By SHAILAJA NEELAKANTAN and KARIN FISCHER (The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 17, 2009)

Kapil Sibal, India's new minister in charge of higher education, might actually do what many Indians have long hoped for: shake up the country's dysfunctional higher-education system. He may also do what many Americans have wished for: open India up to foreign universities.

In the two and a half weeks since he was appointed following national elections, Mr. Sibal has established lines of communication with the United States about expanding educational ties between the two countries, and reportedly threatened to toss out India's alphabet soup of higher-education regulators and replace them with a single body. He has also promised to push a bill through Parliament that would allow foreign universities to set up campuses here.

Mr. Sibal's swift actions have inspired optimism that the country's stagnant educational system is finally going to get the change it deserves. His pro-foreign and pro-private sentiments have also encouraged American universities that have long wanted to enter India's potentially lucrative market. While India sends thousands of students overseas to study, only about 9 percent of young Indians actually go to college, in part because capacity at home is low.

Still, this optimism should be tempered. Mr. Sibal has yet to attach any details to his proposed reforms, and significant political resistance remains toward giving foreign universities the kind of administrative freedom they would likely demand.

According to a draft bill that sets the parameters for the entry of foreign universities, which has been lingering in Parliament for a couple of years, India's primary university regulator, the University Grants Commission, would regulate those institutions. And while Mr. Sibal has verbally approved setting up a single overarching regulatory body, he has not formally said he would get rid of today's 16 messy higher-education regulators.

Last week Mr. Sibal met with William Burns, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, and agreed to set up a working group to monitor plans to expand educational partnerships between the two countries. The group will meet once a year and will include efforts in secondary, postsecondary, and vocational education.

American colleges with a presence in India welcomed the news of expanding ties between the two countries. But several educators said their anticipation was tempered by a certain wariness, as they wait to see the shape of proposed legislation to regulate foreign universities' granting of degrees.

"I think it's an exciting prospect for improving on the way our two countries collaborate," says Michelle Miller, associate provost at Champlain College, in Vermont, which has a campus in Mumbai with a local partner. "At the same time, a lot of questions are running through my head."

'Devil in the Details'

Academics and observers say that dismantling India's burdensome, and frequently ineffective, regulatory structure is critical if India wants to both improve its own higher-education system and invite in high-quality foreign institutions.

"I think the devil's in the details," says Pawan Agarwal, author of Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future. "No foreign university will come with these regulations," he adds, referring to the provision in the bill that gives the University Grants Commission the power to grant university status to a foreign institution.

The bill also says a foreign higher-education provider must keep at least $2-million in reserve. Some foreign universities could be exempt from these provisions, but only if they invest 51 percent of the total cost of establishing the university here, don't repatriate income made here to their home campuses, and have Indian government officials on their advisory boards.

"The Indian political system isn't comfortable even with these [regulations], and relaxing them may be very difficult for Sibal to do," Mr. Agarwal adds.

A number of American colleges are watching Mr. Sibal's moves closely.

Gary Schuster, provost of the Georgia Institute of Technology, says it is critical that the bill allow top universities the autonomy needed to maintain their academic standards. In 2007, Georgia Tech signed a memorandum of understanding with the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to set up a campus there.

"A degree in India must be equal to a degree in Atlanta," he says. "We wouldn't want to, in any way, sacrifice the quality of our degrees."

Toward Comprehensive Reform

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank, says India must not look at foreign universities as separate and apart from domestic university reform.

"The ideal situation is one in which there is comprehensive regulatory reform of which foreign universities are one aspect," says Mr. Mehta. India needs foreign universities to meet student demand, he says, and to ensure that the country can recapture some of the $4-billion that the 200,000 or so Indian students studying abroad spend each year.

Mr. Mehta says that Mr. Sibal is moving in the right direction. The higher-education minister has said that within the next three months he wants to begin creation of a National Council for Higher Education to oversee India's myriad higher-education regulatory bodies.

The local press has also reported—citing unnamed sources—that Mr. Sibal plans to eventually scrap the existing regulators, which many educators here say focus more on regulation than educational quality.

A number of American institutions are already operating in India, but only through partnerships with local, mostly unaccredited, private institutions.

Champlain College has run a campus in Mumbai with a local partner, the International College, since 2001, offering four-year degrees in business, hospitality management, and software engineering. In 2007 the partners applied for accreditation by the All India Council for Technical Education, says Ms. Miller. Nearly two years after submitting their application, they are still awaiting a decision.

Despite that experience, Ms. Miller says, she is supportive of stricter regulation of foreign universities. "There is a certain mistrust of foreign institutions that you pick up," she says, "and it's not completely unwarranted."

What that will mean for Champlain, however, is unclear. Since it began the accreditation process, Champlain has been restricted from admitting new students to its Mumbai campus by the State of Maharashtra, Ms. Miller says. The remaining 25 students will graduate next summer.

"I'm not sure what the future is for us in India," she says.

Plans for Partnership

How many American institutions actually want to enter India is open to debate. Many college delegations have traveled to India but few have followed up with concrete action.

"They were just curious about this fascinating country with great economic growth and a culture oriented toward education," says Krishna Vedula, special assistant to the provost for international partnerships at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. "They have decided it is not worth it."

"I'm convinced that collaborative programs at the undergraduate and graduate level between faculty and students that benefit both sides are the best way to expand ties," adds Mr. Vedula, who is also executive director of the Indo-U.S. Collaboration for Engineering Education, an organization created by engineering educators to improve engineering faculties in both countries.

George Joseph, assistant secretary for international affairs at Yale University, says he hopes one issue the U.S.-India working group can tackle is building up the quality of faculty research in India. Because many Indian universities are focused on teaching, rather than research, it can be difficult for a research university like Yale to build partnerships and exchanges, he said.

Yale, which boasts 150 years of ties to China, last year announced a multimillion-dollar effort to build its course offerings and faculty expertise in India as well as expand student recruitment, research partnerships, and faculty and student exchanges there.

The contrast between the two countries' approaches to working with foreign universities is striking, says Mr. Joseph. Because China has a national higher-education strategy, there is a certain "ease" to working with partner institutions there.

By contrast, "India has been so decentralized, each institution has its own priorities and approaches. There hasn't been a cohesive approach," he says. "It's more difficult to adapt when you don't know the ground rules."

He also says American colleges may have a role to play in training and sharing best practices with Indian college leaders. Yale already does such work in China.

Mr. Vedula's group is developing a training program in which Indian engineering professors with master's degrees can pursue their doctorates in the United States.

In the end, the increased dialogue should center on the needs of Indian higher education, says David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, which has research and exchange programs in India. "I very much hope they'll keep the focus on how Indian institutions themselves can meet demands for higher education and for research directed at solving the problems they identify," he says.

Shailaja Neelakantan reported from New Delhi and Karin Fischer from Washington.