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Australia will start recognising higher education degrees obtained in India under a mutual framework to be signed between the two countries on Thursday, but professional registrations of engineering, medicine and law pass outs will remain outside its ambit.
Visiting Australian Education Minister Jason Clare, who will sign the Mechanism for the Mutual Recognition of Qualifications with Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Delhi, on Wednesday said the framework was an outcome of deliberations that lasted over a decade.
“India has other agreements with countries like the US. What makes this broader than the agreement with the US is it includes online courses also, apart from courses that Australian universities can run in India or at a standalone campus like the one that University of Wollongong is setting up,” Clare told The Indian Express.
“So it means that whether you are studying with an Australian university in Australia, or here in India, or online, or at an Australian university campus in India, those qualifications will be counted and will be recognised for your next big step in higher education,” Clare said.
Asked whether the framework will also accord mutual recognition to professional qualifications, Clare said those provisions are still in the works.
Clare said he was asked the other day whether one can “automatically travel to Australia and practice medicine” if one is a doctor with a medical degree from an Indian university. “At the moment, the answer is no, because there’s another step that has to be taken where the medical profession itself has its own registration process,” he said. “This ensures that [after] this recognition of the university qualifications, the next step is what can be placed into work in terms of recognition by different professional clients. That remains to be done; so that’s a big piece of work.”
Recalling the 2015 Australia-India Education Council meeting, which he had attended, former Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist, global brand ambassador of the University of Wollongong, which will set up a branch campus in Gujarat’s GIFT City, told The Indian Express, “There was some fantastic ideas and possibilities, but it just seemed there was always a handbrake there. So to have the first phase of that being announced on Thursday, I think is a real release of that handbrake, and it should open up a lot more opportunities.”
Besides University of Wollongong, Deakin University will also set up a GIFT City campus, and an announcement on this is likely to be made during Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to India this month.
Clare said Albanese will lead a delegation of at least 25 business leaders. “The Prime Minister will bring with him the trade minister as well as the resources minister. I think that’s an indication of how seriously Australia treats our partnership with India and they will make a series of announcements. But I won’t preempt what he’s going to announce until he gets to step on the battlefield,” Clare said.
