This guest post has been sent to us by VRIJENDRA, who teaches at a college affiliated to Bombay University

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Of late, higher education in India has been in the news for many reasons. The new HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has been busy drafting new bills and formulating new policies to give a big push to higher education and to open up the higher education sector to foreign universities and their affiliates. In this scenario, two issues have been the major focus:

(a) The need to improve the enrolment ratio from the present, dismal ratio of about 10 percent – that is, only 10 percent of eligible young students enrol in colleges in India – to about 15/20 per cent in the next decade to catch up with the rest of the world in some ways. (Though the official enrolment ratio in India is about 11 per cent, if we go by how many of these students are really learning anything in reasonably well–equipped colleges, my guess is that the ratio will be down to alarmingly low level of about 5 per cent.)  For example, in the US and Europe, the enrolment ratio is more than 60 percent. Even in China, our favourite competitor these days, the ratio is about 19 percent.

(b) The need to urgently improve the quality of higher education in the country to make it more competitive globally and to emerge ‘global knowledge hub’ in the near future.

However, any meaningful discussion on these two issues has to recognize two alarming features of higher education system in the country.

Continue reading Divide in higher education in India: Vrijendra →