The higher education system’s mandate is to provide equitable and affordable quality opportunities to all who deserve and desire such education. Given the mind-boggling scale of the demand, the private sector’s participation is definitely a welcome move. India has one of the world’s largest higher education systems, but it is still not adequate. Since 2003, India has apparently been adding more than 1,000 private colleges every year. Lacking in quality control, this expansion did not quite contribute to skill development or boost the nation’s ‘knowledge economy’, and the private sector mostly remained the second-rate, fallback option for the desperate. As the number of ‘educated’ unemployed kept on growing, some of these teaching shops died their natural death.
In recent years, however, some old private brands have been re-inventing themselves, with fresh investments in quality faculty and research, scholarships and so on. The new standards have primarily been defined by a few independent philanthropic interventions. More...
