Foreign Universities: Sobering News from Singapore

Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser ask in CHE: How Loyal Are Overseas Branch Campuses to Their Host Countries? In dealing with this topic, they provide several examples, almost all of them from Singapore:

A couple of weeks ago, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business announced that it would leave Singapore and shift its Asian operation to Hong Kong. The reasoning seems to be strategic. Its contract with Singapore was concluding in 2015, and Hong Kong offers better access to the rapidly expanding Chinese market. Similarly, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas has signaled that it may be leaving Singapore after its last batch of students complete their study in 2015. In this case, the university couldn’t agree on the student subsidies paid by its host, the government-sponsored Singapore Institute of Technology. And, in the midst of its global expansion, New York University also recently revealed it was closing its Tisch campus on the island nation after it also failed to reach a new financial arrangement with the Singapore government.

Tail Wags the Dog

• Exhibit 1:

  Under the proposed rules, foreign institutions that figure among the top 400 universities in the world — according to rankings published by the Times Higher Education, ... Quacquarelli Symonds, ... or Shanghai Jiao Tong University — will be able to set up campuses [in India]. [Bold emphasis added]

• Exhibit 2:

  In a bid to get back on the top of the global best institutes of technology chart, a team of four IIT directors would hold talks with officials of the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) and the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings here on Wednesday. [Bold emphasis added]

* * *

"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist huckster-peddlers from university rankings." [With apologies to Keynes...]

Fab Four from Our University Laundry List

...according to Krishna Kumar, Professor of Education at Delhi University and a former Director of NCERT.

He discusses the four major differences between Universities, ours and theirs (i.e. the West), in a lead opinion piece in The Hindu.

Providing samples is difficult when the rant is as wholesomely scathing as this one. First in his list is 'faculty selection'; here is how, according to him, we do it:

We start discouraging talent early, but a few bright youngsters manage to come up despite our best efforts. They are the ones who face the greatest resistance from our institutions at the time of selection for vacancies.[...] If there is someone with an unusual background or achievement, you can depend on the selection committee to find a technical ground to reject him or her. [...] Democratic procedures and correctness have become incompatible with respect for quality. [...] Selection committees debate over the finest of technicalities to justify the selection of the average, allowing anyone with sheen to get stuck and lost in the maze of criteria.

Read the entire article on how we compare in other issues like teaching, research, libraries.

Tales from Academic Netherworld: After Tri-Valley, it's now Northern Virginia

... a Chronicle investigation suggests that Tri-Valley is only the beginning. Other colleges—most of them unaccredited—exploit byzantine federal regulations, enrolling almost exclusively foreign students and charging them upward of $3,000 for a chance to work legally in the United States. They flourish in California and Virginia, where regulations are lax, and many of their practices—for instance, holding some classes on only three weekends per semester—are unconventional, to say the least. These colleges usher in thousands of foreign students and generate millions of dollars in profits because they have the power, bestowed by the U.S. government, to help students get visas.

While these institutions are well-known among Indian students looking to work full time, they have managed to go mostly unnoticed in the United States. That anonymity is just fine with Daniel Ho, the owner of the University of Northern Virginia, an unaccredited college that has called itself the most popular American university for Indian students. Says Mr. Ho: "We don't want people to know us."

From this Chronicle story by Tom Bartlett, Karin Fischer, and Josh Keller. [It comes with a chart and a slideshow -- grim stuff.]

See also Indira Kannan in The Business Standard: That risky rush for a US degree.

Some or several of the students may not be blameless victims. They had enrolled at these universities precisely as a way of getting into the US on student visas to work immediately – some at grocery stores or a McDonald’s, in cities hundreds of miles away from campus – while ostensibly taking classes online. But for those who joined these schools in pursuit of their dream of a US education, it’s a grim awakening.

The Telugu Association of North America, or Tana, which has been counselling the affected students, fears the Tri-Valley and UNVA cases are just the tip of the iceberg. “There are another 15,000-20,000 Indian students minimum” at similar universities of dubious repute, says Ashok Kolla, the Chair for NRI Student Services at Tana.

Links ...

1. Academic Destinations. A collection of articles, pics, personal narratives, infographics on quite a few (non-US) countries. While India merits just a brief sketch, Germany gets a much more extensive coverage.

