The foreign universities bill may enhance free flow of knowledge

US universities are waiting in the wings for the Indian parliament to open up the country’s heavily regulated education sector. The government still needs to ease regulatory roadblocks and find a way to make education a financially viable business for all concerned. But if that can be done, many more Indian students may just stay in India for higher studies instead of packing up to study abroad every year, spending $7 billion on tuition and housing.

Several American universities, like Columbia University, New York University, and Georgia Tech are evaluating opportunities for growth in India, in part because India sends over 83,000 students to the US every year, more than any other country.

“New York University is evaluating the opportunities for growth in India. It behooves educators and policymakers throughout the world to expedite the flow of knowledge,” Jerry M Hultin, president of the Polytechnic Institute of NYU told DNA.

The bill, which still has to clear parliament, would require universities to invest a minimum of about $11 million and prohibits them from repatriating profits from their academic ventures, a condition that could limit the appeal of an Indian campus to those universities that view overseas programmes as money-making ventures.

“It is a great move by the Indian government. But if they want Duke to come to India they have to make it viable,” said Vivek Wadhwa, an executive in residence and adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering of Duke University.

“On the other hand, American universities see benefits to being in India because it is a major feeding ground to the universities here. They can do exchange programmes  — that would be a win-win. They also need to have their faculties more aware of India and this would give them the opportunity to be more globalised,” added Wadhwa.

Attracting philanthropy
US schools are also looking for partners, such as philanthropists who would help donate the capital to start a new university.
“The best educational policy is one that fosters the highest quality non-profit institutions that invest all surpluses into endowments for scholarships and educational improvements... For the vast majority of us, it would be necessary to find partners, such as philanthropists and business leaders in India, who would help donate the capital to start a new university,” said Hultin.

American universities took note when Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, a Cornell University alumnus, gifted $50 million to his alma mater to help recruit top Indian students and to support joint research projects with Indian universities.

Some US universities aren’t looking to India for profits, but want to include it in their research and education map. The more savvy Indian states are wooing top American institutes to set up campuses as they want engineers and finance students with the right skill-sets to work in the multinational firms already crowding their states.

“We are a non-profit government agency, so we are not looking at it from a tuition point of view but as a research opportunity,” said Vijay K Madisetti, executive director of Georgia Tech’s exploratory initiative to start a campus in India.

“We were offered 250 acres of land in 2007-2008 by the Andhra Pradesh government. We want to focus on a Masters and PhD level programme in India. It requires relationships with industry, other universities and government labs. We want to do research in information technology, energy, biotechnology and infrastructure,” said Madisetti.

Georgia Tech wants to collaborate on research with companies in the Hyderabad and Bangalore corridor by the end of this year. “Our work will be related to working with companies in India and not with offering classes. Georgia Tech students and faculty from our Atlanta campus would be collaborating with local Indian and US companies; they may spend some portion of their time in India working with Indian companies to understand their problems,” said Madisetti.

Georgia Tech has several foreign campuses. “We have a campus in France that has been offering degrees since 1992, a campus in China, we are starting a campus in Costa Rica, and we have a campus in Singapore. We are keen to establish a campus in India and we’re encouraged by the forward-looking vision of the Indian government,” he added.

Georgia Tech’s enthusiasm for India is understandable given that Indian students flock to it. “Indian students constitute the largest foreign student body at our Atlanta campus — they outnumber the Chinese and Korean students. There is a large talent pool of Indian students that we would like to continue to attract. We are looking for unique research opportunities in India that may not be available in the US. India offers us an opportunity to conduct new research in renewable energy, smart grid, cloud computing, climate change and water purification, for instance. India provides the sort of problems that excite innovators in Georgia Tech,” said Madisetti.

World class research
Some Indian political parties fear that India may be fobbed off with second-rate American faculty members or visiting professors who see their trip as a subsidised vacation rather than a real teaching job.

Georgia Tech said that most of the faculty members in its research centre would be from Atlanta. “People who join us from India will have to go through the US campus to be able to teach there. Our goal is to start small, create a quality research programme. We don’t want to go there and just start admitting students. We want to start a world-class operation in India and use that to develop more and more PhD holders who will become our brand ambassadors and future faculty in Indian universities,” said Madisetti.

The entry of foreign universities could help India boost its higher education. A study by Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering found that China is racing ahead of both India and the US in the production of PhDs in science and engineering and thus in the capacity to perform basic research. Building research-and-development capabilities is the key to competitiveness, the study found. India’s engineering PhD numbers have remained flat — less than 1,000 per year — while China graduated 9,427 in 2005 and the United States graduated 7,333.

“India could disintegrate within a couple of decades if we don’t upgrade our education system fast,” said an Indian educationist.
For all its prospects for the future, the enthusiasm about India is tempered with realism. Columbia University is not rushing in headlong but testing the waters with a South Asia centre in Mumbai.

“Clearly India has been one of the most dynamic societies on the planet and therefore it is a place that we feel we need to know more about. We have things to contribute. But we need to learn more about the country,” Columbia University president Lee Bollinger told journalists last week while announcing the launch of the Columbia Global Center for South Asia in Mumbai. Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation will also launch Studio-X Mumbai which will join the network of Columbia architecture labs in Beijing, Amman, Rio-de Janeiro and Moscow.

Kenneth Prewitt, vice president for Columbia Global Center, said the rationale behind the global centres was not the familiar “campus abroad” model, but rather an extension of the university’s research, curricular and service footprint in every world region.
Yale president Richard Levin has also indicated that Yale is looking to build “a broad set of connections” with India.

US universities also want to see how the bill will shape up after moving through parliament. “We are studying whether we as a non-profit educational institution will be liable for tax. How do we get money transfers for various funding activities? There are a lot of small issues,” said Madisetti.

Nikhil Sharma, an engineering student at the University of California San Diego, noted that for his field, engineering, a popular academic and career path for many Indian students coming to the US, the research opportunities just weren’t there in India.

“India is in its nascent stage as far as research is concerned — the infrastructure there is not strong enough to support meaningful research. It’s kind of a tradition for Indian students to come to the US,” said Sharma. “It will be brilliant if US universities set up campuses in India. It could turn everything on its head.”