National Catholic Development Conference 2010

If you will be attending the National Catholic Development Conference in Chicago, please come and visit with me.  Brian Lacy and Associates will have Booth 322 from Sunday September 19 through Tuesday September 21.  On Monday morning at 9am we will host a roundtable entitlted “Interesting New Ways to Boost Direct Mail Results”.  Can’t make it to conference, but you live in Chicago and work in development, every evening great groups will be going out to dinner to talk about development.  Call me (860-478-9291) or email me (brian@brianlacy.com) if you want to join a dinner group.  I can likely hook you up wth a group interesting in the same aspects of development as you!

Regards,

Brian Lacy

Annual-Fund Revenue Fell in 2009

Fewer people gave money to colleges in 2009, and those who did gave less than usual, a study of annual funds has found.

Participation in annual funds has been on the decline for a few years, but 2009 marked the first time that annual-fund revenue dropped as well, according to the 2009 Index of Higher Education Fundraising Performance. The report examined donations to 61 public and private colleges during 2009. Although the negative trends were more marked at public colleges, there were few positive signs for either group.

The study was done by Target Analytics, which is part of Blackbaud, a provider of software to nonprofit groups.

The median participation rate for all colleges dropped from 15.9 percent in 2008 to 12.4 percent in 2009. The colleges in the survey reported an average drop in revenue of 8 percent per donor. Annual-fund revenue declined 13 percent over all—15.6 percent at public colleges and 11.2 percent at private colleges.

These numbers are consistent with the results of this year’s Voluntary Support of Education survey, which reported a record 11.9-percent drop in donations during 2009. That survey, which examines all giving and is conducted by the Council for Aid to Education, found that alumni participation hit a record low, 10 percent, and that the average size of alumni gifts fell 13.8 percent from the previous year.

“Donors were simply giving less,” Shaun B. Keister, associate vice president for development at Pennsylvania State University, wrote via e-mail. He helped analyze the data for Target Analytics.

The drop in revenue could have resulted from what Mr. Keister called a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Worried that donors would say no, colleges asked for less money—and so donors gave less.

The colleges that managed to defy the downward trends were those that “infused more effort” into their giving program, he said.

Rice University, for example, achieved a 10-percent increase in revenue and a 1-percent rise in participation by reaching out to young alumni—traditionally the group with the lowest participation rate, said Darrow G. Zeidenstein, vice president for resource development.

“If we hadn’t done that program, we probably would have been down 2 or 3 percent,” he said.

The full report is available at Blackbaud’s Web site.

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Anyone Can Make a Difference

I recently made a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN with my husband. As we maneuvered our way from appointment to appointment, I caught myself staring at all the portraits of donors and names of halls and wings in honor of someone. It made me wonder; how much money does one have to donate to have a building named after them? As much as I’d like to dream, I definitely know my husband and I are not candidates for that type of gift. But, if down the road Mayo would like to target us as potential donors, what messaging will they use?

Creating messaging that will appeal to your donors and encourage them to act is always the goal. While you want to acknowledge the donors that have given you those multi-million dollar gifts (you can dream too), how many people receiving that messaging will be able to relate? Acknowledging the smaller gifts may have a greater impact on your donors. You can get them thinking about how any size gift can make a difference.

While working as a production coordinator for The Stelter Company I read through countless donor stories that came across my desk each week. While many of them had the same structure and message, the ones that stuck out the most were those featuring donors who gave on a much smaller scale. If they got me thinking, “I can do something like that too”, I can only imagine the impact they had on their target audience.

So while Mayo may never have a portrait of the Durand’s gracing a wing, if they can appeal to me on a level I can relate to, their chances of getting a smaller (and equally important) gift are pretty good.

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7 Signs of Successful Study-Abroad Programs

Interest in study-abroad programs has never been higher among American college students. In 2008 the American Council on Education and the College Board published a report documenting that a large proportion of students plan to study abroad and want their institutions to offer a wide range of international education opportunities.

So why do as few as 1.5 percent of college students travel overseas to study every year?

