Category: Worldwide PSE

The basic situation in Indian higher education right now is as follows: The national government is putting most of its new money into the creation of new institutions (IITs, mainly), which are elite in local – but not international – terms.  That placates the politically powerful upper-middle class, but does very little for access. The rest of the public sector is required to chug along with limited funds. Capacity-absorption (that is, dealing with the growth in demand) is essentially being left to

If you look at India’s higher education system, there are essentially two problems. 1)      Access.  This is a big country.  And so while 13 million or so students sounds like a lot, it’s only about half what China has – and sure, China’s a little bigger than India (1.36 billion vs. 1.25 billion), but thanks to its one-child policy, it’s youth population is actually smaller, meaning that the gap in participation rates is even bigger.  And, as in any rapidly modernizing

India is a big, crazy, multi-faceted, barely-functioning-but-still-impressive-it’s-functioning-at-all kind of country.  So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that its higher education system is a big, crazy, multi-faceted, barely-functioning- but-still-impressive-it’s-functioning-at-all kind of system. The indigenous tradition of higher education stretches back to the 6th century AD.  Back then, Nalanda University was a world-centre of (mostly) Buddhist learning, which attracted students from Nepal, China, Southeast Asia, and Tibet.  Nalanda was also the first university with student dorms, and (allegedly) developed the first