New Delhi, Sept 10 (KNN)  The Ministry of Human Resource Development has sent proposals to the relevant government departments to permit foreign universities to open their campuses in the country as companies, as stipulated under the Companies Act.
 
“As per the powers vested with the Central Government to make rules under the UGC ACT, the ministry is in the process of finalizing 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,” said an official notification.
 
Proposals have been sent to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), both of which have supported the proposal. 
 
The Ministry seeks comments and observations from both the Departments with regard to the rules.
 
Under the proposed Rules, Foreign Educational Institutions (FEIs) can set up campuses in India once the FEIs have been notified as Foreign Education Provider (FEPs) by the UGC.  
 
However, FEI have to fulfil certain eligibility conditions.  Any FEI which intends to set up a campus in India would do so through an association to be registered as a company under section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956.
 
Further, the FEI should be ranked among the top 400 universities of the world as per the ranking published by Times Higher Education, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) or the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
 
Significantly, all FEIs intending to apply under the rules should be not-for-profit legal entities, which have been in existence for at least twenty years and accredited by an accrediting agency of that country or in the absence of its accreditation in that country, by an internationally accepted system of accreditation.
 
The FEP will have to offer programmes of study or courses, the quality comparable to those offered to students in its main campus.  Each FEI before being notified as an FEP would be required to maintain a corpus of not less than rupees twenty five crore.
 
The Rules also provide for penalties ranging from rupees fifty lakhs to rupees one crore for FEP who contravene any provision of these Rules or UGC Act, and the forfeited of corpus fund.
 
Also, the degrees awarded by these FEPs should be treated as foreign degrees only and the same will be subject to the equivalence accorded by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) as per their system.  (KNN/ES)