of Eminence’ would have to submit an application to the Ministry of Education with details of their 10-year strategic vision plan and a five-year implementation plan, including academic plans, faculty recruitment, student admissions plan, research, infrastructure development, financial, administrative and governance plans, with clear annual milestones and identifiable outcomes, according to the UGC, which will also review the applications together with an Empowered Experts Committee.

Institutions must also obtain permission from the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs to start an overseas centre, it said.

But the rules for overseas centres are stringent and could be difficult for most Indian institutions to meet. The UGC guidelines state that an institute wanting to set up an overseas centre must ensure it evolves as a multi-disciplinary research and teaching campus with at least three faculties and a minimum of 300 teachers and 3,000 students by the end of 10 years.

The ‘norms and standards’ of the off-campus centre should be the same as the main campus for similar courses, and should have similar admission criteria, and curriculum, examination and evaluation systems, it said.

Teacher-student ratio

Initially, a teacher-student ratio of 1:20 should be achieved, and a 1:10 ratio by the end of five years, according to the UGC regulations. At least 60% of faculty should be appointed on a permanent or regular basis. The centre should have at least 500 students enrolled under regular classroom mode, with one third postgraduate or research students and should offer at least five postgraduate programmes and research programmes.

Virendra Kumar Tewari, director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, an Institute of Eminence, told University World News: “If you look at the teacher-student ratio in some of the reputed universities in Japan and USA, the ratio is below 1:5. The teacher-student ratio at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is 1:3, and the school has 71.3% of its classes with fewer than 20 students. At Stanford, it is 1:5.”

Tewari said such low ratios help in better bonding and focused interaction. “Further, this is essential where we are trying to increase and improve our research output and impact,” he explained.

He said other criteria such as one third of students being postgraduates are also crucial. “In fact, this is a relaxation from our domestic standards where 50% of our students are studying at postgraduate [level], including dual-degree, masters and doctoral programmes. At Caltech and Stanford, postgraduate students constitute more than 55% of total student strength.”

“In my view, the focus should be on dual-degree and doctoral programmes,” he said, adding that admissions for foreign branch campuses should be structured “in sync” with existing admissions processes.

Tewari said that for campuses to be viable, a minimum enrolment of 500 students was required. “If we have to build the brand of these foreign campuses among the target population and maintain the quality of teaching and learning, we have to ensure we are on par with the Ivy League in our services.”

Tewari said these should not be viewed as restrictive rules, but rather “well-strategised steps” towards the globalisation of India’s higher education system.

But Jason Lane, dean of the School of Education at the State University of New York at Albany in the United States and co-founder of the Cross-Border Education Research Team, which researches international branch campuses, told University World News that branch campuses require a great deal of resources to be successful. “Enrolment goals are hardly ever met, especially in the early years,” he said.

“Five years in the branch campus world is fast” for an institution’s branch campus to prove itself. “Ten years is more realistic,” he said.

“A teacher-student ratio of 1:10 seems near impossible where you are trying to set up an entirely new campus. All these constraints and expectations are going to make it difficult for any campus to achieve success,” Lane said. The targets are likely intended to create a quality educational environment, “but the regulations that are being used to foster that may actually inhibit the ability of these campuses to be successful.”

According to the UGC, the functioning of overseas centres will be reviewed by the Empowered Experts Committee independently or along with the parent institution. If the committee is not satisfied with the branch campus performance, it may recommend its discontinuation to the government.

In such cases the interests of the students enrolled in the centre shall be protected and the institution asked to seek the overseas centre’s affiliation to the state where the parent institution has territorial jurisdiction.

Past experiences with foreign campuses

Lane pointed to IIT Delhi’s attempt to set up a branch campus in Mauritius before the idea was abandoned in 2015 when the then Indian government questioned its legality and withdrew its support.

Although IIT Delhi did not follow through with its plan, other branch campuses in Mauritius, including two private Indian institutions ran into problems and had to close.

“It proved not to be as appealing a destination for students as they thought and many of them struggled to get the student enrolments to financially sustain these enterprises,” Lane said.

IIT Delhi has said it is looking to expand overseas and said last month that the “first round of discussions” had taken place but declined to say which country was involved or the timeline for setting up the branch campus.

However, Ausaf Sayeed, India’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said last September during a webinar on India-Saudi Arabia bilateral relations that the Saudis had expressed interest in having an IIT campus. “We are in talks with the pertinent authorities to allow an IIT campus, which could be a win-win situation for both countries, and the likelihood is that IIT Delhi could set up its campus in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

Among the private universities awarded India’s Institute of Eminence status, Manipal, which already has a campus in Dubai, is the most likely to meet the criteria.

“Manipal could achieve most of these ratios, but the teacher-student ratio of 1:10 might be difficult to achieve. They [Manipal] are set up in places where they can achieve the 500 minimum students and do postgraduate studies,” Lane said.

The Indian government has declared 20 institutes across the country as Institutes of Eminence. Ten of them in the public sector are the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore; IIT Delhi; IIT Bombay; IIT Madras; IIT Kharagpur; the University of Hyderabad; Banaras Hindu University; Delhi University; Jadavpur University and Anna University.

The remaining 10 Institutes of Eminence in the private sector include BITS Pilani; Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Karnataka; Jio Institute; Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Tamil Nadu; Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu; Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi; Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Odisha; OP Jindal Global University, Haryana; Bharti Institute, Satya Bharti Foundation, Mohali, Punjab and Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh.

These Institutes of Eminence can each start a maximum of three new off-campus centres within five years but not more than one in an academic year, according to the UGC regulation.