New Delhi — Because of the huge faculty shortage in India, the Indian government has now prohibited private higher-educational institutions here from using Indian faculty members when setting up campuses abroad, The Times of India reported today. Those institutions will also be forbidden to move profits from their domestic campuses to their foreign ones, or to cross-subsidize them.

The ministry in charge of higher education has issued 15 such rules, it said, to ensure that the quality and academic standards of domestic campuses do not suffer. Among other things, the rules require the private institutions to seek government permission to offer a course on an overseas campus that’s not available on the home campus.

The rules also mandate a distinction between degrees awarded by the offshore campus and the Indian one. The mere completion of a degree program at the foreign campus does not necessarily mean that the degree is acceptable in India, the ministry said. So, for example, an Indian medical student graduating from a private Indian university’s overseas campus would not automatically be eligible to practice in India unless the student satisfied the conditions of eligibility in India. —Shailaja Neelakantan