Strong hopes have been raised that the exodus of Indian students going overseas may be stemmed in the long run with the very same universities that they are going to setting their campuses in India and offering at a fraction of the cost the students today spends in obtaining their overseas degrees. Is this the pie in the sky or real can only been seen in the coming years?
It is not that India never attempted in the past to stem the exodus but to no avail. There have been at least eight different failed attempts to woo the foreign universities in India to set shop even though most prominent ones have been running collaborative exchange programmes for faculty and student cohort.
Most earlier efforts failed due to rigid regulations, political opposition, lack of autonomy for foreign institutions, repatriation restrictions, and low commercial viability.
So, what changed now? The UGC (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023 seem to have done the trick promising more liberal policy initiatives that were absent in the past.
This time it looks like the Universities are getting more serious hoping the government policy would be supporting their initiatives for long term investments in an arguably large if not completely bureaucracy driven HEI (higher education institutions) scene in India. Part of the reluctance of foreign universities to set shop here is though the numbers look attractive as to student cohort, the paying capacity has been not been good in a largely fee based model which the global universities were shooting for. Besides fees, the policy itself was not clear and it kept changing from time to time.
India now allows top foreign universities to set up full independent branch campuses under the UGC (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023. Students receive the same degree as the home campus abroad, but at a much lower cost (typically 40–60 per cent cheaper than studying overseas).
Sounds alluring? May be but everything depends on the quality of content and the faculty quality. If you go by strictly the cost of providing global content and globally exposed faculty the numbers may not add up if you go by the experience of two successful homegrown examples of “Global” campuses in Business education.
No top-ranked foreign university had a full independent campus awarding its own degree on Indian soil.
In terms of quality of offering, the fact many of the business school campuses and also some engineering colleges have obtained international Accreditation from prominent Accreditation agencies like AACSB, AMBA, EQUIS, ACBSP etc., and ABET for engineering, is also a factor that needs to be considered. Also the fact that there are already three full fledged Indian campuses of overseas universities are up and running is also something to note.
Everything depends upon the low fees and high quality of offering that will make a difference and lure the Indian students who otherwise eye the overseas campuses with high costs but guaranteed quality. If you go by the experience of at least two decades old Indian School of Business and that of Great Lakes Institute of Management global quality being offered in these campuses come with a steep price today with the range being Rs 24 lakh to 40 lakh purely for tuition and stay for various programmes. If the new campuses are to match their quality with their own campuses overseas, the current offering of fee may not be sustainable in the long run, the industry analysis aver.
Add to this that there is no guarantee that the bureaucratic stranglehold and frequent bouts of policy paralysis or reversal, that resulted in almost all the previous attempted failures would be gone forever.
The author is Chair of Standards for Educational Advancement and Accreditation (SEAA) Trust, New Delhi a prominent International Accreditation Advocacy organization and former Executive Editor, Business India magazine.