2. Jane Brody in NYTimes: A good night's sleep isn't luxury -- It's a necessity.

3. Andrew Gelman on The "cushy life" of a University of Illinois (@Chicago) sociology professor

4. Johann Hari in The Independent: It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF itself should be on trial: "Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death."

Yale, Singapore, Academic Freedom

Academic freedom at Yale-NUS College, Yale's proposed joint campus with the National University of Singapore, is the subject of this hard-hitting Chronicle piece by Christopher L. Miller. I'm excerpting here some of the stinging blows:

Sidebar

See also: Elizabeth Redden's Inside Higher Ed piece from October 2010: Habitats for Academic Freedom, and Eric Weinberger's TNR piece from December 2010: Will Academic Freedom Be Protected at Yale's New College in Singapore?.

* * *

Most immediately troubling to me as a gay faculty member, male homosexuality is illegal in Singapore. Section 377A of the legal code bans consensual, private male homosexual activity as "outrages on decency," in effect making it illegal to be gay. Enforcement is not the issue here; this is a question of principle. Yale has no business establishing a campus in a state where some of its own faculty members are subject to arrest because of who they are. By doing so, the university has, in effect, violated its own nondiscrimination clause, which protects sexual orientation. Yale could have stayed away from Singapore until the repeal of Section 377A but chose not to. As a consequence, Singapore's discrimination becomes Yale's.

[...]

As plans for Yale-NUS were being reviewed last year, a 75-year-old British author, Alan Shadrake, was imprisoned and fined in Singapore for writing a book (Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock) that is critical of Singapore's death penalty. Provost Salovey claimed to be "greatly concerned," but he also said he was "not surprised by the result. ... I would have hoped for a different result, but Mr. Shadrake's book openly challenged the country's legal constraints on public criticism of identifiable government officials and institutions." Thus to a prisoner of conscience, Yale says, in effect, "What did you expect?"

[...]

To see these issues in concrete terms, consider the following: I am able to write this essay because I am protected by the United States Constitution and by Yale-New Haven's forceful policy on freedom of expression. Will the professors and students at Yale-NUS have that same freedom?

NYU at Abu Dhabi

NYTimes has a story on the UAE operations of the New York University at Abu Dhabi. The academic program has started, and it has 150 students and 45 faculty. Operations will move to a new campus in three years, and student strength will grow to about 2200 in ten years. What caught my attention, however, is the financing of NYU's "outpost" in the Middle East -- and this is worth keeping in mind when the business papers peddle stories about how top universities are keen to start a branch campus in India.

The financing of N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi is noteworthy. The college is being entirely paid for by Abu Dhabi, the largest and richest of the United Arab Emirates, which has so far provided generously, including financial aid for many students and a promise to build a sprawling campus on nearby Saadiyat Island, where branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums are under construction. [...]

“There is a lot of money sloshing around, and that has helped recruit faculty support,” he says. A faculty member could expect to earn a large bonus — in some cases the equivalent of two-thirds of a year’s salary, Mr. Ross says — and “on top of that there are first-class tickets to go over there, your family can go with you, your children can go to private schools for free.”

Officials won’t say what kind of deal they have with the royal family, which gave N.Y.U. $50 million before the project ever got off the ground. Beyond that, Mr. Sexton will say only that a yearly budget is discussed (he says he has never been “disappointed”) and a 10-year plan exists. The new campus is supposed to open in 2014.

Links ...

1. Societal benefits of research -- A project of the Association of American Universities. Short, snappy reports on all kinds of cool things made possible by basic research. Example: Google.

   And, oh, AAU can do parody too! It's mildly funny, but quite effective. [Hat tip to Inside Higher Ed

2. Shailaja Neelakantan in CHE: India Prepares a Welcome Mat for Students and Foreign Universities

3. Sarah Lyall in NYTimes: Missing Micrograms Set a Standard on Edge: "No one knows exactly why the international prototype of the kilogram, as pampered a hunk of platinum and iridium as ever existed, appears to weigh less than it did when it was manufactured in the late 19th century. "

How does India's Regulatory Regime Manage to Keep Philanthropy out of Higher Ed?

Here's an excerpt from an interview of Richard Levin (an alternate link), President of Yale University, by Prashant K. Nanda of MInt:

... There is a lot of philanthropic interest in higher education of India. I hope Parliament will open the market up to those philanthropists to build universities. They can give some money to Yale, but that will not have the impact.

