Higher Education in India: Seizing the Opportunity

This paper reviews the prevailing policy environment to evaluate its efficacy in ensuring that India is successfully able to address these challenges in the education sector. Given the well established constraints on public funding of education, the role of the private sector specially in the provision of higher education and technical training has been highlighted. The paper suggests that India needs to have a proactive demand based policy towards private higher education including foreign institutions/universities desirous of setting up campus in India or entering into joint-ventures. This has to be combined with the establishment of a regulatory mechanism that ensures that students’ welfare is not compromised and quality standards are maintained. [ICRIER Working Paper 179]