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Special Report

India unless either their salaries are
matched or exceeded. This makes run-
ning campuses in India with the same
“standard” prohibitively expensive,”
says Mehta, former vice chancellor of
the top-ranked private Ashoka Uni-
versity, Sonipat, who resigned in 2021
after it became “abundantly clear” to
him that his forthright public essays
had become a “political liability” for
the institution.
Moreover, there’s the question of
“regulatory trust,” says Mehta in his
weekly long form op-ed essay (Janu-
ary 9, 2023) in the Indian Express
written before the UGC regulations
were notified. More pertinently, Meh-
ta highlights that the reason almost Bhanu Mehta: freedom prerequisite Raj Kumar: collaboration alternative
none of the top Ivy League institutions
such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton financial assistance. For instance, dinary opportunities for students and
have branch campuses abroad is be- New York University’s branch campus faculty in India to engage with leading
cause the “economics and the struc- in Dubai is entirely financed by the universities of the world. The capital-
tural form of a top research university UAE government. Therefore, UGC’s intensive campuses investment model
makes it difficult to reproduce them.” presumption that foreign universities envisaged by UGC will not work in In-
R ECENT RESEARCH OF instead of incentives offers a plethora er education highly inaccessible and
are waiting to gatecrash India, which
dia and runs the risk of making high-
non-inclusive,” Dr. Raj Kumar, a poly-
the Oxford (UK)-based
of regulations and code of conduct
Cross-Border
Educa-
tion Research Team (C- rules, is likely to prove wishful think- math alum of Madras, Delhi, Oxford
ing.
and Harvard universities and founder
BERT) reveals that as of March, 2023, “Universities around the world VC of JGU told EducationWorld (De-
83 countries have “imported” FHEIs function as autonomous institutions cember 2023).
(333 campuses overall), of which the with minimal interference from gov- However, spokespersons of Dea-
largest number are in China (47), ernments. These days, the onus is on kin University, Australia — the first
UAE (30), Singapore (16), Malaysia host countries to create attractive and foreign university to establish a
(15) and Qatar (11). In China, barring enabling ecosystems for world-class campus in the Gujarat International
NYU Shanghai, none of the foreign universities to set up campuses in Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) — are
university campuses is of top-ranked their countries. In some cases, host “confident about the execution and
universities. They are either joint countries provide land and funding delivery of the GIFT City campus and
centres (such as Tsinghua-UC Berke- to foreign varsities,” says Dr. C. Raj the success of making international
ley Shenzhen Institute, University of Kumar, vice chancellor of the private standards of education delivery pos-
Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong Uni- top-ranked O.P. Jindal Global Univer- sible for students.” While declining
versity Joint Institute) or universities sity (JGU), Sonipat (Haryana). to comment on the UGC Regulations
set up in collaboration with existing According to Prof. Raj Kumar, 2023, Ravneet Pawha, Vice Presi-
Chinese universities (for example, rather than establishing bricks-n- dent (Global Alliances) and CEO, Dea-
Duke-Kunshan University). Ditto in mortar campuses the current trend kin University (South Asia), says that
Malaysia, not one foreign university is for globally top-ranked universities “Deakin’s India campus is first and
is ranked among the global Top 100 to contract international collaboration foremost a momentous achievement
universities (see box p. 82). Signifi- agreements for student and faculty ex- of bilateral knowledge collaboration
cantly, the majority receive some form change and joint degree and research between Australia and India”.
of subsidy from the host government. programmes. “My humble suggestion Pawha is unfazed by the latest UGC
Indeed, countries such as the is that we should focus on how Indian regulations and code of conduct fir-
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qa- universities can collaborate with lead- man. “Deakin University was the first
tar not only provide liberal regulatory ing international universities. This foreign university to set up opera-
environments for foreign universities will not only help us to fulfil the vision tions in India way back in 1994 and
but also land grants, tax breaks, and of NEP 2020, but also create extraor- over the past three decades, we have

78 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2024