India’s higher education system is the second largest in the world, after the US, and has expanded at a fast pace by adding nearly 20,000 colleges and more than eight million students during the last decade. Yet, its overall performance in terms of research and development remains poor. While Indians are doing well in the knowledge economy, India is not. At a time when growing number of Chinese universities are breaking into world rankings, the majority of Indian institutions remain trapped in mediocrity. While China’s research output has grown significantly over the past decade, India’s has stagnated and even declined in some disciplines. China has pulled ahead in higher education despite India’s “English advantage”.
A recent report titled “Indian Higher Education: The Twelfth Plan and Beyond”, put together by the Planning Commission, FICCI and Ernst & Young, says that private institutions can play an important role by creating knowledge networks and research and innovation centres.
This appears somewhat problematic, given their current status. A vast majority of these institutions are run by businesspeople and politicians, who sense a great opportunity in the higher education business. Though the law requires that these should be non-profit entities, it is common knowledge that nearly all private institutions are eager profit-seekers, offering degrees primarily in professional streams—typically engineering and management. The nexus between business groups and politicians has ensured that despite regulations, the private sector remains poorly regulated.
Under the current education regime, it is hardly surprising that few private institutions—often described as ‘teaching factories’ by their detractors—are doing a good job of teaching, let alone research. Given the current set of incentives and disincentives, it is hard to imagine that the private sector will play an important role in creating knowledge networks or research and innovation centres.
There is a view that India should at this stage, like China, simply improve access to higher education and not worry about quality. No doubt China has improved its gross enrolment ratio from 8 per cent to 26 per cent during the last decade. But it has simultaneously taken effective steps to improve the quality of education. Two of its universities are in the top 50 of the QS World Rankings.
As India’s private universities and colleges grow in number and absorb a larger share of the country’s students, it is evident that they are likely to continue to play only a limited role—teaching in select disciplines, mostly management and engineering—in the foreseeable future. The task of research and innovation, an area in which India’s performance is rather poor, will continue to be largely undertaken at its public institutions.
This can change only if the government facilitates entry of foreign higher education institutions—be they non-profit or for-profit. However, in a country which ranked 94th out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perception Index, and where politicians across the aisle have high stakes in keeping out credible competitors, it is unrealistic to expect that much will change anytime soon. The best India can hope for is that private institutions at least promote the cause of teaching.
The writer is a senior fellow with Delhi-based think tank, Observer Research Foundation