Building Capacity in India: What Role for Cross-Border Higher Education?

November 1, 2011, 4:25 pm

With a staggering unmet demand for higher education and an increasing desire to collaborate with foreign higher-education providers, India has emerged as central component of the global expansion plans for many college and universities. Indeed, for India and the United States, such higher-education collaborations have the potential to strengthen the relationship between the world’s two largest democracies. As such it has attracted significant attention from political leaders as well as higher-education decision makers.

Last month, we attended a higher-education summit held in Washington and a preliminary meeting at Pennsylvania State University focusing on the how partnerships between the two nations might develop. The meetings were prompted by the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative, a project co-sponsored by India and America to spur the development of partnerships and collaboration between higher-education institutions in the two countries. We came away with a fuller appreciation of the challenges India faces in its higher-education sector, as well as the enthusiasm with which American institutions view opportunities for academic partnerships in the country.

The Indian government’s educational projections are incredible: The need to educate 100 million young people by 2020, and a goal of increasing higher-education participation for the age cohort from 15 percent to 30 percent in 10 years. Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal argues that this requires 1,000 new universities and 50,000 new colleges, staffed by a million new faculty members and guided by a revamped quality assurance regime. In his view, partnerships with U.S. universities are a key element for providing the capacity within the Indian educational system needed to meet the surge in demand.

In short, India is staring at tsunami of young people approaching higher education, and the system does not have the capacity to meet the demand. And, if the government is not able to find the means to do so, the country will have a demographic disaster – “just adding mouths to feed, not hands that can work,” according to Narendra Jadhav, a member of the Planning Commission of India, speaking at the Penn State meeting.

But what exactly should the role of American (or other foreign) universities play in the development of educational capacity within India? This question raises a key issue regarding the role of cross-border higher education and the differing perspectives often brought to the table by the host and the home countries. Is the purpose of the activity to build capacity or to be capacity?

India seems to be of two minds on this point. On the one hand, partnerships are envisioned as a way of providing expertise to build new or enhance existing institutions and structures in India. Specific proposals often contemplate the training of faculty for example, or the establishment of new degrees and programs to train the “21st century workforce.” This is classic “building capacity” language. The expertise of foreign institutions is used to transform the domestic system.

However, collaborations take time to develop and time is not something India has much of. They need to respond quickly to the rapidly approaching tsunami of young people. Thus, India is also considering importing branch campuses. Branch campuses, while not always an ideal means for building capacity within the system, can quickly “be capacity” by providing additional access to higher education.

But establishing a physical presence in another country through a branch campus or some other variant of a foreign outpost is an enormous commitment. What we will see is likely to be similar to other countries that have taken steps to welcome foreign outposts to their shores, but have stopped short of actively pursuing branch campuses. A few institutions are able to navigate the political barriers, often through personal connections and with the financial support of local authorities, and set up independent degree-granting locations. But most activity is through joint- or dual-degree initiatives that represent modest home campus investment and can be terminated relatively easily by either party.

The question for India is whether either model satisfies the government’s policy concerns. Greater involvement of branch campuses in India could provide a modest increase in the capacity of the country, but it will certainly take indigenous institutions to fully realize the massive increase in access that is envisioned. But meaningful collaborations with foreign institutions take a while to develop and become operational. In addition, opening up their borders to foreign education providers brings some risk as well. Concerns about profiteering institutions should be taken seriously, especially since the U.S. for-profit industry is looking abroad to expand as opportunities at home are constrained by new Department of Education regulations and Congressional inquiries. In sum, India needs to find a way to rapidly increase educational access, while ensuring the quality and sustainability of the educational experience.

India is making an enormous investment in education, and is looking outside its borders for ideas and expertise. U.S. institutions are eager to help. Foreign outposts and international collaborations may form part of the solution, but will it be enough? What other opportunities might exist?

This entry was posted in India. Bookmark the permalink.

E-mail

lowenstm

I think this is very well taken and articulately put. If you agree with their argument you also have a reason why grades in individual courses don’t help very much with assessment of learning outcomes: the outcomes that matter the most aren’t measured within any one course.
rpm13

We need more policy analysts and foundation executives with this kind of intelligence. I might add that another educational purpose served by thinking hard about complex problems is the cognitive reorganization that takes place in the process regardless of whether particular information is retained. This is how worldviews and conceptions of fields of knowledge are constructed. I would not be able to pass a final examination from Professor Schmandt’s world history class, but I developed a framework for thinking about history and the world from all the work needed to pass the tests back then. These cognitive structures are highly individualistic, based as they are on individual experience, knowledge, and interests as well as the course material at hand. But serious consideration of the course material is a sine qua non. That’s why achieving course level objectives matters a lot.
sand6432

