Western colleges find
school mates in India By
Indrajit Basu
KOLKATA - Last month, St
Xavier's College of Kolkata, one of the most
orthodox educational institutions in India,
announced collaboration with the University of
Manitoba, Canada.
For St Xavier's, one of
the country's oldest and most prestigious
educational institutions that has steadfastly
stuck to its independent values, this
collaboration is significant - it is its first
partnership with any external institution in its
150-year history. Despite being affiliated with a
local university, St Xavier's resisted all types
of external intervention and insisted on autonomy,
which it finally gained two years back.
"It is significant because for one, St
Xavier's has become sufficiently flexible to make
educational collaboration workable," said
Professor Michael Trevan, dean of the University
of Manitoba, Canada. "[And also because] this
bilateral agreement may be
used
in future to create multi-lateral pacts globally
where St Xavier's could be a part of such pacts."
St Xavier's is not alone. Over the past
two years, India has seen an influx of many
marquee names, including Harvard, Kellogg,
Michigan University, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia
Institute of Technology (all in the US), Grenoble
Ecole de Management (France), and Aston Business
School (United Kingdom), while research-oriented
institutions like the London Business School,
Stanford University and University of California
Los Angeles Anderson School of Management, and
many others from the world over are working
towards setting up bases in India.
Their
method of entry or teaching may be different, but
all are trying to fill the one biggest need of
Indian students; to acquire foreign degrees
without incurring the prohibitive expenses of
foreign education offshore.
Enamored by
foreign degrees and treating them virtually as a
passport to a job abroad - and hence a good life -
Indian students have been flocking overseas,
particularly the US, in hordes for years.
According to the Ministry of Human Resource
Development, for instance, more than 100,000
Indians leave the country every year to study
abroad, and with over 200,000 students already
based abroad, the country's students spend over
US$4 billion a year on foreign education.
But now, with quite a few foreign
universities opening classrooms in India and many
more weighing the option seriously, it appears a
new phase is to begin for the education sector.
"I think India's education sector, which
was considerably lagging behind compared to its
economy, is finally opening up," said Mahesh
Senagala, an associate professor at the University
of Texas and an advocate of liberalized education
in India. "Although the impact of privatization
and globalization was not felt in India's
education sector until recently, the rush of
foreign educational institutions in India is an
indication that it is happening here as well."
Driven partly by the pull factor - the
dire need of Indian students for a degree with a
brand value, and partly by the push factor - the
need for foreign institutions to discover India -
foreign universities are entering not only the
five largest Indian cities but also smaller towns
and cities offering almost every type of
professional course. According to a recently
released study on foreign education providers in
India conducted by the New Delhi-based National
Institute of Educational Planning and
Administration, more than 130 local institutions
have already collaborated with foreign
institutions offering either a foreign degree or a
foreign diploma. Reports suggest that at least
another two dozens more are in the process of
joining the bandwagon.
"While the
credentials of many, some of which are not even
recognized in the country where they come from,
are questionable, the willingness of Indian
students to spend huge sums of money for acquiring
a degree from a foreign university is attracting
huge foreign interest," said Prasad Krishna, the
quality assurance advisor in The All India Council
for Technical Education - a statutory body that
regulates technical education.
Their
educational models vary. While some like Georgia
Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Wigan and
Leigh (UK) have set up independent campuses in
India, most prefer collaboration with a local
institution. "Many find collaboration with a local
institution better than setting up a stand-alone
campus because that gives the foreign university
an advantage in getting immediately plugged into
the local culture and local issues," said Trevan.
Such collaboration also reduces the cost
of education drastically. While it takes $20,000
Canadian dollars (US$19,600) per year for four
years to get a degree from Manitoba, under the St
Xavier's University of Manitoba collaboration an
Indian student can attend the first two years of
the course at the St Xavier's campus while
finishing the final two years at the Manitoba
campus. "That way the cost of getting a degree
reduces to half," said Trevan.
Similarly,
thanks to Wharton Business School (Pennsylvania)
and Kellog Business School (Chicago) collaboration
with the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad,
Indian students can obtain a degree from two of
the world's top universities without having to
spend a relative fortune by studying in America.
According to Trevan, the growing foreign
interest in the Indian education sector reflects
the lag between demand and the availability of
good education in the country. "As a country's
economy develops, usually the provisions of
sufficient higher education lag behind the demand
and the need for it," said Trevan. "I know there
are very good universities in India, but the
potential number of [students] who get into them
is a tiny fraction of 1%. That's another reason
why we get students abroad - they couldn't find
the right place in their country."
Undoubtedly, the Indian education sector
is still too small to meet the demands of the
country's burgeoning 1 billion plus people.
According to the National Knowledge Commission, of
all Indians in the 18 to 24 age group, which
constitute some 60% of the country's population,
merely some 7% enter a university. Compare this
number with other developing Asian countries - let
alone the developed Western world - and the
difference is stark. In China, for example, 13% of
the population in the same age group complete
higher studies, and the number is even more
impressive for the Philippines (31%), Malaysia
(27%) and Thailand. (19%).
Moreover,
experts say Indian students are educated with
courses most of which are completely outdated or
irrelevant. Educators claim that the curricula
isn't evolving quickly enough and professors and
institutions have little control over improving
the situation.
The quality of India's
higher education system is also in question.
Domestic industries constantly complain that only
about 25% of India-trained engineers and 15% of
finance and accounting professionals posses the
skills to work for progressive companies.
"The fundamental problem with the state of
the higher education system has been that it has
divorced creation of knowledge from learning,"
said Senagala of the University of Texas.
"Creation of knowledge comes essentially from
research, moreover the education system in India
is a centrally regulated enterprise with
bureaucratic overtones and all these have eroded
Indian education's competitive advantage and even
its intrinsic values."
"Foreign
universities outside India play a large role in
the Indian higher education scene, [by filling in]
the need to supplement Indian content-rich
curricula with activity-based learning and bridge
the gap between academia and industry," said Jane
Schukoske, of the US Educational Foundation in
India. (Schukoske added that this is only her
opinion as the executive director of a bi-national
foundation).
But according to Trevan, the
benefit is not just a one-way street.
Collaborating in a foreign country, "particularly
India and China", benefits the foreign
institutions as well. "It is not just students
transferred halfway through their course and
finishing it off here, but we also get students
from other countries and from other continents
that enriches the student life here and enriches
the students' experience," said Trevan.
Yet not every student succeeds easily in
these hybrid universities. Firstly, there's no
provincial-level regulation for foreign education
in the country, the absence of which often
confuses a foreign entrant, said Senagala.
Meanwhile, Trevan highlights the lack of teaching
staff, infrastructure and the affordability factor
as serious challenges.
Still, an entry in
India provides enough competitive advantage to
those who are willing to take risks. "These
players [foreign institutions] are aware of the
risks; they have seen what businesses have done
and they get some kind of assurance that
eventually India will open up," Senagala said.
Small wonder then that the American
Council on Education already feels that India is
the next frontier (after China) for American
institutions. According to Senagala, "India has
more potential than the USA because the US system
has been established and it is not nimble enough
at this time to change to global forces and
globalization."
Indrajit Basu is
a Kolkata-based journalist.
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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