The latest announcement is in line with the National Education Policy, 2020, which envisioned internationalisation of higher education in India. The 2020 policy aimed at a “complete overhaul and re-energising” of the higher education system in the country. “India should be promoted as a global study destination providing premium education at affordable costs and restore its role as a Viswa Guru,” the policy underlined. For this, the policy recommended that high performing Indian universities be encouraged to set up campuses in other countries, and similarly, select universities in the world be permitted to operate in India. It further recommended that a legislative framework facilitating such entry be put in place, and such universities be given special dispensation regarding regulatory, governance, and content norms on par with other autonomous institutions of India.

While announcing the latest draft norms namely, “University Grants Commission (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023”, the University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar said that the final norms will be notified by the end of the month after considering feedback from all stakeholders. According to the draft regulations, Foreign Higher Educational Institutions (FHEIs) are mandatorily required to seek prior approval of the UGC for setting up campuses in India. The interested institutions need to apply online at the UGC portal. A standing committee formed by the UGC will review such applications and decide upon them within 45 days. The selected institutions will be given two years to set up campuses in the country.

The policy aims to attract foreign universities which are either within the top 500 of overall or subject-wise global rankings or are reputed institutions in their home countries. The approval will be initially granted for a period of ten years and at least one year before the expiry of the approved period, FHEIs will have to apply for renewal of the operations of the campus. In order to make the exercise lucrative for foreign universities, these institutes are permitted to repatriate funds to their parent campuses as per the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) 1999.

The regulation also provides autonomy to the foreign universities to evolve their admission process and decide their fee structure that is transparent and reasonable. The FHEIs will further have the autonomy to recruit faculty and staff from India and abroad as per their recruitment norms and decide the qualifications, salary structure, and other conditions of service for appointing such faculty and staff. The provision, however, comes with a rider that the qualifications of the faculty appointed must be at par with the main campus of the country of origin.

The UGC will maintain a strict quality check on the institutes that qualify to set up campuses in the country. According to the regulations, the quality of education to be imparted by these institutions in its Indian campus must be at par with that of the main campus. Moreover, the institutes are mandatorily required to conduct classes in offline mode only with no online classes being allowed. In addition, they also must ensure that if foreign faculty is appointed for teaching at the local campus, they shall stay at the campus in India for a reasonable period to avoid chances of institutions making them serve as visiting faculties.

While the draft norms offer considerable freedom to the foreign education players willing to establish campuses in the country, it underlines that they shall not offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or the standards of higher education in India. “The operation of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions shall not be contrary to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, or morality,” the draft further added.

It is pertinent to mention that even prior to the NEP 2020, efforts were made to facilitate global universities in India. In 1995, the government drafted the Foreign Education Bill, which was shelved. Another attempt made in 2006 also went in vain. Subsequently, in 2010, the UPA government brought the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, which faced resistance from the Opposition and ultimately lapsed. The 2023 draft regulations is one of the initiatives launched by the UGC towards realization of the aim envisioned under the NEP 2020. “A regulatory framework allowing the entry of higher-ranked foreign Universities, as envisaged in NEP, 2020, will provide an international dimension to higher education, enable Indian students to obtain foreign qualifications at affordable cost, and make India an attractive global study destination, reads the draft.

It would, however, be unfair to say that the draft, in its present form, is free from any inconsistencies or contradictions. First and foremost, it is not clear how the UGC will determine whether or not a foreign educational institution, intending to establish a campus in India, is a “reputed institution” in its home jurisdiction. Secondly, the regulations require global universities to offer the same quality of education as that of the main campus, but at the same time, imposes excessive restrictions by prohibiting them from offering any such programmes of study which jeopardizes the national interest of India or the standards of higher education in India. Thirdly, by giving freedom to these universities to decide their fee structure, the regulations seem to undermine the NEP 2020’s vision of equity and inclusivity in education as it would be unaffordable for many students to pay the exorbitant fees that may be levied on the courses or programmes. Another bone of contention is that while the foreign players will enjoy a greater autonomy in respect of regulatory framework, the Indian universities continue to be highly regulated and poorly governed.

