With the UGC’s clearance for foreign college collaboration with the Indian institutes to run academic courses, city colleges are making efforts to rope in foreign courses.
While Goswami Ganesh Dutta Sanatan Dharam (GGDSD) College, Chandigarh has already been running a course, other private colleges plan to start courses in the coming years – in a move to ensure that Indian degrees of their students are recognised when they go abroad for further studies.
GGDSD College principal Meena Prabhakar said, “We have been running a Canadian BBA course in our college for the past five years and we have received an overwhelming response from students. The biggest merit of the course is that students receive international exposure.”
The UGC has developed a formal mechanism to grant recognition to foreign colleges. The move will end the era of fake foreign educational institutes operating in India. According to the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), over 631 institutions have been operating so far without anyone knowing their credentials.
But now, any foreign educational institution which figures among the top 500 in global QS rankings or Times Higher Education rankings will be formally allowed to offer any degree in general education – BA, BSc, BTech- in India by entering into a collaboration with a top Indian university or college, which has the highest accreditation grade back home.
Indian colleges with Grade A accreditation from the National Board of Accreditation or National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) alone will be eligible to partner with foreign colleges.
The arrangement has been approved by the UGC Commission through a regulation, Promotion and Maintenance of Standards of Academic Collaboration between Indian and Foreign Educational Institutions. The regulation will be sent to the MHRD for notification after which any Indian college can approach the UGC with a proposal to partner with a foreign college. The UGC will soon issue a public notice asking all existing foreign education providers and their Indian partners to fulfill the accreditation norms required under the new regulations within six months.
Once the regulation is notified, the UGC will call for Indian partners of foreign educational institutions to seek certification within six months.
