From Sanjiv Dube
NEW DELHI : On March 19 the Union Cabinet approved three more pending Bills that seeks to reform higher education in the country, particularly professional education in order to match it with the modern times.

While the Foreign Education Providers Bill was cleared last week, the Cabinet cleared the Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill, the Educational Tribunal Bill, and the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority Bill, 2010.

All the four bills would now be referred to Parliament’s standing committee after introduction.

The Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill lists a set of 25 malpractices and seeks to make “capitation fee” a “cognisable offence that can be tried in criminal
courts.”

While in the civil jurisdiction, educational malpractices will attract a fine of Rs 50 lakh and imprisonment of three years, the punishment for criminal complaints will be in the range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh and imprisonment of one month to one year.

“We are very serious about this legislation. The bane of capitation fee is destroying education in India,” Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

The Bill will also look into misleading advertisements and wants education institutions to disclose all information about the fee structure in their prospectus.

Giving details of unfair practices in educational institutions, Sibal said that many institutions have neither adequate and qualified faculty nor the infrastructure required for higher education. “The prospectus do not match with reality,” he said.

Other educational malpractices include demanding donations from students, not issuing receipts against payments made, misleading advertisement in the media with an intention to cheat and forcible withholding of certificates or other documents of students.

The National Accreditation Regulatory Authority Bill, 2010 aims at regulating academic standards and seeks to create an accreditation system to  classify institutes in accordance with their infrastructure, faculty and the level of excellence.

The bill proposes setting up of an accreditation authority which will come out with the norms. A large number of “competent and reliable” accreditation agencies will also be created who will certify individual institutes following the norms set by the accreditation authority.

“Even the Central and state government-run universities have to go for the accreditation,” Sibal said. At the moment, accreditation is voluntary. The new bill seeks to make it mandatory. It seeks to establish an independent regulatory body, which would register, monitor and audit accreditation agencies.

Sibal said there wound not be any government intervention as the regulator would be an independent statutory panel of experts.

The Educational Tribunal Bill seeks to establish educational tribunals at the state and Central level for fast track and speedy resolution of educational issues.

Setting up of tribunals comes from the national policy on education of 1986 that calls for settling disputes in higher education in a timely and orderly manner for a meaningful growth of the sector.

While the state-level tribunals would adjudicate on matters related to teachers, employees, students and institutions, the national tribunal would look into regulatory matters as well as issues concerning institutes in two different states.

The nine-member national tribunal would also have some appellate powers, Sibal added.

Foreign Educational Institution Bill, 2010

From Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI : On March 15 the Union cabinet approved the bill that would open up country’s education sector to foreign educators and investment.

The Bill, called Foreign Educational Institution (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010, seeks to allow foreign education providers to set up campuses and offer degrees. HRD Ministry sources say the bill would be introduced in the Lok Sabha when the House meets after recess on April 12.

“This is a milestone which will enhance choices, increase competition and benchmark quality. A revolution larger than the one in the telecom sector awaits the education sector," HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said after the Bill got Cabinet's assent.

Like private universities in the country, the foreign ones too -- whether private or state-owned -- won't have to implement scheduled caste and OBC quotas. There will also be no state-imposed restriction on the fees they charge.

The Foreign Universities Bill, 2010, has been pending for the last four years owing to opposition from various quarters, including the Left parties, over certain provisions. Last year, it was referred to a Committee of Secretaries which modified certain provisions.

The Bill was approved by the Cabinet on Monday, presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, without any change. It prescribes an eight-month, time-bound schedule for granting approval to foreign educational institutions. They will go through different levels of registration process during this period. Finally, they will be registered with the proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) which will screen the proposals as per India's priorities and advise the government whether to allow it to operate in India.

Though 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment through automatic route is permitted in the education sector since 2002, India does not allow granting of degrees by foreign institutions. The new law is expected to facilitate foreign institutes to participate in higher education sector.

A foreign university aspiring to set up a campus in India will have to deposit Rs 50 crore as corpus fund. Provisions of Section 25 of the Companies Act will be applicable and these institutes will not be allowed to take the profit back and will have to spend the amount for further expansion of the institutions here.

Foreign education providers will be allowed to take part in other activities like consultancy projects.

The cabinet has rejected a key recommendation of the Committee of Secretaries. The bill allowed the regulatory authority — the proposed NCHER — to exempt select foreign universities from most provisions. The committee had opposed this clause and had recommended that it be dropped as it could lead to institutions alleging bias towards varsities granted the exemption. However the cabinet decided to retain this clause, which means that the NCHER will have the power to exempt Harvard, for instance, from most clauses of the bill.

Three other reforms bills, which were slated to be taken up in the Cabinet, were deferred to the next meeting.

These are :

• The Foreign Education Providers Bill

• The Educational Tribunal Bill

• The Accreditation Bill

• The Prohibition of Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill

• Amendments to Architects Act