Times Have Changed, Private Players in Higher Education Are Here To Stay       

Like most of our industries, education in India too, for a very long time, had a strong leaning towards the socialist model we inherited from our first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Until the 1990s, this made sense, for the Gross Enrollment Ratio or GER (the ratio of the students enrolled in higher education to the officially registered population falling in the same age bracket), was relatively low.

The focus was largely on Institutes of National Importance like the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), National Institute of Technology (NITs), and many more. In the 2000s, more IITs, IIMs and NITs were introduced to cater to the growing population. It was not enough.

The broken education system within our schools is no surprise. Focussed on rote learning for years, the Indian education system has confined itself to marks as a single parameter for the evaluation of any student. Thus, when it came to getting admission in central and state universities and colleges, average students often missed out. Today, for leading government colleges in the Delhi University, usually a 95 per cent aggregate in Class XII does not suffice. The faulty examination system coupled with the lakhs of students appearing for higher secondary school examination each year makes it hard for an average student to get through.

Enter private universities. From engineering to a master’s degree in business administration, and more recently, from law to commerce, private universities, today, offer all the courses that were once confined to central and state universities and colleges. As in April 2018, India has 384 state universities, 123 deemed to be universities, 47 central universities, and 296 private universities.

Private universities, unlike most central and state universities, encompass a large number of students. For instance, the author of this story studied in a private university in Himachal Pradesh that had 1,400 students in a single batch for engineering. The student-teacher ratio was 50:1, as in most central and state universities hosting engineering programmes. In engineering alone, the number of students enrolled in the author’s batch was more than the total number of students studying in the three state engineering colleges in the vicinity.

Since the early 2000s, the private sector involvement in the higher education was met with unwarranted scepticism. Firstly, the students enrolled found themselves under scrutiny, for their graduation colleges had no legacy to boast of unlike the IITs and NITs. Two, private universities were seen as a commercial entity, for the fee they charged were higher, sometimes twice, than what was being billed in central and state universities. Three, the quality of education imparted was under question, for they were not expected to meet the standards of IITs, NITs, and IIMs. Lastly, the resources employed by these private universities were not always a match for the ones in central and state ones, and hence, most students saw private universities as the last resort. Come 2018, and times have changed.

Today, across India, one can find many private groups in the higher education sector. Some of the leading names include Manipal University, Amity University, Thapar University, Symbiosis and its affiliated colleges, O P Jindal Global University Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, and Vellore Institute of Technology, to name a few. None of these universities even parallel IITs, IIMs, or NITs, or their commerce, arts, and law contemporaries in most central universities when it comes to legacy. However, whatever these private players lack in legacy, they make up for it with resources.

Sprawling campuses spread across a large area (from 10 to 10,000 acres), world-class facilities in the form of modern labs, classrooms, and other tech assistance, teaching resources recruited from world over, and the ability to host students in hundreds and thousands (the author’s university alone had in excess of 8,000 students) have helped private players garner a respectable name in the realm of higher education. Most renowned players host a variety of programmes, ranging from engineering to medicine, and from law to design and animation, in the same campus.

Established under the guidelines specified by the University Grants Commission (UGC), these universities are imparting quality education while offering students the infrastructural resources usually missing in central and state universities. In recent years, some of the universities have started offering distance courses, with content and operational efficiency far more superior to India’s largest open university, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).

Even today, private players are met with a lot of contempt. The most recent example is that of Reliance. The proposed Jio University was tagged as an ‘Institute of eminence’, under the new (greenfield) private institution category. While one can debate the ‘eminence’ initiative of the government, the online jingoism against the Reliance group is indeed misplaced.

Firstly, the Institutes of National Importance have been subsidised for decades, and yet, the top global rankings have alienated them. While this does not dent their significance in any way, it does warrant urgent attention towards the private sector. Reliance, which under the same name ‘Jio’ has changed the telecommunication game on its head in the last two years, is expected to do the same in education. While the results are left best to time, the pointless skepticism does no good to the Indian aspiration of having its universities in the top 500. Economically, India was reformed in 1991. Educationally, the process is ongoing even in 2018.

It would be incorrect, however, to assume that all is well within the private sector involvement. In some places, the education quality has been diluted. Many individual players have been involved in staged placements, leaving students without a job after the completion of their course. Some players charge an exorbitant fee from the students, as high as four times the market price, thus putting students and parents under tremendous financial pressure. Until a few years ago, the issue of fake universities also emerged. After the timely intervention of the UGC, and increased awareness, the issue has been curbed. Often, many graduates from these universities have been touted as ‘unemployable’. However, that is a problem of the education system as a whole, a debate best reserved for another day.

Most private players run their universities like a commercial organisation, and rightfully so. While crony capitalism does pose a threat to the quality of the education, no private player can be arm-twisted to lower their fee or told how to manage their finances. Going forward, these universities must be encouraged to invest more in research (many private universities have their own startup incubators), be transparent about their expenditure, and have annual reports about the patents filed.

When it comes to central, state, and private universities, the wrong kind of debate must be avoided. It is not about choosing the better between a newly established IIT/IIM or a decade old private university, but realising that both private and public institutions can excel in a nation as big and diverse as India. Compared to the rest of the world, India’s GER in higher education is quite low, and thus, alienating the private players would be a disastrous move. Private sector involvement should not be seen as the reason for dilution in education quality in India, but an opportunity for increased competitiveness in an otherwise stagnant system.