Ng Xin Ler_A0159658J_C01_Essary Draft 1

Knowledge has been identified as the stimulator for productivity and economic
growth in the recent decades (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, 1996). As countries strive to be the top in this globalised
economy, the need to develop human capital leads to increasing demand for
higher education. This is especially important for developing countries, such as
India. However, as public-funding by the Indian government is limited,
accessibility to higher education becomes biased towards urban elites, who can
afford high costs for better institutes, while students from poorer families can
only afford poor institutes with limited facilities. In response to prevent
education becoming a commodity, where the focus shifts to making money
through high education fees, the government attempts to increase accessibility
and reduce costs for higher education through introducing privately-funded
universities. However, this came with trade-offs and more need to be done for
India to achieve the goal being one of the top countries in this globalised world.

As higher education becomes commodified, the high costs for education

deprived many from continuing their studies. According to 2014 National Sample
Survey (NSS), 44.81 million students, between 18 and 24 years, could not afford
to continue higher education (Panigraphi & Singh, 2016). Even though there is a
high demand for it, there were limited schools and the few elite institutes are
mainly filled with rich urban elites. Besides high education fees, this disparity
also could be due to the rich being able to afford private tuitions to train their
child for entrance examinations for institutes that are highly sought after (Singh,
n.d.). Also, as the government channels more resources into establishing the
elite schools, the rest of the institutes becomes neglected, resulting in many
being limited in the facilities and infrastructures available to teach students. This
situation is worsened with good professors being attracted overseas, causing
teaching quality in local institutes to drop, with outdated teaching resources
which are unable to prepare students for the global economy (Singh, n.d.;
Chahal, 2015). In some universities, students even had to self-study almost the
entire syllabus due to shortage of teachers (Patnaik, n.d.). In response to the
high demand for higher education, President Pratibha Patil announced the plan to
increase gross enrolment ratio (GER) of higher education to 30% by 2020 from
the current 11% (Singh, n.d.). To achieve this goal, privatisation seemed to be
the solution to meet the demand and improve quality of education as
government funding is unable to meet the demand alone without increasing
taxes (Abrol, 2016).

To allow higher education to be more accessible to everyone, private institutes

are welcomed into the society to increase enrolment. Growth in both
government-owned institutions and private institutes was observed between
2011 to 2012, with 49% growth for the former and 63% for the latter (Panigraphi
& Singh, 2016). With greater emphasis placed on increasing the number of
institutes, more students now have access to higher education. In fact, private
institutes have grown so much so that they now dominated the market, adding
up to more than 76% of the total number of higher education institutes in India,
according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2015-2015 report
(Panigraphi & Singh, 2016). However, privately-owned institutes also meant
higher costs. It was found out in the NSS report that costs for education in
private institutes is more than double of the public institutes and in reality,
around 53% of the students studying in private institutes were there because
they were not accepted into the public ones (Panigraphi & Singh, 2016). This
becomes a concern for the government as this phenomenon will further
accentuate the problem of accessibility to education due to income disparities.

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In order to prevent this from happening, regulations were set by the government
to ensure that all universities are certified as non-profit legal entity (Choudaha,
2013). This would ensure that private institutes are affordable to the poorer
families as well. However, problem arises again as these private institutes are
profit-driven. According to Chahal (2015), affordability of education was at the
expense of the quality of education provided in the institutes. In fact, in most
institutes, shortage of educators resulted in poor teaching quality as
inexperienced, fresh graduates were hired to teach instead (Singh, n.d.). Singh
(n.d.) also added on that it is a common sight for these teachers to conduct
private tuitions out of class to earn money, despite their limited knowledge and
resources provided for the students. This becomes another issue for concern as
the degree obtained by graduates are not recognised due to the poor education
quality offered by private institutions (Choudaha, 2013).

As seen from above, increasing quantity does not seem to be the solution to
increasing accessibility of higher education but in fact, further commodifies
education into an entity, in which only the rich can afford good education. To
resolve this situation, the government must first recognise that increasing
number of private institutions is not the solution to the problem. The fact that
barely any Indian Institution appeared in the list for top 200 institutes by The
Times Higher Educational Supplement (THES) list (Patnaik, n.d.) further
emphases this fact. To improve on the current situation, I believe that more focus
should be placed on quality of education. In fact, quantity can be reduced but not
the quality. Firstly, the government need to recognise teaching as a highly-
regarded profession and increase starting salary as well. This will encourage
more people to take up education as a profession and reduce the outflow of
talented professors overseas. Training also needs to be provided before these
educators are officially recognised by the society and institutions can only hire
these well-trained professors. Another point to note would be that the
government has to ensure that the cost for education remains affordable in both
public and private institutes. Although this may signify more funding to be
channelled towards the education sector and higher taxes, these reforms are
needed to ensure the quality of higher education, producing greater leaders for
tomorrow.

The trend of higher education becoming commodified such that only the rich can
afford is an issue that needs to be addressed. Education cannot be viewed from a
business perspective, with the objective of institutions making money from it. To
create better leaders for the future generation, quality of higher education needs
to be improved. Although this would signify that the government will have to
channel more resources and funding into the education sector, it is a necessary
move to develop human capital so that India can remain competitive in this
globalised world.

References

J D Singh. (n.d.). Higher Education in India Issues, Challenges and Suggestions.

Retrieved from
http://www.gvctesangaria.org/websiteimg/publications/jdarticle.pdf

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Monika Abrol. (2016). Emerging Trends of Privatization of Education in India.

International Journal of Educational Administration, Volume 8(1), 1-6. Retrieved
from http://www.ripublication.com/ijea16/ijeav8n1_01.pdf

Mukesh Chahal. (2015). Higher Education in India: Emerging Issues, Challenges

and Suggestions. International Journal of Business Quantitative Economics and
Applied Management Research, Volume 1(11), 67-74. Retrieved from
http://ijbemr.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/Higher_Education_in_India_Emerging_Issues_Challenges
_and_Suggestions.pdf

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (1996). The

Knowledge-based Economy. General Distribution OCDE/GD(96) 102. Retrieved
from https://www.oecd.org/sti/sci-tech/1913021.pdf

Prabhat Patnaik. (n.d.). Learning as Commodity The dualistic structure of Indian

higher education. Retrieved from
https://www.telegraphindia.com/1140417/jsp/opinion/story_18192520.jsp#.WLGb
R4VOL3x

Rahul Choudaha. (2013). Three Solutions for Reforming Indian Higher Education.
Comparative & International Higher Education 5, 86-90. Retrieved from
http://higheredsig.org/cihe/Number05-19.pdf

Sushree Panigraphi & Jeet Singh. (2016). Available but unaffordable: Story of
higher education in India. Retrieved from http://www.business-
standard.com/article/current-affairs/available-but-unaffordable-story-of-higher-
education-in-india-116123100779_1.html

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