The Congress-led UPA government has moved a bill allowing foreign universities to set up shop in India. The entry norms specify a minimum corpus of Rs 50 crore, regulation (but no ceiling) of fees by the University Grants Commission (UGC), non-remittance of profits from educational activities, and a possible exemption from quotas for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
R. Jagannanthan, executive editor of DNA, says the bill is designed to kill the IITs and IIMs, and all government-run academic institutions. Reason: it gives the foreign universities the kind of leeway and elbow room that is denied to State-run Indian universities.
Result: Indian institutions will become like BSNL, Air-India and ONGC.
“Will the government allow the IITs to set their own fees for regular students, thus allowing them to subsidise the SC/ST candidates and the poor?
“Will the IIMs be allowed to enforce affirmative action in their own way without being forced to admit poor quality students in the name of quotas?
“What will happen when the foreign institutions come here and offer their own salary packages to the best remaining professors? Who will teach at the IITs? Just the dregs?”
Read the full article: Kapil Sibal’s bill
Also read: FDI + Indian Universities = Infinite possibilities?
CHURUMURI POLL: Quotas in private sector?
CHURUMURI POLL: Private sector = Unequal India?
Tags: Air India, BSNL, Churumuri, DNA, FDI, HRD, Kapil Sibal, ONGC, Quota, Sans Serif
21 March 2010 at 12:31 pm
Weak.
The brand of IIT is not so easily defeated. Its quality will remain.
21 March 2010 at 1:22 pm
One of the very few good decisions taking by this gov’t. If IITs and IISc have to survive, they have to compete in all aspects including salaries given to their faculty.
21 March 2010 at 3:06 pm
Anyway the IITs and IIMs are recently being filled by … undesirable (according to powers that be) behari and andhra coaching factory products. so something was needed/expected to differentiate… by the ruling class.
The template the ruling class using is nothing different than their colonial white masters. Shift the goal posts everytime, like economical marginalization of the OBC though license- permit-rationing raj.
How select few were benefited by the license -permit, at the expense of vast majority, when majority was reduced to pauper, LIBERALIZATION, market competition, loot of the state befitted rich……and long waiting for the majority for trickle down effect.
If the vast majority happened to be from mineral rich states, they were expected to quietly evict from thier homes, else biggest threat to the nation.
21 March 2010 at 7:18 pm
Why are we so obsessed with higher education? As a country, we will reap much greater benefit if the same attention was paid to primary and secondary education.
21 March 2010 at 8:02 pm
The steps Congress taking will destroy Indian higher education (primary education is non existant in any case).
BJP’s Education Minister MM Joshi was taking the opposite step of making 10 more institutes equivalent of IIT which was great.
Also, UPA-I implemented OBC quota in higher education which was another fraud.
Higher education, innovation will be the key to future success of a nation. Look at how China marching ahead in creating finest educational facilities while Congress is surrendering national interests on many aspects to foreign power.
21 March 2010 at 8:06 pm
@G3S,
tell that to TPTB who added reservation in IITs.
But it is a good business decision… considering how much Indians spend in US, AUS, UK etc for higher education. Very little negatives, but a whole lot of positives.
21 March 2010 at 9:43 pm
Competition is good.
It will force IITs and IIMs to further enhance their quality of education.
DNA Editor wants to deny Indian students the best of the world, by giving strange, imaginary excuses.
21 March 2010 at 9:50 pm
Jagannathan’s DNA article is a juvenile attempt at belittling Kapil Sibal’s idea. The criticism is based on a few fallacies.
Fallacy 1: He seems to think BSNL, AIRINDIA and ONGC were paragons of virtue which needed to be protected!
Ofcourse, most public sectors will tell you why they are failing (due to govt. interference etc. etc.)
But the bottom line is, there develops a vested interest that rules any govt. run service worldwide. Most of west realized this early and allow for private competition in most areas, including defense.
India has been late in Doing it, thus we have created this Public sector holy cows.
Fallacy 2: The presumption that protection of govt. companies is protecting citizen’s assets. This is a big fallacy. Actually, what is happening is they represent massive erosion in citizen assets.
A citizen is primarily looking for an vibrant economy that provides him a education, job, healthcare, food and services like Electricity, water, telecom.
He isn’t interested in knowing if he owns a part of any of these. If there is efficiency to be had by switching from BSNL to Airtel, he’ll gladly do it.
Most public sector companies are employee-union infested rackets. They won’t let any meaningful reforms to come in, thus will erode capital. Most of these employees would’ve been hired by archiac hiring processes, resulting in incompetent staff, who don’t even care about customers. Ofcourse, politicians and govt. spoils it further by ridiculous interference and rules.
Changing these entities means changing the employees? How do you change them??
Privatization is the only answer and these company employees will resist it till they have destroyed all assets of the company and are bankrupt. Thus eroding all shareholder (public) wealth.
Fallacy 3: Education is a holy exercise, thus shouldn’t be profitable.
If you ask a person to choose between Food or education, people would choose food, for that’s more essential to life than education!
But, still Food can be commercialised. No one is saying food can’t be sold for profit, but on education they become holier than thou!
