Vedant Thadani, an alum of Goldsmiths College, University of London and works with Muskan Productions, Delhi

The crisis in Ukraine has alerted many Indians to the plight of their fellow countrymen who were stranded in that country. The overwhelming majority of them were medical students who had left India to pursue undergrad degrees. Ukraine isn’t a global leader in education like the US or UK, but still over 20,000 Indians were enrolled in universities there.

Over a million Indian students go abroad for higher education annually. That number is projected to reach 1.8 million by 2024. While there are a host of reasons for this annual exodus, the most glaring is the lack of higher education options in India. As of 2016, only 8.15 percent of citizens held a college degree — an embarrassingly low figure for a country proclaiming itself a rising power.

Admission into Indian universities is notoriously difficult. The competition is ridiculously severe and, in some cases, less than 2 percent of admission applications are accepted. This leaves young Indians with no option but to look elsewhere. There is a huge demand-supply gap in acceptable quality higher education, and this has been the case for at least the past two decades.

Education in India isn’t a free market — the vast majority of schools and universities cannot operate a profit-making model. The University Grants Commission (UGC) Act, 1956 does not explicitly restrict for-profit education. But s. 26 (1) (g) of the Act grants UGC the power to regulate the “maintenance of standards and the coordination of work or facilities in universities.” This allows the commission to regulate fees in higher education institutions.

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Most universities in India are run by the government or family-run trusts. In the former, the governance structure is wrapped in red tape while in the latter category, illegal profiteering is not unknown. It is a well-known fact that a ‘donation’ can secure a seat at numerous schools and colleges in India. Obviously, such payments are not made through the banking system, but in cash. The underlying problem is the shortage of higher education institutions for a very young, growing population.

Take medical education as an example. Every year more than 1.5 million aspirants compete for just 89,395 MBBS seats in colleges recognised by the National Medical Commission (NMC). That translates into a mere 6 percent being admitted.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 attempts to address this issue by granting greater autonomy to higher education institutions and allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India. In March 2010, the Union government approved a proposal to allow foreign universities to establish campuses in partnership with existing institutions. But NEP 2020 proposes allowing them to do so independently.

A free-market model and transparency in governance are urgently required in higher education. Increased competition from foreign universities would result in Indian institutions upgrading their facilities and benchmarking themselves with international standards. Only eight Indian universities are listed in the global Top 400 of the QS World University Rankings 2022, with the highest ranked IIT-Mumbai at #177.

Other countries have adopted the free market model with considerable success. For example, the London School of Business has a campus in Dubai, and New York University has campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. Six American varsities, a British and French university have campuses at the Qatar Education City. Malaysia hosts 11 foreign universities, including India’s Manipal International University.

A Union Budget 2022 proposal to permit foreign universities to set up shop in Gandhinagar’s GIFT City International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) has begun yielding results. Some leading foreign universities have initiated preliminary discussions with the GIFT City administration and the regulator to establish facilities in IFSC.

But these measures are insufficient to solve the crisis in higher education and their implementation will take considerable time. Limiting foreign universities to certain special economic zones and allowing them to teach specific courses will diminish their autonomy and curtail innovation. Admittedly government needs to regulate higher education, but liberally. Greater academic freedom will serve the country better in the long run.

The downside of India exporting over 1 million students to offshore higher education institutions is substantial. At least $8 billion (Rs.61,000 crore) per year is spent by Indian students abroad. The Indian economy doesn’t benefit from all the ancillary services that those students avail, like banking, lodging, transport, entertainment, etc. Moreover, quite a large number of students adopt foreign citizenship after a few years.

The BJP/NDA government says it wants the country to become a global leader in education — a country which attracts students from all over the world. This is a ridiculous pipe dream for a country that can’t provide enough higher education facilities to its own youth. The pace of reform has to be much more rapid if government wants to get anywhere close to making that dream a reality.

The BJP government says it wants the country to become a global leader in education. This is a pipe dream for a country that can’t provide enough higher education facilities to its own youth.

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