30-07-2012, 11:26 AM
INDIA’S HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
– A GROWING MARKET
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.pdf (Size: 201.13 KB / Downloads: 83)
The continuing growth of the middle class in India (approximately 200 million people)
has led to increased demand for higher education that cannot be met by the Indian Higher
Education system. The tertiary education participation rate in India is 11 %, and the
government aims to increase this by 15% in 2015 (National Knowledge Commission
2007). The population is increasing but there has not been a corresponding growth in
provision of education. Although the Indian government is planning to establish new
universities and colleges in the near future, these will not be enough to provide places for
all students who seek higher education. Consequently increasing numbers of Indian
students are seeking higher education opportunities internationally. Historically there
was a strong preference in India for studying in the US & UK, but gradually more Indian
students are becoming interested in Australia. This paper argues that Australian
education institutions need to consider engaging more closely with India, both to promote
and raise the profile of Australian education in the short term, and also to position them
for the future when the regulatory framework for foreign education providers in India is
clarified.
Christopher Kremmer, who worked in India as the South Asia correspondent for the
ABC, and lived there for 10 years from 1990, has written and spoken about outsiders’
perceptions of India. He spoke at the Australian International Education Conference in
Melbourne in 2007 about the unrecognised changes that occurred in India through the
nineties. He said that most of the foreign journalists he knew in India only spoke and
wrote about the negative things in India – the terrorist attacks, the hijackings, the
communal riots, the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, etc. However, he said
that the longer he lived in India, and became part of an Indian family through marrying
an Indian woman, his perceptions changed. ‘Where colleagues saw only doom and
gloom I started to see tremendous resilience’ (Kremmer 2007). While the violence
attracted all the media attention, a slow reform process was going on throughout India,
and the foreign journalists missed the story. Kremmer emphasised that there have been
great and far-reaching changes in India since the early nineties, and India is
misunderstood by many people outside it (Kremmer 2006; Kremmer 2007). One of these
changes that has occurred in recent decades has been the growth of the economy and the
growth of the middle class (Patnaik 2000; Wadhva 2000).