Higher education: Struggle or promise?

To realise the potential of our higher education system, policy must do less to achieve more, and reflect its diversity

India has a massive higher education system.  With over 42 million enrolments, we have more students in higher education than the population of three-quarters of the countries in the world.  Thousands of engineering colleges and management institutes, most relatively recent, sit alongside older colleges of arts and commerce.

Not only is our higher education system huge, but it is also by far the most heterogeneous in the world. In the public system, central universities spread around the country coexist with state universities. The IISc, IIT, IISER and IIM operate as separate entities, each with its own acts of Parliament. Medical