India is very brand conscious and it seems it wants foreign universities to set up shop here. That will help, but that is not the answer. The answer is great Indian universities and Indian brands. You have done it with companies—you got Tata, Reliance (Reliance Industries Ltd and Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group), Infosys (Technologies Ltd), you got Wipro (Ltd). These are great global brands now. You can do the same with Indian universities rather than co-branding like Yale-India Campus or Harvard-India Campus.

The headline -- Allow Private Sector to Have a Big Role in Higher Education -- gives us the impression that Levin doesn't realize the extent of private sector participation in Indian higher ed. Here's a quick reality check from a paper by Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta -- Mortgaging the Future? Indian Higher Education (Brookings-NCAER India Policy Forum 2007-08, Volume 4, 2008, p. 101-157; pdf):

In the case of engineering colleges, the private sector, which accounted for just 15 percent of the seats in 1960, accounted for 86.4 percent of seats and 84 percent of all engineering colleges by 2003. In the case of medical colleges, the private sector dominance is less stark, but the trend is unambiguous: the proportion of private seats has risen from 6.8 percent in 1960 to 40.9 percent in 2003. While we do not have precise data, the situation in more than 1000 business schools suggests that 90 percent are private. Even in general education, there is now a mushrooming of private, self-financing colleges. In Kanpur University (in UP), the number of such colleges outnumber state assisted colleges 3 to 1, while in Tamil Nadu, self financing colleges comprise 56 percent of general colleges and 96 percent of engineering colleges (Srivastava, 2007). ... Even as political parties rail against de jure privatization, de facto privatization continues unabated. [page 23]

The problem, therefore, is not about the level of private sector participation. It's about the kind of private sector participation: real philanthropy as opposed to fake "trusts" set up by businesspeople, politicians, crooks, thugs and muttheads.

Seen this way, the question about private sector in India's higher ed (which Levin also alludes to) is this: what is it in our legal-regulatory regime that allows all these bad elements in, but keeps real philanthropists out?

I'm yet to figure out an answer to this question.

Top universities and their programs abroad

Yale is the latest American university to announce its plans to start a college abroad. This one is going to be in Singapore in partnership with the National University of Singapore. And it's going to be a liberal arts college.

All those are nice. But here's the kicker:

... [It] would be financed entirely by the [Singapore] government.

[Though Yale will lend its model to the program, it will not lend its name to the degree offered by the Yale-NUS College!]

The NYTimes story also makes a passing reference to the New York University's campus in Abu Dhabi. This campus, too, was "underwritten by the government there."

In contrast, a foreign university should deposit about $11 million if it wishes to establish a branch campus in India. So, any top university that might come here will do so through the partnership route -- a la Yale-NUS College -- rather than a stand-alone campus (a la NYU-Abu Dhabi).

On a related note, do read this generally negative report about overseas programs ("hollow shells") of universities. Here's an excerpt from the section about why universities might want to expand abroad:

But the main motivation for setting up branch campuses has been economic. "Branch campuses are largely tuition [rather than research] driven, and almost never operate without the expectation of revenue surpluses," [Jason] Lane [of the State University of New York in Albany] said ...

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.

* * *

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!

* * *

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.

Two data points for Kapil Sibal

1. Michigan State University shuts down its UG program at its Dubai campus.

   Any followers would do well to learn from Michigan State’s combination of ambition, mistakes and misfortune. After just two years of operation, MSU Dubai has moved to immediately discontinue its undergraduate programs due to under-enrollment. That just 85 students are affected is testament to the extent of the institution’s struggle.

2. The New York University's Abu Dhabi campus opens this fall with an in-coming class of 150 students.

   ... NYU Abu Dhabi, by far the most ambitious overseas branch campus to be launched by a U.S. university, opens this fall, and today announced the profile of its inaugural freshman class. More than a third (36 percent) of the 150 incoming students hail from the United States, which is the single largest country of origin, followed by the host country, the United Arab Emirates (8 percent), and China (6 percent).

   All told, the students come from 39 countries and their median SAT score is an impressive 1470 -- as befitting an institution that has already dubbed itself the “World’s Honors College.” The acceptance rate for students at NYU Abu Dhabi, of just 2.1 percent, compares to 29.4 percent (fall 2009 data) at NYU’s main campus in New York and makes it among the most selective undergraduate institutions in the world.

