Indian Govt Plans Portal Listing Accredited Foreign Higher Education Institutes

The Indian government is planning to launch a portal listing accredited institutes of higher education in various countries, the New Indian Express reported on Feb. 7.

The move aims to curb instances of students getting duped by agents, and seeks to ensure that those who want to pursue higher studies abroad can choose their universities based on “verified and authentic” information compiled by the Indian government.

The Ministry of External Affairs is working on launching the portal in consultation with the ministries of Human Resource Development, and Health and Family Welfare. “We have been getting complaints that many students who want to study abroad are lured into taking admission in substandard institutes and later feel cheated,” a government source told the publication.

“There have been even cases that some students landed up in few countries in central Asia only to realize that the institute they had taken admission to did not even exist,” the source was quoted as saying in the report. “We therefore thought that a dedicated portal that will have list of good institutes for undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses in every country will immensely benefit our students. We are in the process of consulting department or ministries of education in various countries and our foreign missions and will soon launch the website formally.”

As per the External Affairs Ministry data released in August 2017, over 5.5 lakh Indian students are studying abroad in 86 countries and over 2.2 lakh students go overseas for pursuing studies every year. The highest concentration of Indian student population is in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bahrain, China and the United Kingdom for engineering, management, medicine or other technical courses.

The government had held discussions with China’s Ministry of Education to identify 45 institutes that can be categorized as “good” medical colleges. However, not all institutes, even in countries like the United States or the United Kingdom are very good, the publication cited an official from the Human Resource Development Ministry as saying. “Students may struggle to get jobs after completing their courses,” the official said. “A Masters degree from some universities in the UK is not recognized in India. The students need clarity on all those facts.”