Learning how to reason, how to marshal evidence to support an argument, how to identify fallacies, how to solve problems using a variety of analytical tools, how to differentiate between correlation and causation, how to write persuasively and elegantly, how to understand allusions and metaphors, etc., are skills that can be obtained in any number of courses and are useful not only in specific careers but in life generally. This is the heart of a liberal education and needs to be defended, I agree, against those who are tempted to equate learning with Immediately applicable job skills. Often the latter are better taught within a company than in a university anyway.—Sandy Thatcher
drj50

This essay points the way to a more realistic means of assessing the true value of a college education. Graduates need to know enough of the specifics of economics (or chemistry, or many other disciplines — at least as non-majors) to be critical readers of news resports and, more generally, have good critical thinking skills, but do not need to recall many of the particulars that we ask them to master in a traditional class.

The problem, however, is that this is not the way most courses are taught. We teach them as though all students are building a foundation of knowledge and skills to serve them in more advanced courses in the particular discipline. To take this proposal seriously, we would need to radically revise the way many courses are taught. We would have to identify plainly which facts, concepts and skills are “keepers” and which are primarily exercises in general skills development — and grade accordingly. It would be hard work, that would require faculty with 20-40 years invested emotionally in the details of their disciplines, to fall in love with general learning and make these critical distinctions. But it would pay huge dividends in efficiency and effective learning.

I would love to see this, but I wonder if/when anything remotely like this will ever happen in this country.
hngjohnson

I know there are other arguable perspectives, but all the perspective given here (including comments) argue for a wholesale rethinking of the organization and pedagogy of Higher Ed.
* “all this works better if both the teacher and the students view the subject matter as intrinsically important” I’m sorry, the mind is more than sufficiently subtle to recognize this ruse. The deception is not working.
* lowenstm says; “. . .the outcomes that matter the most aren’t measured within any one course”. Than organizing ed through courses of study will not accidentally get students to the goal you seek.
* In regards #3 above; measurement, to be truly useful, is linked to pedagogy. Measuring more subtle competences means pedagogical change.
And allow me to place one more idea into the mix. Learning needs in the future, by all indication, will be much different from the past. A 4 year course of study make no sense in a world of constant disruption. Students need to be mentored into lifelong networked communities of learning that are embedded in people everyday lives. I still think this is something much different when compared to current practice.
hngjohnson

I know there are other arguable perspectives, but all the perspective given here (including comments) argue for a wholesale rethinking of the organization and pedagogy of Higher Ed.
* “all this works better if both the teacher and the students view the subject matter as intrinsically important” I’m sorry, the mind is more than sufficiently subtle to recognize this ruse. The deception is not working.
* lowenstm says; “. . .the outcomes that matter the most aren’t measured within any one course”. Than organizing ed through courses of study will not accidentally get students to the goal you seek.
* In regards #3 above; measurement, to be truly useful, is linked to pedagogy. Measuring more subtle competences means pedagogical change.
And allow me to place one more idea into the mix. Learning needs in the future, by all indication, will be much different from the past. A 4 year course of study make no sense in a world of constant disruption. Students need to be mentored into lifelong networked communities of learning that are embedded in people everyday lives. I still think this is something much different when compared to current practice.
electronicmuse

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Right on, and beautifully written.

As I tell my students: “If you don’t want to be replaced by a computer-don’t act like a computer!”

I also tell them that during my 25 years of so “in the field” prior to becoming a college prof, nobody every asked “could I see your transcript?” Or, “what was your dissertation topic about?” Out there, it’s about solving problems-not flaunting some “content.” In fact, most theses and dissertations molder in the stacks (or, at least they used to!) The value of any degree, including “advanced” degrees, is the changes they facilitate in the person doing the work.

And, thanks for taking me back to Father Guido Sarducci. How could any of us forget “35, 35, 35, after a while it starts to add up!” Cheers!
richardtaborgreene

