Foreign Universities in India: Indian Ministry of HRD tries to govern through regulations what it cannot do by law

In a very interesting move, the Ministry of HRD which regulates Universities through the University Grants Commission is now proposing to pass a set of regulations called the UGC (Establishment and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Educational Institutions) Rules to allow foreign Universities to set up campuses in India.

See the news release at http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=99225 with its grammatical and spelling mistakes!!

Mr. Kapil Sibal, a lawyer and the former Minister tried to get the same thing done through an Act of law to be passed through the Parliament which is yet to take it up.  What the lawyer could not do, the current Minister, an MBA from Temple University USA, may succeed by a clever play of governing through rules and regulations.  This is how bureaucrats have always been governing the country through extra-legal means.

This set of rules comes on the heels of the Supreme Court decision that struck down the rules framed by the AICTE, another body of the MHRD, through which the AICTE has been claiming to regulate all the MBA programs in the country.

The new rules that the MHRD is framing through which it seeks to allow foreign Universities to set up campuses in India and award degrees specifies that the foreign Universities can set up a legal entity under The Companies Act under Section 25 which would make it a non-profit entity and thus no distribution of surplus funds is possible.  It also stipulates a deposit of US$ 4 million (Rs.25 crores; thanks to the Rupee depreciation) which may be forfeited if the foreign University does "anything" that violates the rules.

The degrees that these foreign Universities are allowed to issue would be considered foreign degrees!!  Therefore, there is still the need for these degrees to be equated to the Indian ones through an application to the Association of Indian Universities (AIU).  I do not understand why these new UGC rules that allow the Universities to award the degrees cannot stipulate the equivalencies instead of making these foreign Universities to run around the AIU.  This is like telling the Hyundai car company that their car completely made in Chennai would be treated like a foreign car and therefore has to undergo all the "import" formalities!!


I wonder why the MHRD is going around doing this. There is nothing in the law currently that states that a foreign University cannot set up its campus in India.  Any body, can apply to UGC and set up a University under the existing laws.

I am reminded of a situation where my friend's car was towed away by the cops from its parking spot when he was visiting me at my office.  When he called the cops to recover his car, he asked them why they towed his car and they said that it was parked illegally.  He said that there were no NO-PARKING signs, for which the cops asked him if there were any PARKING signs.  In India, it seems that what is not specifically provided for, is taken to be prohibited!!

My question is all this is simple:  How many Foreign Universities are lining up outside the MHRD doors in Delhi wanting to set up their campus in India?

- Sankaran Raghunathan

Internships in India for international students - study abroad in India

Internships Globally - Searching through the maze

Here is some information on how to find internships in India, especially for international students.  Several of these internships are part of a study abroad program.

Here are some portals that list several global internships that are available in India for international students:
www.goabroad.com
www.studyabroad.com
www.gooverseas.comwww.iiepassport.org

www.goabroad.com lists about 205 internship programs in India from 73 organizations.  In this site, search is possible only by country and subject area.  For example, there are 17 internship programs in Information Systems in India offered by 12 organizations.  Cost or fees for the program is not a search criteria.  Similarly, there is no search criteria for Paid or unpaid internships or for scholarships.  These additional search criteria would make the site more friendly for students.

www.studyabroad.com lists 56 internship programs in India.  Out of these, only 4 are internships in Information Systems.  Here again, you cannot search by additional criteria such as whether they are paid/unpaid internships and by the fee/cost or scholarships.

www.gooverseas.com has 43 internship listings for India.  This site is driven by reviews submitted by those who have attended these programs.  This site also does not provide for narrowing down the search by cost or stipend.

www.iiepassport.org is a site maintained for The Institute for International Education (IIE).  This site lists 35 internship programs in India.  Out of these 35 programs, 11 of them offer scholarships.  Of these, only 2 programs are semester length programs and that cost less than $15,000 for the entire semester costs.  Only one of the programs is in the Informations Systems field.  Clearly, this level of search granularity helps study abroad advisors and students to identify programs that are suited to them.  IIEPASSPORT.ORG site can be searched by Country, Term, Format, Language, Subject, Level, Cost and Scholarship.

www.goabroad.com has the largest number of listings - 3668 internships from 814 organizations worldwide.  Out of these 3,668 internships, only 205 are in India.  www.iiepassport.org has 1,067 internships worldwide.  www.studyabroad.com and www.gooverseas.com do not provide a feature to search by internships worldwide; you can only search by a country or region.

Several providers/programs are listed in all these 4 portals and so there is considerable overlap.  However, the sheer number of listings over 3,600 in goabroad.com demonstrates the growing interest in internships among students.  But, if we search for business oriented internships, there are only less than 1,000 programs.  This could be due to the fact that most business schools do not offer internships for credit.


Most of these internships are stand alone programs offering only internship experience.  These are offered by commercial companies who are in the placement service and they do not necessarily offer internship for academic credit.  For the typical student, however, what matters is the combination of academic course work and an academic internship for credit over the summer or a semester.  Quite a few programs offer such an academic semester program with credits for internship.

We, at the National Management School, offer an internship program for business school students who major in Management Information Systems.  This is a 15-credit Semester Abroad program in which 6 credits are toward a 300 hour paid internship at Capgemini and 9 credits are from 3 courses.  Not only is this a paid internship, the total cost for the student including international air fare, visa, academic tuition fee, housing, meals, travel, etc. comes to less than $12,500.  A matching scholarship offered by our partners brings the cost down to about $10,500.  The whole idea is to make the cost of this program almost the same as the in-state cost so that for the student there is tremendous value.  The University at Albany is the partner who awards the credits and transcripts to the students.

We hope to expand this program to other majors in business schools in the near future.