Every year, millions of students, apply to foreign universities to pursue higher education. The government’s move to open the doors for foreign varsities will grant students an opportunity to access global quality education. However, in this attempt to bring Indian education at par with international standards, the accessibility, equity and quality of higher education should not be compromised. 

—By Banshika Garg and India Legal Bureau

By Shivanand Pandit

Six months after it released the draft strategies for transforming higher educational institutions (HEIs) and making them multidisciplinary, the University Grants Commission (UGC) is ready to finalise those strategies.

The guidelines assert that as per the suggestions of the National Education Policy (NEP), all HEIs will be classified into three classes. These are Teaching-intensive Universities, Research-intensive Universities and Degree-awarding Autonomous Universities. As per the guidelines, all HEIs will have to become multidisciplinary universities or degree-awarding independent institutions by 2035 and the multidisciplinary teaching and research universities will have over 3,000 students.

Previously, the chairman of UGC, M Jagadesh Kumar, had mentioned that all affiliated self-governing colleges in India must turn into independent degree-awarding institutes. To make this viable, the Draft Guidelines for Transformation of HEIs declare that the affiliated colleges should accomplish the degree-awarding position by passing through diverse stages of independence or by finishing the procedures required for this. It also mentions that when a HEI becomes an element college of a large university, it may collaborate with other similar colleges of the university or open up new departments to achieve the position of a multidisciplinary HEI.

The guidelines also cite that mobility of credits between institutions is one of the characteristics of a multidisciplinary institute. It suggests the Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) for students to open academic accounts and to get on board of qualified HEIs. All HEIs will have to register in the ABC to facilitate this. Starting online education is also a key attribute of a HEI and it recommends that the Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) portal of the Ministry of Education can assist universities to provide a group of online courses via the UGC’s credit outline for SWAYAM.

It said that in the light of NEP 2020, it is vital to take advantage of the nearness of HEIs in offering multidisciplinary programmes. The guidelines suggest that institutions collaborate to curate programmes that boost the type of degree and education being offered. For example, the Bachelor of Education programme can be combined with the Bachelor of Arts programme from two different universities to provide the Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) with a combination of BA and BTech. The guidelines make it mandatory for institutions to consent to the NEP-proposed dual degree programme.

To offset weak admission rates and the absence of means, the guidelines suggest that colleges form a cluster unit to share resources and provide courses and programmes across the spectrum. This cluster unit can then become a single independent unit of degree-awarding colleges. The guidelines indicate that a cluster of government colleges will work under a board of governors whose chairman will be selected by the state government. The tuition fee charged for courses will be as per the respective institution providing it.

Although the objectives of the policy are impressive, the key challenge is to streamline the institutional outline in current universities and shape a new outline for future ones. Today, the question the education sector faces is: Are India’s universities and colleges up to the mission of creating employees for a knowledge society? Whichever prism one gazes from—employability, excellence of research or instruction, the outcomes are underwhelming.

It is disheartening that worldwide, less than 10 Indian institutions are among the top 500 in terms of employability. In addition, many national surveys regularly report an excessively huge number of unemployable graduates. Therefore, it is natural that our HEIs should transform themselves. It will be in line with the demands of the new policy so that their institutional flaws do not stymie the policy. The hitches of inferior instruction and the failure of most of our institutions to offer significant skills are great weaknesses. 

In India, universities are mainly independent when it comes to the selection of teaching bodies. If they are responsible for delivering specific goals, they must have the power to take actions that accomplish that mandate. Then again, HEIs in India are mostly state-funded, unlike in several advanced countries. Therefore, they suffer in terms of resources when they hire bad quality teachers or when the teachers do not improve their skills and proficiencies. 

