India's Higher Education Quality Deficit

Philip Altbach:

A constant theme in discussions with Indian academics, government officials, and business people concerns the low quality of the country's rapidly expanding higher education system. India now ranks third in size, after China and the United States. The current cumbersome, and ineffective accrediting system is being dismantled. The government is proposing a new system -- how it may work is as yet unclear.

India's undergraduates attend more than 20,000 colleges, some quite small and of varying quality. It has been impossible to ensure the quality of these colleges. Private institutions are particularly problematical. They receive no government funding and, as a result, are entirely tuition dependent.

India's burgeoning high tech and software industries complain that as many as 80 percent of engineering graduates are so poorly trained that they are not qualified for available jobs. Some are hired and then provided with additional training by their employer, while others are simply not hired. At least one of the software giants, Wipro, invests a major amount of money providing remedial training, and is also working with engineering colleges to improve teaching methods and standards.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 11, 2010 2:03 AM
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