Withdraw the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill!

The HRD Minister has tabled the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill along with three other education related bills in the Lok Sabha today. The SFI registers its strong protest against the tabling of the FEI Bill which seeks to promote FDI in Indian higher education.

The bill seeks to allow any “foreign education provider”; who have twenty years experience of providing “educational services” in any country and who can maintain a corpus of Rs. 50 crore; to set up off-shore campuses in India. The bill gives complete freedom to these foreign education providers to determine the fee structure and admission criteria for students, even absolving them from the constitutionally mandated reservations for socially deprived sections. This will only lead to rampant commercialization of higher education and create enclaves for the elite within the education system, undermining the principles of equity, social justice and intellectual self reliance.

The stated objective of the bill in keeping sub standard foreign institutions at bay is nothing but an eyewash, since the bill in Clause 13 (1) allows for foreign institutions which are not even notified as FEPs to offer certificate courses in the country without any regulation. Clause 9 (1) further enables the Central Government to waive off even the minimal regulations provided in the bill on the basis of criteria such as “reputation” and “international standing” of the institution. These provisions further make the bill a sure recipe for misuse and corruption.

The likely gain from this bill being cited by the HRD Minister, in terms of good quality foreign universities coming to India, is never going to materialise. No reputed foreign university has so far announced its intention of setting up campuses in India. The ones that are interested to enter are teaching shops, whose sole motivation is to make quick profits by offering sub-standard courses, which have little academic value. In this regard, SFI would like to cite the views of Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who has said that: “Whenever these outstation universities set up campuses, be it in Singapore or other places, they have not been able to reproduce the culture of the original place”.

SFI considers the FEI Bill to be the first step towards the implementation of the HRD Minister’s neoliberal agenda in higher education. SFI is determined to fight this agenda tooth and nail. SFI Units across the country will organise protests to force the Government to withdraw this anti-student bill.