Governing organisations such as the UGC have announced grading techniques, academic performance indicators, made monetary funding dependent on grades gained and initiated faculty supervising and career development plans. However, there is no method of stopping non-performers in universities from free-riding on the labours of performing teammates.

Hence, the style of selection of faculties in universities has to be re-inspected and procedures formulated so that the best are selected. They must absorb and engage that unit of specialists who possess the latest know-how. Only HEIs that adapt to creative changes and change into nimble and latest educational services providers will survive. Otherwise, they will find it more and more difficult to demand government funds. Financing associations will gradually introduce performance-centered financing and this may swing to the students rather than the institutions.

The UGC’s recent proposal of permitting educational institutions to appoint professionals as Professors of Practice is a welcome move. The UGC also recommended capacity-building for teachers so that they can teach, train, and research in multi-disciplinary academic programmes such as through initiatives like the Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching and investment in learning assessment tools. It has also insisted on setting up Education Departments in universities and colleges. These will teach curriculum design, pedagogy, communication and writing to prospective teachers.

Incentives and disincentives for faculty functioning may be left to the universities. The present system where universities have the independence to select, but no obligatory duty to deliver is not helping India’s pursuit to a knowledge economy. If students are to be accommodated in a global system, there has to be an emphasis on teaching them to think and question and to relate it to the aspirations that they demand from a system of education.

A crucial question that we need to ask is whether education will assist in creating secular democracy, along with its components of human rights and social justice? Will education help bring about the society we are waiting for? Given India’s demographic, with the population tilted proportionately towards the young, higher education is deeply linked with people’s aspirations and desires. The level of higher education is often a marker of social status and its role in a highly stratified society cannot be underestimated. 

—The writer is a financial and tax specialist, author and public speaker based in Margao, Goa

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought responses of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and the Union of India on a plea challenging the legality and Constitutional validity of admission criteria 2022-23 of KVS.

The Single-Judge Bench of Justice Rekha Palli passed this order, while hearing a petition filed by Aarin through her next friend and natural father Pawan Kumar.

The Court asked Counsel for the respondents to take instructions and also said that on March 10, the next date of hearing, it would consider passing an interim order in the matter.

The petition said that the admission criteria of respondent KVS was violative of fundamental and statutory right to education of petitioner as guaranteed to her under Articles 14, 21 and 21-A of the Constitution of India read with the provisions of Delhi School Education Act, 1973 and Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

The petition further said that prior to academic year 2022-23, the minimum age of admission for class I in respondent KVS was throughout 5 years, as on March 31.

The plea stated that the admission criteria of the respondent KVS was arbitrary, discriminatory, unjust, unreasonable, violative of fundamental right to education of petitioner as guaranteed to her under Articles 14, 21 and 21-A of the Constitution of India read with the provisions of Delhi School Education Act, 1973 and Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

In this petition, the petitioner by the petition has raised the following vital questions of law for determination by the Court:-

a) Whether impugned action on the part of respondent KVS in making sudden change in admission criteria from minimum age of 5 years to 6 years for admission in class I is arbitrary, discriminatory, unjust, unreasonable, impermissible in law, prohibited in law, against public interest, opposed to public policy, violative of Articles 14, 21 and 21-A of the Constitution of India?

b) Whether the impugned admission criteria 2022-23 of respondent KVS to the extent it lays down minimum 6 years of age for admission of a child in class I is arbitrary, discriminatory, unjust, unreasonable, without authority of law, contrary to the recommendation of Ashok Ganguly committee report dated March 31, 2007 and contrary to provisions of Delhi School Education Act, 1973 and Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009?

The petitioner submitted that she was born on June 03, 2016 and as on March 31, 2022 she shall be 5 years 9 months and 28 days old. She was born in Delhi and is ordinary resident of Delhi. It is submitted that in academic year 2021-22 petitioner is studying in UKG in Kilkariyaan Just Play School.

The petitioner further submitted that as she would be 5+ age as on March 31, 2022, she was desirous of applying for admission in class I in respondent KVS in academic year 2022-23.

