Higher Education in India: Structure, Statistics and Challenges

Abstract

India's education system is often cited as one of the main contributors to the economic rise of India. The size of India's higher education market is about $40 billion per year. Presently about 12.4 percent of students go for higher education from the country. If India were to increase that figure of 12.4% to 30%, then it would need another 800 to one thousand universities and over 40,000 colleges in the next 10 years. This paper presents the development and present scenario of higher education in India by analyzing the various data and also identifies the key challenges that India's higher education sector is facing. This paper also presents the key initiatives by the government and recommendations to meet these challenges. The ideas presented in this paper were initially presented at the International conference on India Emerging, held at IBA, Greater Noida, India, Feb 24-25, 2011.

Keywords: Higher Education, Knowledge Economy, Technical Education, University