This post is to give you some information regarding the Recognition of a Foreign University Degree in India. This is intended for all who are planning to return to India at some time in future and want to join in any government/ public sector organizations, research institutes or academic institutions.
All Foreign University Degrees need to be recognized by an organization named “Association of Indian Universities (AIU) ”, for them to be valid in India. See the Gazette notification.
Link – http://aiuweb.org/Evaluation/Gazette%20Notification.pdf
AIU will issue an Equivalence Certificate, equating your foreign degree to the corresponding Indian degree. This equivalence certificate needs to be produced upon request from your employer, which is mandatory for all Govt. of India jobs and most likely to be asked for teaching positions even in private engineering colleges.
Conditions for issuing the equivalence certificate are given in below.
Link – Recognition of Foreign Degrees in India
Few points that we felt are important are highlighted for your convenience. The original document can be downloaded from the following link – http://www.aiuweb.org/Evaluation/evaluation.asp
One Important Condition is that the Duration of the Masters Program should be at least Two Years (which corresponds to the Duration of the Master Program in India) but interestingly they consider the Period of Your Full Time Studies on the Campus of the Awarding University, rather than the Official Duration of the program. We had contacted AIU via email and phone call, and they had asked us to produce a certificate from the university mentioning the start date and end date of our Masters course.
Now you might have understood the problem. Even if the official duration of your Master Program is two years, if you have completed it in less than 2 years, we guess they might consider it as a “FAST TRACK” degree and might not issue the equivalence certificate. This might not be a problem for many of the students here, since most of us take at least 2 years to finish the Master course.
But, for the Master Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering the official duration ofthe program is 1 .5 years (90 ECTS credits). Though most of the students finish the program in 2 years, some students would have already finished it in less than 2 years and some may be planning to do so. For those who are planning to finish it in less than two years, please think twice before you do so.
We had first taken up this issue with DAAD, New Delhi. But they told us to contact officials in TU Kaiserslautern or HRK (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz) or KMK (Kultusministerkonferenz). Later, we contacted ISGS (Mr. Arthur) and Prof. Wolfgang Kunz (The Program Coordinator for EIT Masters, Embedded Systems). Prof. Kunz asked us to submit the relevant documents which state the above mentioned restrictions so that he can escalate this issue. He has communicated this within the EIT department and the university and they are working on it. From our discussion with Prof. Kunz, it is clear that this problem cannot be easily solved since it needs ministry level
discussions, which is a time taking process. Also as mentioned earlier, we had phoned the AIU Headquarters in New Delhi, and they told us that we needed to produce a duration certificate from our university, stating the starting date and the completion date of our Master course. If the period is less than two years they will not issue an equivalence certificate.
So we hope finishing the course by taking at least two years will be a temporary solution to this problem 🙂
You can obtain the Duration Certificate of your Master Degree from the Student Service Center ( SSC ) in bldg. 47, upon request.
Now, most you might have the following questions in mind:
1.) How UK / Australian Master degrees are valid in India ?
Please read the following article ….
Link – http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/ukpgdegreenotrecognisedinindia/article337
3409.ece
The British Government is still trying to solve this issue, but the hopes are diminishing.
URL – http://www.telegraphindia.com/1 1 4091 5/jsp/frontpage/story_1 8836752.jsp#.VClXU7mbF6N
2.) Will it be a problem for Private Jobs in India ?
We don’t think so. But it may create problems if you want to teach in private engineering colleges in India. We are not aware of any AICTE / UGC regulations on this matter. But, we think the institutions can take their own decision. Read the story below:
Link – http://www.university.careers360.com/articles/ukdegreesunrecognisedinindia
3.) Will it affect your chances of higher education in India (eg. PhD) ?
Most of the Indian Universities require a Master Degree as the minimum requirement for PhD.
URL – http://www.unipune.ac.in/admin/circular/revised_rules_phd.pdf
Link – http://www.dtuadmissions.nic.in/Documents2014/Phd/Phd_Information_Brouchure_2014.pdf
However, IITs and NITs have special rules for their PhD programs. They may accept you if you have very good academic record in your Bachelor Degree. For eg. see the PhD admission requirements for IIT Chennai.
Link – http://www.iitm.ac.in/research/doku.php?id=research:eligibility
P.S. – Since the University of Kaiserlautern is already aware of this issue, we request you to avoid sending mails to the officials here since they might find it disturbing. If you have any queries, plz forward it through ISAK instead of sending individual emails.
Any further updates that we get will be posted on ISAK. Also, if anybody can obtain more information (may be through some of your friends who have gone through the process of getting an equivalence certificate) please post it here in the comments section.