Among other things college taught me:
1) I could read the hardest books of science, math, literature, poetry, anthropology, psych research that had ever been written (not with ease but with effort—that is, I need not avoid or fear them)
2) the faculty of my college were systematically neurotic, distorting truth in analytic, mathematic, individualist ways they got while growing up in American culture–if I trusted them and their ways and “learned” those ways in college, I would NOT be able to protect Western culture and the USA from disasters and decline they themselves with their own ways and blindnesses to alternative ways, generated.
3) immense powerful Nobel level skills that I could not hope to match, were built up by years of consistent professional practice—as I observed in faculty around me—THEREFORE I could myself build up immense historic levels of skill the same way—practice reflection practice reflection practice feedback practice reflection
4) knowledge and people were hopelessly splintered by current faculty, corporations, fields of knowledge, publishings, and career paths, SO MUCH SO that ALL major problems were beyond any one produced as grad of any department of any university—universities were in a deep sense THE problem of my era and civilization
5) that the hardest subjects were not nuclear physics, general relativity, quantum gravity—but modern English poetry, multi-national standards-making and policy-making, and similar more soft social psychologic areas
6) that the smartest people at my college were not faculty and the smartest contents were not in courses but rather in research centers run daily by grad students where hour by hour immense skills and reckless experiments abounded, got observed and learned
7) that one could learn a lot even when subjected to absolutely horrible teaching by faculty seldom aware of the origin and purport of what they taught and champing to get back to their labs
8) that one book, if and when it fit one life’s deepest yearnings and mysteries, concerns, could open ten thousand doors and entire new universes of feeling, thought, and action–and one was not ever going to be able to guess ahead of time what book and topic that door opener would be.
9) that somehow universities has lost their educating mission entirely and were merely informing students—faculty seldom responsible for their actual impact on society around them, believing some invisible hand would take 10,000 over priced journals articles and somehow magically make that into a solution to societal problems one could never get tenure by actually addressing.
10) that sex was wasted on young men and women and like tennis it was going to take giant amounts of practice to enjoy it and get good at it, mostly by shutting down programs in us put there by our genes that made the whole thing too automatic, speedy, and a flight from feeling rather than to it.
11) that one had better watch out for one armed female teachers with unbelievably wide and deep reading and a commitment to poking holes in student thinking and expression—a well read person could instantly take all my supposed thought and accomplishment and reduce it to the trash it was, leaving me whole new frontiers of growth to tackle—humiliation was always going to be the door to growth, less painful doors simply did not exist
12) that any field that was new, growing rapidly, or technical meant the faculty were two generations out of date and only grad students could prepare you for current stuff, except in those few BEST colleges where the new stuff was being actively developed on campus by faculty having zero tolerance for, or interest in “teaching”—one could learn a lot without being taught anything from some people
13) that books were better than all lectures, save a few british ones
14) that nearly every thought and feeling that I thought was personal and my own, had been generated in millions by giant forces and changes in society that I was unaware of—my me-ness my most personal feelings were not mine and not really personal—highly disappointing discovery as I remember it
15) AND 50 other things 150 highly educated people told me in some research put into my book Are You Educated? 64 Capabilities of Highly Educated People
willamette

Freire. “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.
amsterdamup

I fully agree with Esposito’s reaction: where does the money come from in an Open Access environment? To our opinion, the guiding principles for scholarly communication should be: 1. research and the dissemination of results belong together. 2. Funders’ OA policies should include OA publishing and 3. publishers should develop OA publishing as a service to the scholarly community. This last principle is already evolving in the STM journals/articles world, where an author can chose for OA after his/her publication is accepted through peer-review, if he/she pays for it up front. This ‘authors pay system’ used in STM for the publication of journals and articles should also be introduced in the HSS, where the monograph is the most common way of disseminating the results of the research. Special attention is recommended for Open Access for scholarly monographs, in particular in relation to the Humanities and Social Sciences. There is a clear need for Open Access publishing and funding models for monographs to bridge the gap with OA articles, but also because the traditional business model for books is losing its sustainability. Finally, not the author, but the funders of research should take care of the costs for the Open Access edition as the dissemination of research should be seen as part of the research, but also because they are already taking care of most of the costs of scientific publications through the library budgets. This is the way our major scientific funding organisation NWO looks at it since 2009, and I believe it is also the way the EU is moving. Amsterdam University Press/ Saskia C.J. de Vries
Finally, not the author, but the funders of research should take care of the costs for the Open Access edition as the dissemination of research should be seen as part of the research, but also because they are already taking care of most of the costs of scientific publications through the library budgets. This is the way our major scientific funding organisation NWO looks at it since 2009, and I believe it is also the way the EU is moving. Amsterdam University Press/ Saskia C.J. de Vries
solidagojuncea

Federal mining laws will probably allow Mr. Loomis to lease mineral rights under the sculpture and wipe it out in his search for more coal.
dmoser5

FULL DISCLOSURE (Sort of . . .) — I have a close affiliation with Pronghorn University (I say that tongue-in-cheek because there are more pronghorn antelopes in the area than students, total. Yes, we see them in town on the way to the local Big Box Store).

