UGC gives nod to IITs and other institutes of eminence to set up offshore campuses

As per the new UGC (Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) (Amendments) Regulations 2021, UGC has amended its regulation for IoEs and included a clause that will allow offshore campuses for such institutions.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced that the Institutes of Eminence (IoEs) in India, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), will now be allowed to establish their campuses outside the country. As per the new UGC (Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) (Amendments) Regulations 2021, UGC has amended its regulation for IoEs and included a clause that will allow offshore campuses for such institutions. 

At present, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has declared 20 institutes — 10 private and 10 public, including IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Madras, IIT-Kharagpur, IISc and the University of Hyderabad, among others — as IoEs.

As per the reports, the central government had started working on the plan to allow top-ranked Indian institutions like the IITs to set up campuses abroad last year itself. In August 2020, the ministry had asked all IoEs whether they would be interested in setting up campuses outside India, as this is a provision the new National Education Policy allows. The government has now come up with rules and regulations for the same.

The Union Cabinet has given its nod to the NEP 2020 on July 29, 2020. The policy's focus on Higher Education in the country has a far-reaching impact and proposes to restructure higher education into three categories of the institutions that conduct research, teach and degree-granting colleges. The policy also proposed to discontinue M.Phil courses and a 4-years bachelors' degree with research.The policy also called for single higher education regulator called Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). These bodies will replace autonomous bodies like University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).

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