This is a good place to remind ourselves (once again) about the pre-history of NYU's Abu Dhabi campus:

When John Sexton, the president of New York University, first met Omar Saif Ghobash, an investor trying to entice him to open a branch campus in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Sexton was not sure what to make of the proposal — so he asked for a $50 million gift.

It’s like earnest money: if you’re a $50 million donor, I’ll take you seriously,” Mr. Sexton said. “It’s a way to test their bona fides.” In the end, the money materialized from the government of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal is planning a US visit

During the visit he will try to convince American universities to come to India and lure IIT professors into betraying their country.

Some clarity on what the foreign universities are likely to do

Most top universities are unlikely to set up an Indian campus -- the list of universities that have said 'no' to this option is pretty long: Yale, Columbia, Brown, Oxford, Cambridge, ...

Here, for example, is Prof. Andrew Hamilton, Vice Chancellor of Oxford:

We have many links to India already but we have no plans...in the foreseeable future to establish a campus in India and we have no plans to offer degree courses anywhere other than Oxford for the time being.

Any particular reason?

Oh, I think there are many reasons. Oxford is an institution 800 years in the making and recreating the very special environment that sits in 700-year-old colleges and the living environment that they provide and that critical mass of scholars and students that is present in Oxford, that is a very hard thing to reproduce anywhere else.

Would it be accurate then to say 'Oxford' is not really a brand you're interested in franchising?

Universities are much more complex than talking of hamburgers and franchises.

[The last answer is brilliant, isn't it?]

I think we now have some clarity on the most likely option for foreign universities that wish to have a presence in India.

Partnerships and Collaboration.

This option offers a lot of flexibility, and could take many forms -- short term exchange programs (study tours and semester-long stays), summer internships, and / or longer programs where students do their coursework in India and do their final year projects overseas.

The Indian partner can advertise the tie-up with foreign universities; the foreign partner will have a dependable host in India to send its students to under an exchange program. The overseas partner may also manage to extract some 'earnest money' from the Indian partner -- all of which will end up increase the cost of education in these colleges and universities.

There's also a potential upside: If the partnership is broad enough to include faculty exchanges (and long term collaborative research), it will be a huge plus for India -- India will benefit from the expertise of people who have worked under many different kinds of environments.

President of Brown University on why an Indian campus doesn't make sense

Prof. Ruth Simmons, President, Brown University, is quite candid in this Mint interview (with Aparna Kalra) about why "major universities will not [open campuses in India] to a very significant degree":

... [For] the most part, if you are in another country, they (the students) don’t want a second-class programme. If you come, they want a first-class programme, which means they want the same faculty that you have back home, they want the same course material, they want everything to be the same.

By and large, it is very difficult for universities to replicate what they have in their own countries. If you ask your faculty to travel back and forth, that’s pretty imperfect, often faculty don’t want to do that. You end up with faculty who are not vetted in the same way that your campus faculty is vetted.

What, then, makes sense for a foreign university with an interest in having a presence in India?

The answer is: Partnership and collaboration. Here's Prof. Simmons, again:

It is very important when you come into another country to demonstrate respect for the educational system in that country, to demonstrate equality of standards. I think for the most part, people will still want to have collaborations. You know, collaborations are wonderful because that sense of equality is very strong in collaborations.

Your students come to us, our students come to you. Your faculty are engaged in research on this project and so are ours, and that equality is very apparent. It is much harder to do that trying to set up an entire programme unless it grows out of collaboration.

Kalra, the interviewer, mentions Brown's partnership program with St. Stephen's since 1991. Prof. Simmons says she's keen on expanding this program, as well as on collaboration with other institutions.

Foreign universities

First few links are euphoric or alarmist. As it stands, the Bill doesn't deserve either reaction, because its impact on India's higher ed system is more likely to be puny than punchy. As brand name universities stay away, those that do show up here have neither the high quality nor the size required to make an impact.

1. Needlessly Euphoric: Associate Chambers of Commerce is being either ignorant or dishonest in claiming that the entry of foreign universities will "help [India] save outflow of about $ 7.5 billion of foreign exchange per annum as large number of Indian students go abroad to receive higher education."

2. Needlessly Alarmist: Daily News & Analysis executive editor R. Jagannathan thinks the entry of foreign universities will "kill the IITs and IIMs."