Education, just like food, is a commodity. Food gets sold in a Darshini or in a five star hotel for various prices and people consume it differently. Yes, it creates a class system, but then I haven’t seen anyone trying to ban 5 star hotels!
Bottom line: If you don’t allow top class universities to come in, people go out. What do you gain by doing that?
Fallcy 4: If foreign universities will come in Indian ones will loose their top rank status!
None of the Indian universities are in top 500 in the world! So, how you can loose something you don’t have??
China is spending 10.2% of its GDP (which is already 3 times larger than Indian GDP and growing) on Education. Compare that with India’s 9.2%, which is the least in BRIC countries, you’ll realize why we’ll loose out entirely to china in coming years.
China opened up to Foreign universities 7 years ago! And we are still debating.
Fallacy 5: All education needs to have Reservations to SC/ST etc.
It is not the case already! What about the education provided by innumerable computer institutes int he country? What about various certifications offered by world wide universities through various testing mechanisms, which are valued by MNCs?
Also, why is reservation important? because there isn’t enough supply of a commodity, so you prioritize certain category of people. But, if you end the supply constraint itself, where is the question of reservation? Then the only problem is that of money, which can be taken care of by loans etc.
To summarize:
Kapil Sibal is doing an excellent job, in making Education an service just like any other. I hope our politicians don’t throw in a wrench in his work and stop him. We’ll pay dearly for each years delay in education reforms.
***
Gokulam:
>Why are we so obsessed with higher education?
Exactly!
The govt. should focus its spending on primary education and making it universal and of High quality.
Leave the higher education to market forces – just as in every other developed country.
21 March 2010 at 11:45 pm
agree with khan on his marxist views. It’s a “Rich Dad Poor Dad” situation.
also with G3S for concern on primary education.
22 March 2010 at 6:18 am
Reality check!
In the discussion one small point is forgotten by all.
The bill would only help Indian Players registered at foreign soil (Mauritius, Maldives, UAE etc) as “Foreign University”. It will also help them bypass the present restrictions, in the name of being “foreign” (afterall we all have a weakness for that word!)
Don`t expect any big players to enter.
22 March 2010 at 1:26 pm
R. Jagannanthan, executive editor of DNA, says” …. What will happen when the foreign institutions come here and offer their own salary packages to the best remaining professors? Who will teach at the IITs? Just the dregs?”
Hello! The best teachers have already migrated abroad to earn $$$$. What staff remains in the so called Ixxs are degs only. Further it is not the teachers which created a rank for these Ixxs, but their filtration system that drains millions of students to select a few brilliant ones. As seats in all these Ixxs put together remained same in spite of increasing number of aspirants, these institutions were able to create an aura around themselves. Now they do not want competition, lest they lose their holy cow status and touch me not attitude.
@Khan: If such Maldive technological University really comes in a guise of an ivy league school, it will be easily identified within a year or two and would be banished to wilderness by the recruiters as well as aspiring students.
I feel more is merrier.
22 March 2010 at 6:20 pm
Doesn’t matter what happens to our youngsters who study at Indian extentions of foreign universities. My title, more important than my degree, is safe. My son-in-law, or SIL, is only “phorin visited.” In my neck of the woods, I know of nobody referred to as “Ahmedabad returned” or “Kanpur returned.” Nothing sounds as magical as “when are you going to foreign for higher studies, man?” I feel sorry for my grandchildren who will never have to be insulted in Australia as”darkies” or as “Pakis” in Canada or Great Britain if they don’t want to.
Remember the story of a state minister who did not want to be administered a local anaesthetic for a minor operation if a phorin one were available? Yet another minister is reported to have been astounded on his trip to England on seeing every child over there speaking perfect English. Many of our writer folk attest to the great significance of phorin when they say, “Naanu inglandadalli iddaaga” or “naanu amerikeyalli odthaa iddaaga . . ..” Why, look at all the mushroom like schools in Bengaluru calling themselves Cambridge that or Oxford this. There is an age old Scottish School in Kokata, but The Scottish School of Bangalore?
It won’t be long before educational vendors will be publicly traded companies. No better way to invest my little compensation from Bhopal.
23 March 2010 at 2:04 am
A nephew who is waiting for his papers to study in the U.S. has the status of “phorin going.”
23 March 2010 at 7:38 pm
@Harkol – Excellent analysis. In addition to what you mentioned, even if we take what the article says at face value, it is more likely that institutions from abroad would penetrate certain streams such as IT related education. This would still leave the field relatively clear for government run institutes in other areas and let them focus more on basic research. Also, this policy can be streamlined once the initial trends are observed.
24 March 2010 at 11:18 am
Faldo:
I don’t know what Kind of institutions will come up in India, but I suspect all sorts of technical and management education will gain, if not fundamental sciences.
But, the operative word here is GAIN
We are hopelessly undersupplied on a commodity called education. For our children’s sake we need to fix this as soon as possible, _otherwise_ we’ll loose another generation in making up for it.
27 March 2010 at 10:50 am
And what does the Congress-led government have in stock for the illiterate and hungry-stricken Indians who still live in paltry conditions at barely a stone’s throw from existing and soon-to-be constructed universities in this ‘developing’ and ‘emerging’ country of ours?