New Delhi
Reversing his earlier plans, India's minister in charge of higher education has drastically altered legislation allowing foreign universities to operate here so that the bill now would free foreign universities to set tuition and would not force them to observe admissions quotas, as public universities here do, according to The Telegraph.
According to unnamed government officials, the long-delayed Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, as revised by Kapil Sibal, the minister, says that a new category of institutions—"foreign education providers"—will not be shackled by education regulators, the newspaper said. The bill is silent on the matter of quotas and would effectively allow foreign universities to charge fees determined by the market.
The redrafted bill would require foreign institutions to have operated for at least 10 years in their country of origin before they could apply to open a campus in India, a new provision said to have been added to bar fly-by-night organizations from the country.
Unlike the original bill, foreign institutions would not need to seek university status from the University Grants Commission, the university regulator, in order to become eligible to open here. Rather, foreign universities would have to provide a certificate from an accreditation body in their country of origin. A central panel would scrutinize each institution's credentials before allowing it to offer courses.
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