University of Plymouth partners with Kaziranga University

Celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2012, the University of Plymouth is another prominent British institution expanding its footprint in India.

Bill Rammell, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Plymouth along with a delegation comprising Peter Ingram, Head of International Office and Professor Sanjay Sharma visited India in February 2012 to explore the possibility of collaborating with Indian varsities.  

University of Plymouth: India footprint

A memorandum of understanding has already been signed between Kaziranga University in Assam and the University of Plymouth. The agreement will open the doors for the sharing of learning resources, faculty resources. This will have long-term implications in terms of placements of Indian students in international markets and pave the way for development, research collaborations, and faculty and student exchange programmes.

A delegation from the institution will hold series of meetings with officials in India and work in areas of curriculum development, curriculum implementation and its assessment.

Kaziranga University coupled with Plymouth University’s expertise in areas including robotics, engineering, computing and environmental sciences will converge the three themes shaping the future of education, namely education and society, education and learning science, and education and learning tools, to form a new learning framework through their School of Management Studies and the School of Engineering. 

“Together with a research-informed curriculum, we embed employability skills throughout a student's journey altogether. More such agreements are expected to be signed in the near future,” said Rammell, adding that his university was excited to have collaborated with Kaziranga University. He said Assam was famous for having the highest population of the one–horned rhino and it would be a noble effort to save such a rare animal by creating awareness through global educational ventures.

Vilas M Salokhe, Vice–Chancellor of Kaziranga University said the university would start its academic session with courses in engineering and management. “The university aspires to become the centre of excellence for teaching and research by embracing diverse branches of learning such as health sciences, agriculture, environment, IT and allied subjects. Students will find ample opportunities to get an exposure to the best institutes and corporate houses in the country and abroad, “ Salokhe explained.

Rammell said there was an inherent link between higher education and economic growth and thus it was vital that universities delivered innovative and enterprising education to produce graduates who would thrive in the global market.  

A new bill in town

Another Bill. As if we did not have enough bills already!

The newest one – the Higher Education and Research Bill 2011 seeks to establish the National Commission on Higher Education and Research (NCHER), an overarching regulatory body for university education including vocational, technical, professional and medical education.

The Bill will promote autonomy of higher education and innovation and provide for comprehensive and integrated growth of higher education and research keeping in view the global standards of educational and research practices, for which it will establish the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER).

The NCHER will facilitate determination, coordination, maintenance and continued enhancement of standards of higher education and research other than agricultural education and matters pertaining to minimum standard of medical education as are the subject of proposed National Commission on Human Resources in Health (NCHRH).

So far so good.

The existing regulatory bodies including the University Grants Commission and the All India Council for Technical Education will subsequently be scrapped.

All that’s left now is to wait for this and all the others (reportedly 11) to be cleared. Some backlog indeed!

Top varsities or bottom feeders?

In an article published in an US-based education website recently, Philip Altbach wrote “India is still debating legislation to open the door to foreign higher education institutions. It is unlikely, despite smiling university presidents and copious amounts of goodwill, that America’s top universities are going to invest heavily in India, even if the doors are open. More likely, bottom feeders will slither into the country.” Altbach is Monan Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the United States.

Nothing short of a sad indictment given the earlier anticipation surrounding the Foreign Education Providers Bill in India and the entry of “world class” varsities to the country. A year ago, I had written an article for QS TopMBA on foreign b-schools that were keen on setting up offshore campuses in India once the proposed bill became a regulation. University representatives of b-schools in North America and Europe were very excited about the new regulation that was being planned. There was a flurry of activity. Land was being acquired, campuses planned.

Canada’s Schulich School of Business was one such institute. Schulich is setting up a campus at Hyderabad in partnership with the city’s GMR group. “The GMR Campus of the Schulich School of Business will be a mirror image of Schulich’s Toronto campus, with first-rate facilities, international faculty and an internationally-focused curriculum,” said Schulich Dean Dezsö J Horváth. “We will attract the best and the brightest students from India and abroad and prepare them for global careers in India and elsewhere in the world.” US-based Georgia Tech was also scouting around for locations in Hyderabad for a b-school in collaboration with Infosys.

Faculty of top Indian b-schools such as the Indian Institutes of Management were upbeat about the competition. Professor Sougata Ray, Dean, Programme Initiatives, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC), noted, “The bill is certainly a welcome move as there is a great demand for quality management education in India. Large numbers of students do not get admitted to the IIMs and end up spending huge sums of money going abroad. By allowing foreign varsities into India, these students will now get a chance to study at a good institute.”

Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, was also optimistic. “We have always believed that the best public policy for improving educational institutions is to enable and encourage competition. The introduction of this bill allowing foreign institutions into India seems to be a step in the right direction. There is a large pool of bright young students whose aspirations have been limited by the lack of right opportunities. We need several high quality educational institutions to meet this demand.”

So what changed over the course of the year? Could it be the delay in getting the bill cleared? Or the mixed signals from the government? Or protests from private education providers in various parts of the country.

In a report released recently by the US-based Institute of International Education (IIE), US institutions are being advised that bureaucracy may present a significant challenge to setting up study abroad programs in India and building partnerships with Indian institutions. The report says that “legislation to alleviate this has been introduced but has an uncertain future.”

“Given the delay of the much anticipated Foreign Providers’ Bill in India, US institutions interested in initiating large-scale operations in India may want to focus on joint and dual degree programs in partnership with Indian institutions, rather than wait for future opportunities to establish brick-and-mortar branch campuses in India, which may also be prohibitively expensive to launch.”

One wonders whether it is just a case of US universities getting cold feet about setting up offshore campuses in India and therefore, diluting their brand? One will just have to wait (for the Bill to get cleared) and watch ….