Crisis in higher education in India?

There is a crisis in higher education in India, both with the quality of education being delivered to students as well as in the inadequacy of institutions of higher learning in the nation. Only 12.4 per cent of Indian students go in for higher education, and it is now clear that the government alone cannot handle the task of providing 800 more universities and an estimated 10,000 colleges in the next 10 years. It is in this context that the public-private partnership model is being envisaged, and indeed, encouraged.

We have it on the authority of the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal that most of the private technical institutions in the country are not up to the mark, and indeed lack both the required infrastructure as well as qualified staff. The Minister, however, is not just expected to state the problem; he is empowered to provide a solution. Instead, in Parliament, recently, he lamented that a World-Bank funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme had failed to take off since none of the 130 proposals submitted by technical institutions fulfilled the criteria laid down for allocation of funds. Thus, these 130 institutions were not even of a basic level, where they would qualify for a programme that would help them attain excellence.
With the economy growing steadily, more jobs are available. However, there are not enough institutions to educate students and train them. Many of the new institutions are inadequate. Students of such institutions find it difficult to get good jobs and this leads to discontentment. The HRD Minister must make the effort to monitor both government and private education institutions to ensure that they conform to the norms. Citizens have a right to not only education, but also, by implication, to higher education. It is the duty of the state to provide and adequately monitor institutions of higher education.