The two larger training establishments are in talks with the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) to determine impartial “international branch campuses” in GIFT City close to Gandhinagar in Gujarat.

Source mentioned a proper announcement about one of many two Australian universities, ranked within the 250-300 band of QS World University Ranking and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, is more likely to be made by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese throughout his go to to Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar early subsequent month.

The improvement comes 4 months after the IFSCA (the GIFT City regulator) framed the rulebook to permit international universities to arrange campuses in India via GIFT City.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had first introduced in her Budget speech final yr that world-class international universities and establishments could be allowed in GIFT City to supply programs in monetary administration, FinTech, science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic “free from domestic regulations”.

On Thursday, IFSCA formally began inviting purposes from international universities. “We have notified the application form recently. The two interested universities are in talks with the expert committee of educationists that has been set up for the task,” a senior authorities official instructed The Sunday Express.

“Setting up a campus in India makes sense as they (two universities) already have the highest presence of students from India,” one other authorities official mentioned.

In 2022, in each the Australian universities, Indian college students made up the most important cohort of international college students and represented a minimum of 1 / 4 of international scholar enrollment of their Australian campuses.

The curiosity expressed by the Australian universities comes at a time when the University Grants Commission (UGC) is drafting guidelines to control international instructional establishments that need to arrange campuses in India. However, the UGC guidelines can be relevant to all such potential initiatives, besides these in GIFT City, the place solely the IFSCA pointers can be relevant. Speaking to The Sunday Express final week, UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar had mentioned the upper training regulator was in talks with universities from New Zealand and Europe.

Meanwhile, the IFSCA’s notified rules underline that the programs or programmes to be supplied by the international universities’ campuses in GIFT City “shall be identical in all respects with the course or programme” supplied by them again house.

The diploma, diploma or certificates will even must be equivalent, the rules state. These shall additionally “enjoy the same recognition and status as if they were conducted by the parent entity in its home jurisdiction”.The rules additionally enable international institutes to repatriate earnings from campuses they arrange in GIFT City.

Although the NDA authorities formally introduced its dedication to the entry of international universities within the National Education Policy doc in July 2020, the concept goes again to the Nineteen Nineties.

Governments previously have made a number of makes an attempt to enact laws for the entry, operation and regulation of international universities within the nation. The first was in 1995 when a Bill was launched however couldn’t go ahead. In 2005-06, too, the draft legislation may solely go as much as the Cabinet stage.

The final try was by UPA-II in 2010 within the form of the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, which did not go muster in Parliament and lapsed in 2014 because the BJP, Left and Samajwadi Party opposed it.