According to the HRD Ministry’s All India Survey on Higher Education, 34.2 million students were enrolled in institutions of higher education in 2014-15, with 22 million students (65%) in private institutions. Out of which around 53% college students are enrolled in private institutions because there are not enough public higher educational institutions.

In 1950, the number of universities in India was just 20. And by June 2017, the number rose to 819 — 47 central, 367 state, and 123 deemed and 282 private universities.

Need

• The status of higher education continues to be dismal as can be seen in the recently published Times Higher Education (THE) Emerging Economies University Rankings – 2018.
• Issues in education in India - Lack of funding, poor quality of teachers, poor learning outcomes and problem of brain drain.
• Amartya Sen says “India is trying to be the first country to become an industrial giant with an illiterate and unhealthy labour force”

Benefits

• Better access to infrastructure, faculty, global exposure and wider interaction with global educational institutions along with higher level research and innovation.
•  It will act as platform for faculty exchange between different institutions resulting better training of teachers and opening more opportunities for them.
•  It will lead to more competition in education sector thus leading to better quality for students.

Challenges

• More inequity as it will deepen the already prevalent class divide in the Indian higher education system.
• The privatisation of education has benefited mainly the parallel system of coaching classes. The middle and even the lower class people are spending a fortune on their wards’ education by enrolling them in coaching classes.
• Kota in Rajasthan is a classic example of how coaching classes have turned themselves into factories. The students are under tremendous pressure to perform with no time to rest and relax. Some 24 students, taking tuitions at these coaching factories, have committed suicide in 2017, unable to cope up with the rigorous schedule of the coaching classes. And last year, nearly 450 teenagers in AP and Telangana have committed suicide, due to the pressure of academic performance.
• Privatisation will lead to commodification of education as most of the private player in education view it as a business - Issues of capitation fees, poor accountability, fake degrees, fly-by-night operators etc.
• The privatisation should not be an alibi for the corrupt and inefficient functioning of public educational institutions.
• The indiscriminate privatisation of education has deprived the children of weaker section and under privileged the opportunity to receive quality.

Despite its demerits and challenges, private education is imperative for universal education. The requirement is to minimise demerits while leveraging benefits.