The answer involves a series of obstacles that prevent enthusiastic students from seeking the opportunities they desire. As the report states, “barriers to student participation are real, including security concerns, high cost, academic demands that accommodate neither study abroad nor other international-learning experiences, and lack of encouragement by faculty and advisers.” Also, many colleges do not foster the international-learning experience. They may talk the talk but don’t walk the walk; they construct many of the barriers that hamper students.

It’s just a matter of time before those institutions find themselves at a huge disadvantage when recruiting undergraduates. A global college education is increasingly becoming a crucial part of being competitive in today’s job market, and students are demanding it more and more. They are talking and blogging about “unfriendly” study-abroad practices and where to stay clear.

So what is a successful study-abroad program? What does a “study-abroad-friendly” university look like?

Here are my seven signs:

Support from both the administration and the faculty. If the administration supports international education, but there is no buy-in from faculty members, will students study abroad? The answer is yes, but not many. If faculty members support international education, but there is little or no administrative buy-in, will students study abroad? Probably, through a “decentralized” approach, or where there are many barriers, an “exit” approach. Many land-grant institutions, like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and other universities, like the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, adopted the decentralized approach, whereby faculty members pioneered and paved the way for international-learning experiences long before the administration stepped up to support them. The exit approach is the most extreme: Students completely withdraw from the university in order to study abroad.

All in all, things tend to work out better when both administrators and faculty members are on the same page. Administrators have the power of finance, while professors have the power of influence. Where the two converge, there are bona fide results. In an ideal university, professors are globally minded, appreciate international experiences, and have opportunities to engage in the international-education process. Administrators are supportive through both actions and words.

Variety of program options. Nothing frustrates me more than colleges that don’t allow their students to participate in study-abroad programs that are not their own, or make it very difficult for them to do so. They may restrict financial aid, withhold course equivalencies, and/or deny valuable academic credit. Colleges that encourage study abroad offer a portfolio of programs, supported by the academic departments, to meet students’ needs. They also provide a degree of flexibility that allows students to individualize their potential experiences.

Preparation for risk. Colleges with long-term successful study-abroad operations prepare for the inevitable. They develop study-abroad programs carefully and have thorough application processes that involve judicial affairs, health services, disability services, the counseling center, and other key offices on campus. They also have appropriate health insurance, contingency plans, crisis-management protocols, policies, procedures, training, and orientations designed to promote health and safety throughout the international experience. They encourage teamwork and use the campus as a support network. Some successful universities, like Michigan State University, have even named an administrator to oversee the health, safety, and security of travelers.

Fair value, a fair price. Study-abroad-friendly universities are not always cheap and they’re not always nonprofit, but they are usually open about their financial model and net gains. I read on a student’s blog this year that an American college is going to charge $30,000 tuition to award credit for a $5,000 partner program run by another university. That college should be clearer and more open about its budget. Otherwise, it looks like a 600-percent markup to put its name behind some courses, which they neither develop nor teach.

Eastern Illinois University collaborates with higher-education institutions around the world to maintain quality study-abroad programs for students. We negotiate discounts for students and price programs at cost. While abroad, our students often encounter other students paying three or four times as much for the same academic experience.

Every department has options. Each college needs to connect international-learning experiences to academic needs. The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, for example, has developed its well-known “study-abroad major advising sheets” to do that. Those sheets help students, academic advisers, professors, and study-abroad professionals match overseas programs with academic programs. They are built from study-abroad course articulations and shift the focus of study abroad from an “extracurricular” activity to a “scholastic” one. And the sheets do more than engage various people in a discussion; they help the college identify programming gaps in academic areas that lack study-abroad opportunities.

Students earn valuable credit. There is no standard for study-abroad credit. An American college may accept academic credit from language schools or institutes overseas based on its own criteria. Successful operations recognize and accommodate the “study” in study abroad. They put mechanisms into place that encourage students to take their courses seriously. Approved courses abroad replace major, minor, and general education requirements in their undergraduate-degree program or fulfill course work or practicum experiences at the graduate level.

