Pune's private university boom

The 15 private universities to come up in a decade have diversified course offerings but raised higher education costs, impacted public institutions

- Musab Qazi

Punekars affectionately call their city 'the Oxford of the East' — a sobriquet given by Jawaharlal Nehru to Pune in 1950 — while those preferring the vernacular refer to it as 'vidyeche maherghar' or the maternal home of education. While comparison with the British university town may appear far-fetched, the city has been long perceived as a destination for higher education across the Global South.

As the city transformed into a major information technology hub post-liberalisation, in addition to the existing automotive and manufacturing industry, it saw a significant growth in private educational institutes, especially those offering technical and management programmes. The next chapter in Pune's educational journey is the proliferation of privately-run universities, dotting the city and peripheral towns.

Since the Maharashtra government framed guidelines for establishing private universities in 2013, 33 have been set up in the state. Pune got the lion's share - 15. Barring the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, private universities have been set up at a steady pace in a district which already had a handful of private deemed-to-be universities.

Thanks to the state government's policy of decentralising higher education to ease the administrative burden on public universities, most private universities emerged out of existing colleges in the city.

The advent of private varsities has allowed students from within the state as well as outside, even abroad, to pursue unique, multi-disciplinary and industry-oriented courses in technical disciplines and even liberal arts. However, the exorbitant fees has heightened the educational disparity, as cash-starved public institutes struggle to retain staff and attract students.

The boom