Globalization of Education and Potential
Impact on Intellectual Disparities in India
India does not seem to be
having an internationalization strategy at the national level for education.
It is in 2013 that the
University Grants Commission came out with a regulation[1],
which was more of a reaction to an unregulated scenario of large number of
foreign tie-ups already in place than a strategic attempt to globalize higher
education with a larger purpose.
Till 2013, the market was
implicitly impacting on the education sector with tie-ups mostly catering to
the foreign degree craze of Indian students than for any real educational or
strategic reasons. The demand understandably was for technical, medical and
management education. The collaborations were mostly in the form of twinning
programs or franchise arrangements.
Since the craze for foreign
degrees or the assumed social capital from a foreign degree was the force
behind this mushroom growth, the collaborators from abroad were mostly from those
institutions, which were ready to award degrees with least effort on the part
of the students.
While the growth has either
subdued or become negative now, there is still a student segment, which will go
for it.
The Indian industry did
realize that these degrees are not of much value and hence the segment of
students who were looking for better employment armed with these degrees slowly
disappeared. The only market left for these types of collaborations is the nouveau riche from the business community or from the socially less
privileged class. It is this exploitation (which is as a result of the legacy
of education policies of the Government itself) that provoked the University
Grants Commission to come out with regulations.
While the regulation is in place, the implementation
in terms of regulating the players who are in it only for money’s sake is still
wanting. The mechanisms for this are yet to be put in place.
What is envisaged in the new regulations is a subset
of what could have been the case in the unregulated situation. The regulations
expect highest graded institutions from abroad to collaborate with institutions
that are Grade B and above in India for twinning programs and for award of the
foreign Universities’ degrees. The fact that such collaborations did not happen
in a big way in an unregulated environment indicates that the market or social
forces do not incentivize such collaborations.
That part of the Indian education system, which
caters to the masses (in contrast to elite institutions which cater to the
privileged few), has evolved into a system that enhances social capital by
awarding degrees rather than by imparting education. Imparting real education
for the masses requires pedagogical innovations and hence is costly and time
consuming. Elite institutions will target better education through such
collaborations and will also attract high-grade collaborators easily. Assuming
high-grade institutions were shy to enter into collaborations in an unregulated
environment, the real beneficiaries will now be elite institutions.
Without any explicit strategy articulated by the
Government, globalization of higher education in India probably will result in
larger disparities between the intellectually privileged and the intellectually
underprivileged.
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