A commitment to go green. Middlebury College awards “sustainable study-abroad grants” to assist students with research and projects related to environmentally friendly practices. It also has a Going Green guide, a Green Passport program, a carbon-offset program, and a comprehensive list of sustainable travel resources. We in higher education can’t possibly be promoting global citizenship if we are inconsiderate of how international travel affects the environment. Wise colleges have an awareness, understanding, and concern about the global impact international visitors are having in communities around the world. They do their part in educating students and helping them reduce their possibly harmful footprint.

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College Students Have Less Empathy Then in the Past

Today’s college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and ’90s, a University of Michigan study shows.

The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.

“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”

Konrath conducted the meta-analysis, combining the results of 72 different studies of American college students conducted between 1979 and 2009, with U-M graduate student Edward O’Brien and undergraduate student Courtney Hsing.

Compared to college students of the late 1970s, the study found, college students today are less likely to agree with statements such as “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”

In a related but separate analysis, Konrath found that nationally representative samples of Americans see changes in other people’s kindness and helpfulness over a similar time period.

“Many people see the current group of college students—sometimes called ‘Generation Me’—as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history,” said Konrath, who is also affiliated with the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry.

“It’s not surprising that this growing emphasis on the self is accompanied by a corresponding devaluation of others,” O’Brien said.

Why is empathy declining among young adults?

Konrath and O’Brien suggest there could be several reasons, which they hope to explore in future research.

“The increase in exposure to media during this time period could be one factor,” Konrath said. “Compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three times as much nonwork-related information. In terms of media content, this generation of college students grew up with video games, and a growing body of research, including work done by my colleagues at Michigan, is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others.”

The recent rise of social media may also play a role in the drop in empathy, suggests O’Brien.

“The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline,” he said.

Add in the hypercompetitive atmosphere and inflated expectations of success, borne of celebrity “reality shows,” and you have a social environment that works against slowing down and listening to someone who needs a bit of sympathy, he says.

“College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don’t have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited,” O’Brien said.

The American Association of University Women provided support for the analysis.

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Women’s Share of College Enrollment Continues to Increase

Women now account for a disproportionate share of the enrollments of higher-education institutions at every degree level and are likely to become an even more dominant presence on campuses over the coming decade, according to results of a study released today by the U.S. Education Department.

The report, a compendium of data published annually by the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, projects that by 2019 women will account for 59 percent of total undergraduate enrollment and 61 percent of total postbaccalaureate enrollment at the nation’s colleges and universities. Since the late 1990s, they have accounted for about three-fourths of the increase in the number of master’s degrees awarded in the United States and nearly all of the growth in the number of professional degrees earned, the report says.

Among other key findings, the report, “The Condition of Education 2010,” charts substantial increases in the number of people earning college degrees, how much money they are paying to do it, and the proportion of undergraduates who study abroad. It also documents that the for-profit sector of higher education continues to experience rapid growth, both in the number of for-profit colleges and in the share of students they serve.

The bad news the report contains is that, in the eyes of some national experts on higher education, the United States is not making nearly enough progress in moving more students through high schools and colleges to become more significantly competitive in the world economy.

“We are simply not on a trajectory to significantly ratchet up either access or educational attainment,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “We cannot tweak our way to international competitiveness.”

Noting that a growing percentage of American children come from minority families, Mr. Callan said that if the nation fails to do more to close the educational gaps between races and ethnicities documented in the report, it may pay “not only a moral and civic price, but an economic price as well.”

Gains for Women

Between the 1997-98 and 2007-8 academic years, the number of women earning doctorates rose by 68 percent; first-time professional degrees, by nearly 35 percent; and master’s degrees, by 54 percent, the report says. As of the end of that period, women were accounting for 62 percent of all associate degrees, 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, 61 percent of all master’s, and 51 percent of all doctorates being awarded.

The gaps between women and men are especially stark in certain minority populations. Among black students, women earned 69 percent of associate, 66 percent of bachelor’s, 72 percent of master’s, and 66 percent of doctoral degrees in 2007-8.

The report also notes, however, that at every degree level, young adult males had higher median earnings in 2008 than young adult females with the same levels of education. William R. Doyle, an assistant professor of higher education at Vanderbilt University who has studied sex-based differences in educational attainment, said in an interview Wednesday that women’s lower earnings compared with those of equally educated men helps explain why women are progressing further through the education system.

