U.S. colleges say no for setting up Indian campuses
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U.S. colleges say no for setting up Indian campuses
Bangalore: When Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal returned from the U.S. recently, he boasted of a long list of foreign universities interested in setting up shop in India. But it appears that his enthusiasm is not shared by some of the world's top centres of learning. Instead these universities would rather prefer their researchers to collaborate with their Indian counterparts. According to DNA, neither is Harvard coming, nor is George Washington University. Jim Aisner, Director of media relations at Harvard Business School (HBS) said, "HBS has only one campus and it is in Massachusetts. We have no plans to open more. However, we have research centres around the globe, including one in Mumbai. Their mission is to help HBS faculty with on-site research and course development in each of the regions served." In fact, most recently, it is Cambridge University that gave a thumbs down to the plan. On Tuesday, Cambridge University Vice Chancellor Prof Alison Richard said that the 800 year old institution was not keen to set up a campus in India, reports Mail Today. "I would like Cambridge's joint working with academic and industry partners to focus on scaling up India's capacity to offer irresistibly high quality and exciting and advanced training opportunity to talented Indian students," she said during a visit to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Asked whether the university planned to open a campus in India, she emphatically said 'no'. A university spokesperson explained that the Cambridge experience was tied to the history and geography of the place and its unique system of small college communities cannot be replicated elsewhere. Many other universities are believed to have developed cold feet due to the strict norms proposed in the foreign education provider bill. An expert who tracks the Indo-U.S. education scene, said that American universities were waiting to see how the foreign educational institutions (regulation of entry and operation) bill is adopted by parliament. "Some U.S. universities were thinking of setting up campuses here, just the way Michigan University set up a campus in the Middle East or the way it tied up in Singapore and Hong Kong. They were also willing to take up losses initially. But certain provisions in the bill, such as almost 50 percent reservation for SCs/STs and OBCs, hiring, fee structure and ban on remittances, are big sitting points for them," the expert said.

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