NEW DELHI: A non-profit public-private partnership (PPP) model has been envisaged for the South Asian University (SAU), mooted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the November 2005 Dhaka summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). It is expected to avoid the limitations of State-funded universities and the profit motives of private institutions of higher education.

Drawing up a business plan for the SAU, Gowher Rizvi — Director of Ash Institution of Democratic Governance & Innovations at Harvard University, who was entrusted with the task of preparing a concept note — has advocated it as a middle path between government-funded and private education to facilitate autonomy from bureaucratic stranglehold while maintaining social commitment towards the have-nots.

Prepared after a series of consultations across the seven countries that constitute the SAARC, the note has been submitted to the governments to elicit their views ahead of the next summit in the capital in March 2007. The financial contribution of governments will be confined to capital costs to set up the residential university. Once it is fully operational, the governments will not be expected to provide annual subsidies and grants. Instead, the university will scout for private and corporate donors without allowing them to influence its administrative and academic autonomy.

Though the note does not suggest an approximate fee and presses for private participation, Prof. Rizvi has said the university should at least be partly self-supporting through a rational fee structure. Again, walking the middle-path, a fee structure somewhere between what is prevalent in American/British universities and those in the region has been mooted. With a provision for a quarter of the students to be from the economically and socially disadvantaged sections, the fees charged from the remaining students should be such that it can cover the cost of those on full financial aid.

Given the variance in academic standards within the region, a case has been made out for an imaginative recruitment policy that will allow some concessions at the time of entry while providing opportunities to bring them on a par with others. While the capital has emerged as a preferred city for the university's location, the note has thrown up issues that need to be resolved, such as the legal framework. For this, Prof. Rizvi has suggested that the governments consider the Central European University (Budapest) and the University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) models.