INDIA'S HIGHER EDUCATION SET FOR GLOBAL LEAP

CASTING off the shackles of geographical boundaries of the highly inward-oriented higher education system since Independence, the New Education Policy has set the stage to take India to the global stage, it long deserved.

- PROF RAKESH MOHAN JOSHI

This has been the first time in the education history of India, that the UGC and the government has taken a bold initiative to integrate Indian higher education system with the international education and making meticulous efforts by evolving implementation strategies and regulations to make it world class.

Higher education in India remained highly inward-oriented despite several post-independence reforms in education sector. In terms of number of educational institutions, India has the world’s largest higher education system with about 1,000 universities and 40,000 colleges whereas it ranks third in terms of size and diversity, but its presence in the international education system has been abysmally below its true potential that remains unexplored.

Interestingly, India is also home to world’s second largest English-speaking people after the USA, surprisingly more than the United Kingdom. Despite being the world’s second most populated country with 1.39 billion people accounting for 17% of the world population, India’s share in the foreign students arriving for higher education remains miserably low at 0.85%. This explicitly reveals the fundamental faults in the country’s higher education policy post-Independence.

Moreover, there had been serious regulatory impediments to internationalise and take initiatives on their own by private and also top-class public institutions of national repute. Over the period, government and its key higher education regulatory body UGC became stumbling blocks rather than facilitators in internationalisation efforts.