“We have known for a long time that the amount of education people pursue is driven in some part by the labor market,” Mr. Doyle said. “For women, if you want to get a decent job and decent earnings, the state of the labor market is such that you are going to need to pursue a couple of extra years of education.”

Also helping to explain disparities between men and women in higher education, Mr. Doyle said, are gaps between the sexes in their high-school graduation rates, especially among people who are black, Hispanic, or Native American. The underrepresentation of men in higher education is partly the result of “a tremendous intake problem,” he said.

Despite their overall gains in higher education, women remain severely underrepresented in certain fields, the report shows. For example, as of 2007-8, they earned just 17 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering and engineering technologies. In computer and information sciences and support services, they earned 18 percent of bachelor’s degrees, down from 27 percent 10 years earlier.

Growth—and Growing Gaps

From 2000 to 2008, overall undergraduate enrollment at postsecondary institutions rose by 24 percent, to 16.4 million, the report says. Private institutions, which experienced a 44-percent increase in enrollments, accounted for a disproportionate share of growth.

The report says postbaccalaureate enrollment rose to 2.7 million in 2008—having increased every year since 1983—and appears destined to grow to 3.4 million in 2019. It projected that total enrollment in all of postsecondary education in the United States would rise by nearly an additional 16 percent, to 19 million.

Although all racial and ethnic groups have experienced substantial increases in their rates of bachelor’s-degree attainment since 1971, the gaps between whites and blacks or Hispanics in this area have actually grown.

One development that is very likely responsible for some achievement gaps is the growing share of the school-age population that is having to learn English for the first time. Between 1979 and 2008, the share of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home rose from 9 percent to 21 percent, or from 3.8 million to 10.9 million. As of 2008, foreign-born Hispanic and Asian young adults were substantially more likely than their native-born counterparts to have dropped out of high school, while, among the nation’s white, black, and biracial or multiracial populations, the foreign-born actually were less likely than the native-born individuals to have dropped out.

Among the good news the report offers minority members is that, among young adults with at least a master’s degree, there was no significant gap between whites, blacks, and Hispanics in terms of median earnings as of 2008.

Low-income Americans of any race or ethnicity appear to have recently caught a break in that the net price they paid to attend a four-year private or public college, adjusting for inflation, did not increase from 2003-4 to 2007-8. Students whose families were better off financially, by contrast, experienced an increase in their net price of college attendance, which is calculated by subtracting the amount of non-loan financial aid students receive from all of their college expenses.

From 1999-2000 to 2007-8, the percentage of full-time undergraduates with federal grants increased from 31 percent to 33 percent, while the percentage with federal loans increased from 44 percent to 50 percent.

The share of students who enroll in college immediately upon completing high school has remained fairly flat during this decade, having risen fairly substantially from the early 1970s until the late 1990s.

Faculty Catch Up and Falter

For their part, full-time faculty members appear better off financially than they had been a few decades ago, according to the report. Adjusting for inflation, the average salary earned by full-time instructional faculty members with academic rank was 24 percent higher in the 2008-9 academic year than it was in 1979-80. The biggest gains over that time were made by instructors, whose average salary rose by 46 percent, followed by professors, whose average salary rose by 30 percent.

The report added, however, that much of the growth in faculty salaries since 1979 occurred in the earlier portion of the time span it charts. After growing by 14 percent during the 1980s, the average faculty salary climbed by 5 percent during the 1990s and about 4 percent from 2000 to 2009.

John W. Curtis, director of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors, argued in an interview Wednesday that, even with such caveats, the report suggests faculty members are doing better than is actually the case. During the 1970s—prior to the span of time over which the report charts salary increases—inflation outpaced salary growth so badly, he said, that “faculty salaries did not again reach the levels from 1971-72 until the 1997-98 academic year.”

“A lot of what was happening in the 80s and 90s was essentially just recovering the losses from the 70s,” Mr. Curtis said.

When it comes to benefits, the picture for faculty members was brighter. Between the 1979-80 and 2008-9 academic years, the value of the average fringe benefits given to faculty members rose by 78 percent, causing their share of overall faculty compensation to rise from about 16 percent to about 22 percent.

