Despite opposition from Bangladesh’s university regulator, the country’s caretaker government passed a law on Monday that allows private individuals and institutions to establish campuses in the name of foreign universities, but only with prior permission from the government, The Daily Star reported.

Last November, the regulator, the University Grants Commission, banned 56 foreign-university campuses in the capital, Dhaka, and in four other cities, for selling degrees and for not meeting quality standards. In its own draft of the new law, the commission had said no foreign universities should be allowed to set up campuses in Bangladesh at all.

In a bid to streamline the mushrooming growth of private universities’ off-campus branches, the new law says the universities can run campuses only in places that the government has certified. The law also says that, with government approval, anyone with 20 years of experience in teaching, academic research, or university administration, and who has a “first class” or equivalent result in their undergraduate or graduate degree programs, can be eligible to be appointed vice chancellor of a private university.

The caretaker government is scheduled to hold national elections late next month. “Whether the laws/acts passed by the caretaker government will all be ratified by the incoming government after the election has been a subject of much negotiation, and at present all indications are that all acts passed — including the Private University Ordinance — will be ratified and not overturned by a new government,” said Zafar Sobhan, a political commentator who writes for The Daily Star, in an e-mail message. —Shailaja Neelakantan