Attracting Foreign Universities to India

In discussions about foreign universities' interest in India, politicians and pundits keep referring to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT, even though those institutions have not said much about starting an Indian campus. We now have a NYTimes story -- Midlevel Universities Look Into India Branches -- by Vir Singh, which talks about real plans of some universities.

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I'm sure you want to know the universities that are described as "midlevel," "Tier 2" and "still far superior to the average Indian education provider." They are: Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Schulich School of Business (Toronto), University of Wolverhampton (UK), and -- gulp! -- Carnegie Mellon!

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Bottomline: Joint operations with existing Indian institutions are far more probable than stand-alone Indian campus.

In a recent talk at IISc, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal spoke about how the proposed legislation (which is yet to be passed by the Parliament) will protect Indian students from being exploited by unscrupulous foreign entities. [Sibal spoke about quite a few other things, see Giridhar's post]. Vir Singh's article touches on some of these 'safeguards':

... [T]he bill now before lawmakers prohibits repatriation of profits. Furthermore, those wanting to set up campuses must deposit more than $10.5 million with the government. The proposed law also requires that institutions have at least 20 years of teaching experience in their home countries. Officials will have the power to exempt applicants from some conditions, but not the one banning providers from taking profits out of India.