However, on February 24, 2022, all of sudden respondent KVS has made changes in minimum age criteria for admission in class I from 5 years to 6 years by uploading the impugned guidelines on the portal kvsanghatan.nic.in, just four days before admission process starts (from February 28, 2022).

The petitioner was shocked to find out by the impugned guidelines, that she has been made ineligible to apply for class I in respondent KVS in academic year 2022-23.

It is also submitted that said change in minimum age criteria has been made without giving sufficient time to parents to make alternate arrangements for their child.

No comments were invited from affected parties, nor any public discussion held. Therefore, it is submitted that impugned guidelines suffer from unreasonableness and hit by Article 14 of the Constitution.

It is submitted that guidelines say that “as per mandate of NEP 2020, entry age for Class 1 has been revised to 6+ years Academic Session 2022-23”. However, the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) has not mandated any such thing. In fact, the NEP 2020 has not made any changes to the age of school going children. It has not disturbed the status quo. The change to 6+ years is an invention of the respondent KVS without any mandate from the NEP 2020 and that too in the disadvantage of children like the petitioner.

The petitioner said that respondent KVS has relied upon NEP 2020 in the impugned guidelines. It is submitted that, there is no mention of 6+ year of age for admission in class 1 in NEP 2020. Secondly, the NEP 2020 has no statutory force. Thirdly, on reading para 1.6 of NEP 2020, the NEP 2020 itself states that entry age in class I is 5 years.

It is submitted that in private schools, the age of entry to class 1 remains 5+ years. Most of the reputed private schools have closed their admission by February last week. Thus, parents cannot now admit their wards in good private schools even if they want to.

It is also submitted that due to enforcement of these new guidelines by respondent KVS many children will be put at a disadvantage of one year as compared to children born in the same year who have now completed 5+ years and can get admission in private schools.

It is further submitted that children would lose 1 year for no fault of their as most of the Government competitive exams mandate maximum age criteria for writing exams.

The petitioner invites attention of the Court to an order dated March 07, 2007 of Division Bench of the Court dealing with the issue for minimum age of entry of a child in school.

It is submitted that the Division Bench by the said order constituted Ashok Ganguly committee to examine and recommend on the issue as to whether the pre-primary school should be of duration of one year only and what would be the proper cut-off age for admission in pre-primary class.

The petitioner submitted that Ashok Ganguly, having been constituted in terms of aforesaid order dated March 7, 2007 of Division Bench of the Court, the Ashok Ganguly Committee submitted its report dated March 31, 2007 in the Court which was accepted by the Court and Government was directed to frame rules.

It is submitted that Ganguly extensively examined the appropriate age of entry of a child in different classes in school including the factum of Constitutional amendment incorporating Articles 21-A in Constitution of India as fundamental right after Article 21 that mandates free and compulsory education to all children between 6-14 years of age in such manner as the state may, by law, determine.

The petitioner submitted that after seeing the impugned admission criteria 2022-23 of respondent KVS, the petitioner sent a legal notice dated February 27, 2022 to respondents, but no response has been received so far.

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction declaring part of the Bar Council of India’s gazette notification abolishing one-year Master Degree in Law to be ultra-vires, violative under Articles 14, 19 (1)(g) and 21 of the Constitution.

The petition has been filed through Advocate-on-Record Arvind Gupta. The petitioner is a student of B.A.LL.B final year and is preparing for LL.M entrance exams. The Bar Council Of India has sought to abolish the one-year post-graduate course i.e. LL.M (Master Of Law) course in India leading to Master degree, in short as per the notification, vide No.CGD-E-05012021-224194, dated 02.01.2021, of Bar Council of India, LL.M, has to be of two years’ duration over four semesters; which has come as a shock not only the petitioner but to numerous other law students also, who are preparing for the last six months or more for various LL.M entrance exams like CLAT, AILET, ILI etc., being scheduled to be held in the month of May-June 2021, for the academic year 2021-2022 and many of them have already deposited the entrance fee for the same, alleged the petitioner.