For a reality check, I suggest you check out Ram Mohan's post. In this DNA report, Philip Altbach says a lot of sobering things. See also this opinion piece by Venkatesan Vembu.

Here are a few more links:

1. As I said in this post, foreign universities will need lots of assistance from the locals. I gave the example of NYU which received 50 million dollars from Abu Dhabi. Here's an excerpt this Hemali Chhapia story about Singapore's experience:

   ... INSEAD ... received $10 million for research, land at a third of the market price, soft loans, housing access, etc. [Kris] Olds notes that the University of Chicago-Booth School of Business also received several million dollars in subsidy via the renovation of the historic House of Tan Yeok Nee building, their Singapore campus. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) also benefited from subsidies upwards of $80 million.

   Even so, within months of being set up, UNSW folded up citing its “unsuitable financial model’’. Three years ago, the John Hopkins Centre, which received $52 million in funding since its 1998 arrival in Singapore, also closed down as it did not meet the performance benchmark. And the UK’s Warwick University, which was to set up a full campus in the real sense of the term, backed out at the last minute.

   Ten years down the road, as Singapore draws up a balance sheet of its expectations and realities, experts say there is a yawning gap between the two.

2. T.T. Ram Mohan has a good post From the UAE, there's yet another report on their not-so-stellar experience with foreign universities that were set up in "free zones" outside the purview of education regulators.

3. In case enthusiasts like Kapil Sibal and Assocham (or even alarmists like Jagannathan) need reminders about why they should tone their expectations down, here's Rahul Choudaha in University World News (this article also appears in his Choudaha's blog, Dr. Education):

   ... Some of the off-shore campuses of foreign universities in the Gulf are finding it difficult to fill classes. In addition there are big names who have had to shut down their operations in an embarrassing manner. For example, the University of New South Wales closed down its Singapore campus in 2007 in what The Australian newspaper wrote was one of "the higher education sector's worst business failures", for the reason of enrollment shortfall.

   Top reputed universities are now even more cautious about their brands and look for substantial financial support and autonomy to be present for an off-shore campus. In the Indian context, government is not in a position to provide any financial incentives nor it could ensure complete autonomy from socio-political influences. Overall, this makes the case for reputed institutions entering in India quite weak.

Foreign universities Bill ...

... has got the Cabinet's approval [see also WSJ and NYTimes]. It did cross this obstacle once before (back in 2007), but failed to make it to the Parliament. Let's see if this Bill survives the likely mauling by MPs in the Lok Sabha.

To me, foreign universities are like any other private institution. Also, they represent diversity in educational methods, examinations, admissions, and administration; thus, they are a potential source of innovation. So, I'm all for foreign universities as long as they don't ask for concessions [see #1 below].

A few additional thoughts [some of them are repeated from here and here; I have collected a bunch of links here]:

1. Will the Harvards and the Oxfords flock to India? Unlikely. Because, foreign campuses are expensive operations -- and they become impossible without 'incentives' or 'earnest money.' For example:

   When John Sexton, the president of New York University, first met Omar Saif Ghobash, an investor trying to entice him to open a branch campus in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Sexton was not sure what to make of the proposal — so he asked for a $50 million gift.

   It’s like earnest money: if you’re a $50 million donor, I’ll take you seriously,” Mr. Sexton said. “It’s a way to test their bona fides.” In the end, the money materialized from the government of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates.

2. But the present Bill demands 'earnest money' from the foreign universities! They are required to deposit Rs. 50 crores ($11 million) with the government before they are allowed to start their Indian operations.

3. The likely effect of this provision will be to encourage them to enter India through a partnership with an Indian organization. Thus, it is a major deterrent to the serious players who want to be in India on their own.

4. A ToI story claims that Georgia Tech faculty at its Indian campus will earn the same salary as those at its Atlanta campus.

   I don't believe a word of it -- unless Georgia Tech plans to use its Indian campus for educating rich kids capable of spending five million to ten million rupees over four years. But here's the thing: if kids can spend this much, they might as well go to the Atlanta campus!

5. There's another possibility: to keep the costs down, the Indian campus will be primarily a teaching shop. But what is so special about the Indian Georgia Tech if there's little research?

   Research is expensive, and will require extensive support from government. I can't see the government bankrolling a foreign university's research facility in the absence of anything in return.

