Private Higher Education May Be Key to India's Future, Leaders Say

By Shailaja Neelakantan

New Delhi

As concerns continue to rise within India over the country's low college-going rate, speakers at a conference here last week suggested that the solution may lie in further growth of the private sector.

"Strategies for Expansion in Higher Education in India," sponsored by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, brought together 600 Indian and foreign educators, business leaders, and policy analysts. While there was some talk during the two-day meeting of reform of India's public higher-education system, attendees seemed more inclined to see expansion of private higher education as the key to real growth.

Half of India's 1.2 billion people are under the age of 25, but only 13 to 15 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds attend college. Yet India's burgeoning economy desperately needs highly skilled workers if it is to truly capitalize on that growth, attendees said. "If there is no expansion of the higher-education system, this demographic dividend will turn into a demographic liability," said Harsh Mariwala, president of the federation.

While India has a thriving private education system—four-fifths of engineering and management schools are private, for example—the sector has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. Kapil Sibal, India's minister in charge of higher education, has cracked down on corruption within the regulatory oversight of the engineering and management colleges, and persuaded the country's Supreme Court to strip 44 private universities of their official status because of quality concerns. New rules framed last year further tightened government oversight of private universities.

Yet Mr. Sibal has said that private participation in higher education must be encouraged, and conference attendees agreed that if the government hopes to reach its goal of sending 30 percent of young people to college, both private and public participation are needed. The challenge, as always, is in weeding out the low-quality operators.

"The public perception of private higher education is in a range," said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, head of India's Planning Commission, a top government policy-making body. "Many are good, but there is a problem of those not-very-good ones."

Mr. Ahluwalia argued that supply and demand will eventually eliminate the bad actors, but others disagreed.

"It will be difficult to weed them out," said M. Anandakrishnan, head of the Indian Institute of Technology's Kanpur branch. Because there is more demand than supply, he said, it will take time for stakeholders to make discerning choices.

Another delegate, Sachi Hatakenaka, a British-based education researcher, argued that "private sector growth is good for quantity but not for quality."

The Lure of Profit

Some attendees wondered whether allowing private for-profit players would encourage more private participation. India does not now allow private colleges to make a profit, although critics say that plenty of these institutions find ways to work around the rules.

"Education and health care are supposed to be charity, but in health care we have [for profit] private hospitals, so this is a dichotomy," said Vidya Yeravdekar, executive director of the well-regarded, private Symbiosis Centre for International Education. For-profit providers can provide revenue to the government through taxes, which can then be plowed back into public education, she said.

While news of shady private players has made headlines in recent years, there doesn't seem to be an inherent bias against private education in India. According to a survey examining public perceptions of education in India, conducted by the federation and Synovate, a consulting firm, parents did not seem to care whether an institution was public or private when evaluating where they would want their child to attend college.

"Many parts of the world are against for-profit higher education. I don't see it as a bottleneck for private-sector entry here," said Pawan Agarwal, an adviser on higher education to the planning commission.

Still, said Mr. Agarwal, the next round of government higher-education planning will focus more on expanding capacity at existing institutions rather than adding new universities.

Some private players were hopeful that the government will look to the private sector more as an ally than an adversary in coming years. "It is important that we have come down to the third circle of hell from the ninth circle where we were before India liberalized its economy," said Sushma Berlia, chancellor of the private Apeejay Stya University, recalling what she told some students. "They then said to me that even if we have moved from the ninth circle to the third circle, the fact is that we are still in hell."