First up, I have serious concerns about the leap of faith that is being made to connect the mountain pine bark beetle infestation that is inexorably devastating the surrounding forests here with the coal industry that admittedly does provide much to the economy of the state. Quite simply, either Chris Drury has been misquoted or misinformed (he could have come to my office; we spent the last year helping with a project by one of the University’s Bristol Scholar’s—he did a photo-reportage, with audio interviews, of the people bearing the impact of the pine beetle infestation and nary a lump of coal insight).
Second, I am deeply saddened to see the rush to judgement on the part of the Wyoming Mining Association in their condemnation of this project. @chronicle-3d4cf264a045538cf252e719e74b68f5:disqus has nailed it quite well in saying that this is an opportunity for debate and education, all the way around (especially if I am right about #1 above!).This campus desperately needs such opportunities for open debate; we have learned nothing from the debacle here last year if we do not take this one.

Or perhaps Peter Garrett was right after all and “And nothing’s as precious, as a hole in the ground . . .”
thedoctorisin

The problem I see here is that the sculpture is permanent and therefore the anti-mining statement will endure for generations. Even if this could be turned into a “learning moment,” the Wyoming Mining Association can make its defense but one time.
lexalexander

I like the idea of constructive debate around the issue and, to the extent that the university community and the taxpayers of Wyoming care what I think, I strongly encourage that debate.

That said, if Mr. Loomis truly understood academic freedom, he wouldn’t have brought up his association’s financial support of the university in raising his objections, and it is disingenuous for anyone to claim otherwise.
lexalexander

I agree, and I did not intend to imply that Drury was blameless or that his positions should go unchallenged if there is a factual basis for challenging them. I’m simply saying that by bringing financial support into the conversation, Mr. Loomis weakened his own position.
thedoctorisin

Understood.
dank48

Heaven knows I’m not up to speed on this controversy, but the numbers seem odd. “. . . students and faculty members had told
him that the beetles had destroyed more than 100 million acres of forest
in Wyoming and other mountain states. . . .” Okay, “and other mountain states” is an out, but is this accurate, or even credible?

Wyoming itself has a total area of 97,818 square miles. One hundred million acres is 156,250 square miles. Perhaps the beetles really have destroyed mountain-state forest equal in area to 1.6 Wyomings. But could someone point me toward the evidence that “100 million acres” is actually anything more than a SWAG?
raza_khan

I am not sure what was the purpose of the article when the “scholarship” is broadly defined…. Are we talking about academic merit based scholarship? Of course then prom outfit out of duct tape would not qualify!!! Are we talking about scholarship for certain majors? atheletic based scholarship? So, first, the kinds of scholarships neeed to be defined and then myths taken out of those scholarships… So if I can get a merit based scholarship for coming up with best prom dress out of duct tape, I am all ears!!!

Raza

__________________________

Dr. Raza Khan

Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com
dpn33

Hey, OldNassau’67, even Princeton University Athletics has its own website, and they are hardly a sports powerhouse. I’m not quite sure why that last sentence is even there. It’s irrelevant.

This whole article comes off as an extended ad for Mr. Kantrowitz’s website.
texasmusic

I think the purpose of the article was to say there are many kinds of scholarships available (yes, even the kind where someone contributes to your tuition when you submit a winning duct-tape prom dress design). This is typical of the kinds of articles you see about this time of year, when high school seniors are starting to get serious about college. It encourages people to get creative and not to assume they’re out of luck before they even begin.
texasmusic

And on that note – I was really hoping for some good news with number 6: that scholarships are not just for high school seniors. Evidently they’re just for high school seniors and younger, and maybe some college freshmen. I was really hoping to hear about a “starting-over” scholarship for the non-traditional adult students.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000421945279 Fe Fo

Scholarship are not only merit based, but having a good GPA and academic background is a must to getting in school and paying for it. However, you don’t have to be a 3.0-4.0 student to receive a scholarship. I received several scholarships during my undergraduate and kept a 2.5. to maintain them. I think some people also over think academics, if you are a well rounded student; involved in school activities, sports and so on, it also make you look like a better candidate because you have to posse structure to be involved with school activities. Some of these people comments below are broken down by what the article said, however, I still agree with most of their tips and don’t think their is one straight narrow path to getting and keeping a scholarship And I have worked in financial aid and scholarship for seven years.
hhopf

oldnassau67, not all athletic scholarships go to football players, and the list is correct that most athletes do not get a “full ride.” At my institution, many of the women’s athletic scholarships go unfilled, because the athletes choose to accept instead an academic scholarship (from the institution as well) that covers more of their educational costs. And our athletes (as is the norm) as a group have a higher GPA than that of the overall student body.
mkant69

The popularity of top ten lists may have more to do with alliteration (both top and ten begin with the letter T) and ten being a small number than anything else. Top twelve, top two, and top three are popular for similar reasons. People do not necessarily pad the list with additional items to get to ten. They might use a different number and just omit the word “top”. In this particular case a 20-minute time limit for the talk required cutting the number of myths to 10.