So, who'll come? In the short term, a few teaching shops and for-profit entities. Also, a few B-schools. Especially if they follow the ISB model of offering a short-duration MBA to those willing to pay a couple of million rupees.

Kapil Sibal seems keen to sell the idea of millions of students getting high quality education at Indian campuses of foreign universities. I think he knows better; he's saying this stuff only -- at least, primarily -- to sell the Bill, which will help burnish his credentials as a 'reformer'.

Bottomline: While the impact of foreign universities will be symbolic, I also expect it to be (disproportionately) significant: (a) their 'customers' will come from India's elites, and (b) they'll focus on high-visibility and high-prestige areas of business and technical education.

Links ...

1. List of Professor-Approved Holidays at PhD Comics.

2. Raghu at A Heuristic Viewpoint of Life: Graduate School Mahabharata.

3. Johann Hari in The Independent: A morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour: "Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has been morally bankrupt all along. The idea that Dubai is an oasis of freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time."

4. Anubhuti Vishnoi in The Indian Express: Brand IIT goes to the world, gets OK to set up a campus in Qatar. From the Wikipedia entry on Qatar, we learn the following:

   Qatar University was founded in 1973. More recently, with the support of the Qatar Foundation, some major American universities have opened branch campuses in Education City, Qatar. These include Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Texas A&M University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Cornell University’s Weill Cornell Medical College and Northwestern University.

5. Aaron Swartz at Raw Thought: How I Hire Programmers: "There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them?"

6. Geoff Maslen in University World News: AUSTRALIA: Collapse spreads around global village:

   News spreads fast in the global village created by the World Wide Web. And bad news always travels that much more quickly than any other kind - as the Australian government found to its likely cost this month when a Chinese-owned company called the Global Campus Management Group that ran a series of vocational education colleges in Melbourne and Sydney for foreign students suddenly shut its doors and went into voluntary liquidation.

Links ...

1. Suzanne Franks at Thus Spake Zuska: Lives of the Saints of Science: Darwin:

   This past year the scientific community has been engaged in a massive telling and retelling of the story of one of those key figures - Charles Darwin. All year long, I have been reminded of my first encounter with the actual writings of Mr. Darwin, as opposed to the presentation of his myth. It happened in a women's studies class.

2. Charu Sudan Kasturi in The Telegraph: Foreign University Bill in Deep Freeze:

   A proposed law to allow the entry and regulation of foreign universities will now be reviewed afresh under a panel of top bureaucrats, threatening to delay indefinitely a legislation scheduled for cabinet approval. [...]

   The decision to refer the bill to a committee of secretaries effectively means the proposed legislation, which may now undergo fresh changes, is unlikely to see the light of day for some time.

   Typically, committees of secretaries take several months to review a proposal or draft legislation before finalising their reports. But they have no time restrictions within which they are required to complete the review.

3. Thomas Frank in WSJ: A Liberal Thanksgiving: "We hear much less nonsense about the wisdom of markets these days."

   ... Just about the only ones who still believe in omniscient markets anymore are the think-tankers who are paid to believe in it.

Kapil Sibal talks to the US universities

Two reports with news about what HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has been doing in the last couple of days in the US.

The first one is from BU Today, Boston University's newspaper:

“We are looking at institutions of excellence,” says Sibal. “We would like the best in the world to come to India, and it is in that sense that we would welcome Boston University.”

He says that India’s population — vast, young, and eager to learn — presents a great opportunity for U.S. institutions of higher learning.

“India has about 560 million people who are less than 25 years of age,” Sibal says. “The number of children going to school is 220 million, and a substantial percentage of those children will have to graduate. So we need educational institutions, and not all of those institutions can be provided by the government.”

The second is from The Economic Times with some stuff about what he said at a press meet:

Government has promised a level playing field to top US institutions in a bid to encourage foreign investment in the education sector as New Delhi seeks partnerships with global institutions to provide quality education at home.

"With the expansion of the higher education sector and the needs of Indian students, we need not just to allow education providers in India to grow, but we also need to provide for foreign investment in the education sector," India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said at a press conference here Friday.

Sibal, who was here to seek partnership with leading American universities for an Indian initiative to set up 14 innovation universities to push research and development, said he was encouraged by the response, which made the trip "exceptionally satisfying".