Local opposition to international universities grows in India

Critics fear a “two-tier” higher education system is developing in parts of India as more Western universities gain permission to launch branch campuses, with fears that the new names will take staff and students away from underfunded public institutions.

The approval of the University of Western Australia (UWA) to launch its latest branch campus in Chennai has recently highlighted the criticism others might face as they gear up to operate in India.

The Joint Action Council of College Teachers (JAC), a coalition of major higher education and faculty associations in the state of Tamil Nadu, raised formal objections about UWA’s final approval from the University Grants Commission (UGC), highlighting that more than half of Tamil Nadu’s 21 state universities are experiencing faculty vacancies.

Several Indian institutions are operating with over 40 to 65 per cent staff shortages, and 15 of the southern state’s public universities do not have a permanent vice-chancellor. Lack of funding means universities often struggle to pay salaries to teachers.

UWA Chennai is launching seven undergraduate programmes, mainly in disciplines related to AI and computer science, and two postgraduate programmes.

It is UWA’s second campus in India, as the university opened a campus in Mumbai in September of this year.

Most universities are staffing branch campuses via a mixture of flying faculty from their home base, local recruits and international academics prepared to relocate to India.

In its statement reported in The Hindu, the JAC said: “At a time when State universities and government-aided colleges are grappling with severe deficits, infrastructural neglect, vacant faculty positions, and research funding shortages, prioritising foreign and private expansions raises serious questions about state policy priorities.”

Teacher organisations also pushed back against the September decision by Tamil Nadu higher education minister P. Viswanathan to relax the requirements to set up new private universities in the state, including the reduction of land requirements for establishing private institutions.

Rahul Choudaha, director of DrEducation Research, said that the challenge of understaffing and underpay in public universities was “an emerging issue” and added that “it has a political context at the level of the Tamil Nadu state”.

While Choudaha acknowledged that international branch campuses including UWA are “currently priced at a substantial premium” compared with public universities, he argued that there are “many private universities in Chennai which also cost much more than public universities”.

“Expecting one campus to solve all the recurring challenges of higher education in the state is a disproportionate and unfair expectation,” he said.

“The resistance faced by UWA is also a symbol of the choppy waters of establishing international branch campuses in India, where surprises abound, and the ability to navigate it will be tested constantly.”

P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of advocacy group State Platform for Common School System – Tamil Nadu, told Times Higher Education that there are very strong state universities in Tamil Nadu but they are underfunded.

“Now what we see in Tamil Nadu is that the UGC have given permission for establishing UWA…If you allow a foreign university to establish a campus in India, they will try to attract the students, and these state universities will be further weakened.

“If they are further weakened, that means the people from marginal [groups] will not have access to higher education,” Chennai-based Gajendra Babu argued.

He added that the research ecosystem at state universities will also be impacted. 

“What they [government] should have done is strengthen public universities instead of allowing a foreign university…They should give adequate funding to the state universities to compete.”

The general secretary said a “great challenge” facing international branch campuses was demonstrating how they might “address the demands of the Indian society, social development, economic development”. He described the inpouring of international branch campuses in India as “colonising a sovereign country” because he said any economic gains would go to foreign universities rather than Indian people. 

UWA was contacted for comment.

rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation.com