The financial picture for faculty members varies significantly by sector. At private two-year colleges, for example, average faculty salaries were 4 percent lower in 2008-9 than they had been in 1999-2000. At private baccalaureate colleges, the average faculty salary rose by 9 percent during that time.

For-Profit Growth

The report says that, between 1997-98 and 2007-8, the number of for-private four-year colleges rose from 170 to 490, accounting for most of the overall increase in the number of four-year higher-education institutions. The number of for-profit two-year institutions rose from 480 to 550, while the overall number of two-year colleges actually decreased due to roughly a 5-percent decline in the number of public two-year colleges and a nearly a 49-percent decline in the number of private ones.

Partly as a result of such growth in the number of for-profit providers, the number of all types of degrees awarded by private for-profit institutions increased at a faster rate than the number awarded by nonprofit private and public colleges. From 1997-98 to 2007-8, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by nonprofit private and public colleges rose by 27 percent, from about 784,000 to about 996,000, while the number awarded by for-profits increased more than fivefold, from nearly 14,000 to nearly 76,000. The number of master’s degrees awarded by for-profit colleges increased eightfold, causing their share of all master’s degrees awarded to rise from 1 percent to 9 percent.

Of the 1.6 million bachelor’s degrees awarded by all of the nation’s colleges in 2007-8, 21 percent were in business, 11 percent in the social sciences and history, 7 percent each were in education or in the health professions and related clinical sciences, and 6 percent were in psychology. Of the approximately 625,000 master’s degrees awarded that year, 28 percent were in education and 25 percent were in business.

Over the 10-year period leading up to the 2007-8 academic year, the field with the fastest rate of growth in terms of the share of bachelor’s degrees awarded was parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies, followed by visual and performing arts and by communication and communication technology. Education was the only field to account for fewer bachelor’s-degree recipients at the end of that period than the beginning.

At the associate level, the field of social sciences and history experienced the greatest percentage growth in the share of degrees awarded over that time. Several fields, such as engineering and engineering technologies, experienced a decline in the number of associate degrees awarded.

At the master’s degree level, the field with the fastest rate of growth in terms of degrees awarded was security and protective services. Among professional degrees, the field of pharmacy saw the greatest increase in the number of degrees awarded.

International Perspective

As of 2007-8, about 262,000 American students were studying abroad, up from about 62,000 20 years earlier. About 15 percent of students in bachelor’s-degree programs were going abroad as undergraduates, compared with about 9 percent 10 years before and about 5 percent 20 years before. The largest share of undergraduates who studied abroad, 36 percent, were doing so as juniors.

The share who study in Europe had shrunk, from three-fourths to just over half, over the past 20 years, and the share studying in the Middle East had declined from about 5 percent to 1 percent, with a large share of the decrease occurring by the end of the 1990s. The share of American students studying in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, or at multiple foreign destinations had substantially increased.

Among college students who went abroad in 2007-8, the largest shares were specializing in the social sciences, business and management, or the humanities at their home institutions. Students who are majoring in foreign languages accounted for a much smaller share of those studying abroad than they did 20 years before.

As of 2006, the United States was spending about $25,100 per student at the postsecondary level, more than twice as much as the average of about $12,300 for all of the member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that reported data. The United States was spending 2.9 percent of its gross domestic product on postsecondary education, the highest share of any data-reporting OECD nation.

Changing Landscape

Among its other findings, the Education Department report says:

• Educational attainment remains a key factor determining income. In 2008, among young adults ages 25-34 who worked full-time throughout the year, those with a bachelor’s degree earned 28 percent more than those with an associate degree, 53 percent more than those with just a high-school diploma, and 96 percent more than those who did not get through high school.
• The types of elementary and high schools that college students have passed through are changing. As of 2007-8, a larger share of private-school students were attending nonsectarian schools or Conservative Christian schools than had done so in the mid-1990s. And from 1999-2000 to 2007-8 the number of charter schools in the United States had risen from 1,500 to 4,000, and the number of students enrolled at such schools more than tripled, from 340,000 to 1.3 million. The report projected that total enrollment in public schools would increase by 6 percent, to 52.3 million, between the 2007-8 and 2019-20 school years, with much of the growth expected to occur in the South.
• In a special section on high-poverty schools in the United States, the report notes that teachers working in high-poverty schools are less likely to have a master’s degree than teachers working in schools with low poverty levels. Over all, full-time public school teachers have fewer years of teaching experience than they did at the beginning of the decade, but are more likely to have a degree higher than a bachelor’s degree than they were then.

