The new Minister of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, has promised to open India’s doors to foreign universities and to promote private investment in higher education. Past policy has been sceptical of foreign involvement in Indian education. As India is about to embark on a new higher education direction, it is worth examining the likely consequences of the open door, based on the experience of other countries.

If Mr. Sibal assumes that foreign involvement will assist India to rapidly improve its lagging higher education system, he is quite wrong. With few exceptions, foreign higher education providers worldwide are engaged in making a quick profit by establishing programmes that attract high student demand and are inexpensive to start and operate. Worldwide, many of the foreign transplants are in information technology, business studies, and related fields. Most foreign providers are not top universities but are rather institutions at the middle or bottom of the hierarchy in their home countries. Some have financial or enrolment problems at home and want to solve them with offshore ventures. And some are “bottom-feeders” who will provide a substandard educational product in India. A truly open door permits pests as well as welcome guests to enter. International experience shows that the “market” is slow to detect low quality — and there seems to be a clientele for poor quality in any case.

A few top universities will be interested in India for a combination of reasons — to earn money and also to introduce long-term relations, in the country, with the best Indian institutions — and to provide a base for recruiting outstanding Indian students and faculty.
Improvement through foreign involvement?

Some have argued that India’s admittedly moribund higher education system will receive a needed dose of reform and upgrade from foreign transplants. This is a quite unlikely diagnosis. Thoughtful Indians know what is wrong with the system, and numerous high-level inquiries, including recently from the Knowledge Commission, have provided road maps for reform. Further, many Indians have experience in the best overseas universities and know how they work. Improvement will inevitably come from the inside and not from a few foreign institutions operating in India. Further, the foreign programmes will not be focussed on reforming Indian higher education but rather on successfully competing with local colleges and universities. Nor will the foreigners bring the full panoply of a complex and highly expensive university to India. Rather, they will bring specific programmes and facilities that will be profitable in India. Only when the host country pays the full cost, such as in the Gulf countries, do foreign universities establish full facilities and expensive programmes such as the Cornell University Medical School in Qatar.
Problems of sustainability

If Mr. Sibal believes that he will easily get well-functioning, top quality foreign universities to set up shop in India quickly, he is mistaken. It is likely that some of the for-profit providers, such as Laureate and Apollo, will be most interested. These institutions, which have operated successfully in many countries, are not seen as prestigious institutions. University transplants frequently have experienced significant logistical problems. A challenge involves convincing professors and staff from the home campus to teach abroad. Indeed, this ordeal often acts as the Achilles’ heel of foreign providers, for in almost every case, they end up hiring local staff to teach. It may be sufficient for Indians to study in an ostensibly foreign institution in India taught by local professors; the students may end up with a foreign degree but not with much of an international experience. Just as important, if the foreign institution cannot earn a quick profit, it might well pull up stakes and leave or, alternatively, reduce costs by lowering the quality.
International examples

India might study other countries’ experience with foreign branch campuses and international collaborations. A few that have opened their doors wide with little regulation found that most foreign institutions entering the market were substandard. This represents Israel’s experience. Lack of opportunity for access at home led the government to open the country to foreign providers. Most of the foreign institutions performed poorly and were marginal in their home countries. The door was soon closed again. The losers, of course, were the students who paid high prices for bad quality.

Most countries with a relatively positive experience involving foreign providers created a clear regulatory framework to control who could enter the market and the terms and conditions of operation. China, for example, requires foreign institutions to connect with a Chinese institutional partner and to receive government approval. Yet, some of the Chinese provincial and local authorities who approve foreign collaborations have made mistakes.

While Minister Sibal claims that other countries do not maintain strong regulators such as the University Grants Commission or the All India Council of Technical Education, this point of view seems not to be the case. Many countries have been run by strong regulatory regimes that have worked well. Singapore, with a largely successful history of foreign collaboration, stringently regulates foreign providers and has been willing to end the programmes, such as one with the Johns Hopkins University in the United States, which the Singaporeans felt was not living up to its promises. Ministries of education or their equivalents in South Korea, Japan, and some other Asian countries carefully regulate who can enter the local market and monitor performance.

Quality assurance has been a central concern, and few countries have solved that problem. Few countries can effectively monitor standards of their own universities, and foreign institutions do create additional challenges. American branch campuses are monitored by the U.S. accreditors, which have found it difficult to fulfil this task. India’s quality-assurance agencies do not function particularly effectively. Monitoring and evaluating numerous foreign transplants may be beyond the capability of the system.
What can be done?

Minister Sibal is right that India cannot forever keep its academic doors closed. India, after all, constitutes an increasingly central part of a globalised world. However, simply to throw the doors open would be a serious mistake. India, like other developing countries, needs a clear and transparent policy and regulatory framework. What comprises the rationale for participating in global higher education? What institutions — and investments — from abroad are appropriate for India? What are the criteria for selecting, monitoring, and evaluating foreign institutions? Without answers to these questions — and the policy framework to go along with the answers — opening the doors will create long-term problems for India’s academic system.

(Philip G. Altbach is Monan University Professor and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, USA.)