The Hindu Business Line : Open university

It is a moot point if foreign direct investment in higher education would send the country's brightest young minds rushing to the local campuses of universities of the West. Education, useful in itself, has always been seen as a passport to a job abroad and eventually to permanent residence in the host country. All the same the Commerce Ministry's discussion paper on whether higher education in the country should be opened up to foreign participation, is timely.

It has come at a time when there is widespread concern about the quality of higher education offered by local institutions. Representatives of the software industry have spoken of the poor record of employability of professionals turned out by the country's educational institutions with some of them putting the number at just one in ten. Indeed, many software companies have been forced to incorporate for their new recruits an extended spell of orientation, which is essentially in the nature of a supplementary programme of under-graduate studies, before their induction into work. Policy-makers cannot afford to dismiss such claims as usual scare mongering by the industry simply because it is not just the outsourced services activity but also the economy as a whole is on growth momentum.

That foreign investment in higher education is the only answer to the quality concerns might seem somewhat outlandish, considering that a large number of countries that have liberalised external trade and investment have been loath to opening the doors of educational institution to overseas investors. As the Commerce Ministry document notes, a mere 29 countries out of those that participated in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade discussion agreed to open up their education services and fewer still offered any commitment to opening up higher education. But this should not deter India. It has demonstrated that despite the initial hardships the manufacturing sector has over the years significantly improved on its quality and operational performance after the Government lifted tariff and quantitative barriers to external trade. There is no reason why the country's higher education sector should not be able to do so.

India's investment in education — as a percentage of GDP — is lower than not just of countries in the West but also some of the emerging economies, including China. The percentage of population in the relevant age group enrolled in higher education too is the lowest among countries with which it must compete. Clearly, there is a need to scale up substantially the physical infrastructure and attract better faculty by offering market wages. All this is going to cost enormous sums of money. The claims on the public purse towards programmes of poverty alleviation and other social sector schemes are far too heavy to offer much scope for hiking public outlays on higher education.