Delhi University teachers hold protest demanding rollback of UGC Foreign University Regulations

Concerns have been raised in the media by political parties and educationists on the efficacy of this measure to allow foreign universities to open campuses.

Another association of teachers, Joint Forum for Movement on Education (JFME), comprising teachers of Delhi University has raised its concern regarding foreign universities setting up their campuses in India. On the other hand, the UGC has extended the deadline to share concerns and feedback related to Foreign Universities Regulations 2023 to February 03.

Concerns have been raised in the media by political parties and educationists on the efficacy of this measure to allow foreign universities to open campuses. It has been flagged that elite educational institutions are being set up where the costs of studying will be unaffordable to the vast majority of the Indian people, that there is a deliberate undermining of the public-funded universities by such a move and that this would induce an exodus of senior and eminent teachers from the public universities to these universities.

UGC Chairman M. Jagadish Kumar speaking to Shiksha earlier last week stated that UGC will put in place a mechanism to prevent foreign universities from charging exorbitant fees.
As per JFME, moreover, it has been argued that the establishment of these universities will encourage the repatriation of profits made from their operations in India back to the home country in a throwback to the colonial days.

“Indeed, this will stimulate unprecedented profiteering in the private sector in education in India in turn. Thus, the UGC regulations point to establishing educational enclaves which will be cut off from the larger social ecosystem in which a university flourishes. Such enclaves, as a NIEPA study points out, offer a second-rate education even as compared to their parent Institutions abroad,” said JFME in a statement.
JFME is of the opinion that the further examination of the structure and pedagogic practises of these universities and their content reveals a thrust which will only weaken the democratic and anti-colonial gains made in the struggle to build public universities in India.

It stated that western universities would at any rate be likely to invest in India in courses that have a utilitarian perspective being aimed at technology-based and vocationally oriented subject matter and approach. This is due to the fact that their goal is to raise and repatriate profits and not to further knowledge.

The teachers have argued that India however needs to provide the more significant democratising, scientific and critical training and experience possible only in autonomous, diverse academic communities as our public universities have attempted to do since independence. This is still very much a part of the unfinished agenda of fashioning ourselves into an independent and modern democratic nation.
JFME has demanded a complete rollback of these UGC guidelines.

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