India is on the Cusp of Revolutionary Change in the Higher Education Landscape
British Prime Minister Kier Starmer has recently announced that nine British Universities are to open campuses in India. PM Starmer further announced that eventually, almost all leading British universities will open India campuses, and that Britain will become the leader in providing quality higher education to Indian students in India. PM Starmer's announcement, delivered during his recent visit to India, has shaken up the Indian HE landscape.
Until now, foreign universities' entry into the Indian HE market has been a trickle. A few Australian universities have decided to open campuses in India; one British university has set up shop as well. But India's invitation to foreign universities to set up shop in India under the New Education Policy (NEP) did not open the floodgates as was initially expected. PM Starmer's announcement may just do that.
This ought to be great news for the Indian student and their families. If a quality world-class education at a much more reasonable cost can be obtained in India through foreign universities, then that ought to be welcome news. And students will have a variety of choices in front of them in the next few years as these campuses go 'live'. But what does this do for the existing HE institutions in India, particularly the indigenous ones?
My prediction is that India's HE sector will soon have a segregated hierarchy of institutions. At the very top of this hierarchy will be the 'elite' foreign universities, who will mostly cater to students coming from affluent, urban, and private school educated backgrounds. Next in the hierarchy will be a select few indigenous private universities, who will mostly absorb those students who cannot get into the elite foreign universities. Then will come the central universities, which typically educates the Indian middle-class students from modest backgrounds. At the bottom of the hierarchy will be the state universities, which typically absorb students from rural or semi-urban and public school educated backgrounds.
While the central and state public universities have voiced their opposition to the entry of foreign universities, they will not be hugely affected by this new competitive landscape. They will continue to absorb students from more modest backgrounds and things will tick along for them. Most of these universities are teaching-focused and hence they will continue to offer meaningless courses and degrees to Indian students who cannot afford an elite education. But the real losers of this new game will be the Indian indigenous private universities.
When these private universities were set up, it was done on the basis of the argument that free of government control these institutions will develop world class infrastructure and provide cutting edge education to Indian students that would be at par with what is available in developed countries. If you visit the websites of these institutions and read the strategic vision statements, the ideals and objectives that many wish to aspire for and achieve are indeed lofty. For example, several institutions have publicly expressed their resolve to get into the Top 200 in the global university rankings. Lofty ambition indeed and very much applaudable. But are they anywhere close to achieving this goal?
The reality is actually very far from that promise and lofty ambition. While many indigenous private universities have built excellent campus infrastructure, the quality of the education that they provide and the level of research output that faculty and scholars at these institutions generate are seriously questionable. And it is research and pedagogy that count for most in global university rankings. Hence, what many of these indigenous private universities have become in reality is highly expensive undergraduate teaching hubs for kids from affluent backgrounds who can pay these institutions' lofty fees. Can you name at least one or two research centres at these private universities that produce world class research? Can you name one or two private universities that produce PhDs who can be compared to the best PhDs produced by top ranked Western universities? In my field, political science and international relations, I could not find a single faculty member at any indigenous private university in India who has over 1000 citations in Google Scholar.
In my opinion, the real competition to Western universities that will now flood the Indian HE landscape must come from the Indian indigenous private universities. The public universities, state and central, having been tuned into vipers' nests by political, ideological, and criminal interests, will be no match for the foreign universities. And they do not want to be either as long as the Indian taxpayer silently keeps paying their bills and gratifying their egos. So, the real challenge to the foreign universities must come from the indigenous private universities. But for that, the private universities must really up their game. University owners and administrators must stop seeing their institutions as 'cash cows' through expensive undergraduate education for affluent kids. They must really become a 'university' in the truest sense of the term! This means doing the following:
(a) Offer undergraduate courses that imparts skills and knowledge to students and prepares them for the kind of jobs that will be available in this century. Thesis writing, practical internships, and study abroad options must be integrated within the four-year undergraduate courses.
(b) Develop cutting-edge postgraduate courses that imparts higher level skills and knowledge to students in specific areas, which then would allow them to become real world problem solvers. This is particularly important for the humanities and social sciences. In other words, humanities and social sciences must address fundamental and core problems of peoples, societies and states in this century. And what are these fundamental and core 'problems'? I believe these are the interconnected issues and problems of development, governance and public policy, and security in its both traditional and non-traditional senses.
(c) Build strong doctoral research programs and create a vibrant and supportive research culture across the university. Create scholarships for doctoral students and recruit the best students on merit (and not the ability to pay). Learn and adopt from the best practices in the West. Invest serious funds in research by developing and nurturing world-class research centres. Create a strategic road map for research and set realistic attainable objectives. Compete for government and private funding for research. Benchmark research strategies and outcomes with India's national interests and priorities.
(d) Recruit faculty from India and abroad, based purely on merit. Be strategic in faculty appointments. Bring senior people from outside India to lead research centres and teaching programs and to supervise doctoral students and mentor younger faculty and research scholars. Give these people the autonomy to shape the pedagogy and research in the Schools and Departments. Remember that good institutions are those where there is respectful partnership between the Students, the Faculty, and University Leaders and Administrators. Each has a specific role, but to be effective in that role there must be respectful synergy between the three. The bottom line is that all three must act in ways to achieve a common set of objectives for the institution.
(e) Finally, to compete successfully with Western counterparts, indigenous private universities must benchmark everything that they do with India's national interests and priorities. This is the area where I have a lot of questions regarding the blanket entry of Western universities in India. And this is where Indian private universities must 'separate' themselves from their Western counterparts. What this means is that everything that these indigenous private universities do (research, teaching, scholarship, etc.) must be done in a way that collectively promotes India's national interests, priorities and wellbeing.
Surely interesting times are ahead. I will be watching developments with a keen interest.
I welcome comments from my readers and followers.
Rajat Ganguly is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs (Sage) and Journal of World Affairs: Voice of the Global South (Sage). He is also a faculty member of the Global Security program at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He received his PhD in Political Science from Tulane University (US) and has held academic positions at Murdoch University (Australia), the University of East Anglia (UK), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), the University of Southern Mississippi (US), Tulane University (US), and the University of West Florida (US). He has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at McGill University (Canada). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of South Asian Development, South Asian Survey, Journal of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Journal of Law and Policy, and the Journal of North-East Indian Studies. He specializes in international relations and international security, particularly great power politics and interstate war, ethnic conflict and insurgency movements, terrorism and political violence, Indian foreign and security policy, and Asian international and strategic affairs. He is the author/editor of several books, and his articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as Small Wars and Insurgencies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Third World Quarterly, Asian Studies Review, Strategic Analysis, and India Quarterly.