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Despite Criticisms, Berkeley Keeps DNA Assignment

The University of California, Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science is not yielding to calls for it to drop its plan to ask incoming freshmen and transfers to submit a DNA sample to be analyzed for three genes that have to do with the metabolism of food and drinks. A Tuesday Inside Higher Ed news story opened the floodgates of media coverage by other national and local media outlets. Though Berkeley officials have said the assignment is completely optional and anonymous, the project has been a lightning rod for criticism.

Alix Schwartz, the college’s director of undergraduate academic planning, said she and her colleagues are “definitely not canceling the program” in response to the backlash. “Even the negative or ill-informed attention” brought to the plan would “add to the dialogue, and dialogue was what we hoped to generate,” she said. Some faculty have voiced concerns about genetic testing “but their response is not hysterical, and we are all talking and listening to one another.”

In a letter to Berkeley administrators — and to Mark Yudof, president of the University of California System — the Council for Responsible Genetics called the project “woefully naïve.” While seemingly harmless, the group’s president wrote, the test results have “the risk of increasingly being used out of context in ways that are contrary to the interests of the individual, perhaps even discriminatory, and privacy-invasive.” The Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit based in Berkeley that has no affiliation with the university, has also asked administrators to cancel the program.

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IRS Extends Deadline for Nonprofits to File for Tax-Exempt Status

“Now that the May 17 filing deadline has passed, it appears that many small tax-exempt organizations have not filed the required information return in time. These organizations are vital to communities across the United States, and I understand their concerns about possibly losing their tax-exempt status.

“The IRS has conducted an unprecedented outreach effort in the tax-exempt sector on the 2006 law’s new filing requirements, but many of these smaller organizations are just now learning of the May 17 deadline. I want to reassure these small organizations that the IRS will do what it can to help them avoid losing their tax-exempt status.

“The IRS will be providing additional guidance in the near future on how it will help these organizations maintain their important tax-exempt status — even if they missed the May 17 deadline. The guidance will offer relief to these small organizations and provide them with the opportunity to keep their critical tax-exempt status intact.

“So I urge these organizations to go ahead and file — even though the May 17 deadline has passed.

“Filing a tax return for the small organizations is easier than you’d think. It just takes a few minutes to fill out the electronic notice Form 990-N (e-Postcard). This is available for small tax-exempt organizations with annual receipts of $25,000 or less.”

For access to the e-Postcard and further details, see Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations, Form 990-N (e-Postcard).

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World Report: India Invites the Worlds Universities to India

India’s government has approved a plan to allow foreign universities to set up campuses and offer degrees in India.

The proposal, which needs to be ratified by parliament, is expected to benefit thousands of Indian students who head abroad to study.

India is reforming its higher education system after concerns that it faces a shortfall of qualified graduates.

Every year thousands of English-speaking Indians head to countries such as the US and Australia to study.

Despite having top quality educational institutions, India is unable to meet the demand for a quality education, the BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says.

Some analysts project that India’s growing economy will face a shortfall of half a million qualified graduates over the next five years.

Federal Education Minister Kapil Sibal described the bill as “a milestone which will enhance choices, and increase competition and benchmark quality”.

If parliament approves the law it could see universities such as Harvard and Oxford set up institutions in India.

It is thought leading foreign universities could be attracted by India’s large number of English speakers and its burgeoning middle class.

India has allowed foreign investment in education for a number of years, but foreign institutes have not been permitted to grant degrees.

The bill had been opposed by some political parties, particularly those from the left, on the grounds that it will benefit only elite Indians with poorer students unable to afford to pay high fees.

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