Open Campus Challenge

The Economic Times 4th September 2020 Save

Context: With the New Education Policy (NEP) opening up space for foreign universities in India, the internationalization of higher education is welcomed but requires certain fine-tuning.

Factors of India’s attraction:

Second largest education system in the world: after China, with more than 1.5 million schools, over 40,000 colleges and close to 720 universities.
Massification of Higher Education: with a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 26.3%, which is increasing rapidly.

Internationalization of Higher Education in India: based on the mobility of students, faculty members, programmes, and institutions across countries. Measure taken by the Government of India (GoI) -

Mobility of Students and Faculty:

Global Initiative of Academic Network (GIAN): aims to invite world-class scholars, scientists and researchers.
Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC): to promote joint research and collaboration with top QS ranking institutions.
Study in India programme: allows meritorious students from Asian and African countries to study in top 100 National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked institutions.

Mobility of Institutions:

NEP aims to attract top 100 QS World Ranking universities: to open offshore campuses in India.

Advantage of Opening Foreign Campuses in India: Foreign institutions will -

Reduce the migration of Indian students and provide opportunity to study in foreign universities at home.
Bring knowledge, technology and innovative pedagogy and set new standards in higher education.

Enhance India’s access and exposure to global intellectual resources.

Disadvantages of the move:

Would increase the cost of education and widen the already existing disparities in matters of accessing quality and affordable higher education.
Could accentuate the existing hierarchies and have a bearing on the diversity on campuses.
Scramble for meritorious students with many of them going to foreign campuses.

Challenges

To widen the scope of internationalization: balancing the advantages and disadvantages of international ranking frameworks.

The danger of falling into Policy Cracks: Several world-class institutions do not participate in any world rankings, For, E.g. Max Planck Institute
Critiqued Rankings: There is a growing body of literature critiquing the world rankings.

Foreign campuses might not give preference to social sciences and humanities disciplines.

STEM and professional courses have greater market value compared to the social sciences and humanities.

Vocational and skill education cannot be internationalized in the same manner as academic education.
Foreign varsities might not agree with the overall vision of NEP.