The petition stated that one of the main features of one-year LL.M programme is the establishment of a Centre for Post Graduate Legal Studies (CPGLS) by the university/college mandated by the UGC which will have a dedicated team of senior teachers competent to guide post-graduate scholars including Ph.D. students. A couple of other features of this programme that attracted most of the aspiring students especially working professionals and practising lawyers are the reducing of the duration to one year without compromising anything to make the course rigorous and maintain academic quality and standards.

The Union Cabinet has approved the new National Education Policy (NEP) in July 2020 with an aim to introduce several changes in the Indian education system from school to college level and whereby in view of ‘Chapter 18.3 of Part-II of NEP 2020’, the first vertical of HECI will be the National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC). It will function as the common, single-point regulator for the higher education sector including teacher education and excluding medical and legal education, thus eliminating the duplication and disjunction of regulatory efforts by the multiple regulatory agencies that exist at the current time but it doesn’t say at all that higher legal education impliedly would be governed by the BCI, rather the said chapter is absolutely silent on the subject.

In the petition, it was further alleged that the Bar Council Of India erroneously and arbitrarily assumed itself that it has the power to make the rule governing the higher legal education, by strongly emphasising upon section 7(1)(h),(i), (ia), (ib), (ic), (2)(b), (c), 5(1), 49(1), (af), (d), (e) of the Advocate Act, 1961, whereas absolutely to the contrary none of the above provisions are applicable and gives power to the BCI to make rules governing the higher legal education and to abolish the one-year LL.M (Master Of Law) course in India and the post-graduate course in law leading to a Masters degree.

The petitioner cited the judgement of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in the case Gopal Krishan Chatrath vs BCI, AIR 2001, PH, 41, in which the Court held, “The perusal of Section 7(1)(h) and Section 49(1)(d) definitely leads us to a conclusion that for promoting legal education and for laying down the standards of legal education, the Universities in India and the State Bar Councils were required to be consulted and that the said consultation had to be effective consultation because the Universities are engaged in imparting the legal education.”

It was claimed in the petition that mere exclusion of the higher legal education from the ambit of NHERC or HECI by NEP 2020, cannot be construed automatically that the higher legal action is impliedly and exclusively governed by BCI. Whereas the power of BCI to govern legal education is still the same as it was prior to coming in force the NEP 2020.

It was further claimed that bare perusal and gist of Section 7(1) (i) of Advocate Acts provides that to recognise the Universities whose degree in law shall be a qualification for enrolment as an advocate and for that purpose to visit and inspect Universities 3[or cause the State Bar Councils to visit and inspect Universities in accordance with such directions as it may give in this behalf]; 4[(ia) to conduct seminars and organize talks on legal topics by eminent jurists and publish journals and papers of legal interest. Therefore, the provision also doesn’t empower BCI to issue impugned notification as the function of the BCI under the above provision is merely to recognize Universities whose degree in law shall be qualification for enrolment as an advocate. Thus the degree of LL.M course is not a qualification for enrolment as advocate.

“Article 21 of Indian Constitution grants right to personal liberty to study and pursue one-year LLM Programme to abridge or annul this guaranteed right BCI should have adopted the Procedure established by law and satisfied the tests put forth under Article 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. Though, the reason for adopting such a change is ambiguous yet it is certain that the said notification patently violates the test of article 21 of the Constitution. Since, no chance of hearing from students, consultations with UGC, Universities, etc., took place; thus, in light of such it is certain that the said notification is absolutely unreasonable, erroneous, arbitrary and unilateral,” the petition reads.

“In the alternative, pass a prohibitory order restraining the BCI from notifying the date of implementation of the regulation of two years LL.M course passed in the impugned notification, till the end of academic session of 2021-2022 of one-year LL.M course”, the petitioner prayed.

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