Foreign educational institutions may soon set up campuses in India with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and the Department of Economic Affairs supporting the proposal by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to permit foreign universities to enter India under the Companies Act.

In an official statement released on Tuesday, the Ministry said it “is in the process of finalising the UGC (Established and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Educational Institutions) Rules by which foreign universities can set up campus in India and issue foreign degrees.”

Foreign universities will be allowed to function in the country as companies under Section 25 of the Companies Act.

The Ministry has sent proposals to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and the Department of Economic Affairs to permit foreign universities to open their campuses in the country as companies as provided under the Companies Act.

“Under the proposed Rules, Foreign Educational Institutions (FEIs) can set up campuses in India once the FEIs have been notified as Foreign Education Providers (FEPs) by the UGC,” the Ministry statement said.

These institutions will have to rank within the top 400 universities of the world by the ranking published by Times Higher Education, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) or the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Further, the institutions, which will be required to maintain a corpus of not less than Rs 25 crore, will have to be not-for-profit entities that have been in existence for at least 20 years, and accredited by an agency of the country of origin or by an internationally accepted system of accreditation.

The degrees awarded by these universities will be treated as foreign degrees.

Related Topics