The Hindu Business Line : London School of Economics keen to offer joint degrees

London School of Economics is hopeful that it would in the coming days be allowed to offer joint degrees in association with Indian institutions. Currently, Indian institutions are not permitted to offer joint degrees with overseas institutions.

"What I understand is that there is going to be a new framework that would give more flexibility to Indian institutions. I am told that it may happen. If it does happen (flexibility for joint degrees), then we will take it. We already have similar models with countries such as China, US, France and Singapore," Mr Howard Davies, Director, London School of Economics, told Business Line here on Wednesday.

Stating that one could appreciate a country's reluctance to allow large campuses to be developed by overseas institutions, Mr Davies, however, said that he could not understand the nervousness about joint degrees.

"I can't really understand what the political objection to that (joint degrees) is. I can't see why people should be opposed to it," he said.

He highlighted that the institution chose not to set up campuses in countries such as Singapore and China even though it was permitted to do so. "We chose to work in partnerships with domestic institutions where together we could do what we could not do on our own. Over time that is the sort of model that we would like to work with in India," Mr Davies said.

London School of Economics' approach so far in India has been to look for partnerships with Indian institutions rather than to establish its own campuses here.

"We have not been allowed to establish campuses up to now. I am not sure that we would easily want to do that," he said.

He also said that the institution was aiming to expand research into India besides increasing the number of Indian students.

Buoyant economy

Talking about Indian economy, he said that India had been benefiting considerably from the benign global environment.

"The fundamentals of the economy are very strong. India is developing on a broad front and not just particular industries. I am optimistic about India and the economy would continue to grow at a new trend rate of 9-10 per cent," he said.

He, however, highlighted that India was not invulnerable to world developments. Mr Davies said that he was anxious about the prospects of US and expected a slowdown to happen in that economy in the first half of 2007.

"India is bound to be affected by a slowdown in the US economy. While the fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong, there are risks to Indian growth arising out of imbalances in the US," he said.

Mr Davies said that everybody would be affected some way or the other if the US economy were to slowdown. He, however, noted that there would not be any crisis of confidence on India as its financial position was stable.