49 Foreign Varsities Look to Tie-up with Indian institutes: UGC chief

 At least 49 overseas universities have expressed interest to collaborate with Indian universities academically, University Grants Commission (UGC) chief M Jagadesh Kumar said on Sunday.

Several of these universities are preparing their MoUs for the collaborations, Kumar said. “The UGC is proactively contacting these universities. Several universities are in the process of preparing the MoUs. These processes involve discussions and approvals within the university statutory bodies. Therefore, let us give them time to work on these matters,” he said.

In May, the India’s higher education regulator had allowed academic collaborations between Indian and foreign higher education institutions to offer three types of degree programmes — dual (where both colleges award the degree in the same subject), and joint and twinning (where part of the course is completed overseas with the upper limit being 30% in twinning programmes and the lower limit being 30% in joint programmes).

The regulator has also identified 230 Indian and 1,256 foreign higher education institutions that fulfil the eligibility criteria for these collaborations.

The foreign universities that have approached the commission expressing interest for such collaborations include Michigan State University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Heidelberg University, University of Newcastle in Australia, University of Birmingham, Queen Mary University of London, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Paris-1 University, Karaganda University in Kazakhstan, Universiti Malaya in Malaysia, University of Lodz in Poland, and Haifa University in Israel, among others, according to the UGC.