Forget university rankings or bschool rankings and their cousins that don't have Indian institutions anywhere in the top list. Many (myself included) argue that such rankings are ratings are skewed in the favour of the developed nations given the yardsticks and the way data is collected.
The undeniable fact is that Indian universities and niche institutions don't have the current will and the people to make something out of the great opportunity on global higher ed. The Chinese comparison is obvious here but a lot of India centric factors make the India model a unique proposition.
I sincerely believe that what these institutions need today is a "vaccination" of sorts. A herd immunity that allows seamless change across all systems - student recruitment, TNE partnerships, benchmarking, design of pedagogy, etc.
The bottlenecks for such vaccination are sadly created and maintained for some unknown reason by the democratically elected government.
We at times forget that for our government the higher ed thing is something that plays right into vote banks wherein higher ed mostly becomes a privilege that they intend to distinguish tier supporters and votes with.
However we are also aware that with the growing economic troubles and the way reforms processes need to be implements there is not much that the government can do to invest and change the state of higher ed on the country.
Gross enrolment ratio and the requirement of large number of universities cannot be supported by any 5 years plan or prepared by the planningn commission. And institutions too cannot look at the government at all times.
Vaccination process, as it is, requires everyone to take it up at the same time if a disease needs to be eradicated. Remember small pox?
Indian universities - both public and private will all have to agree to this transformation and take the bitter pills. This herd immunity will allow the Indian students access to better education and the industry with all the talent that's missing today.
The question is- who will initiate the vaccination? Who will tell what vaccine to take? Who will administer the vaccination? And who will benchmark that the immunity is proper and continuity is maintained?
It is not the government for sure. I just know that whosoever gets this done will surely change the landscape of higher ed in this region and therefore affect major systems in the world that depends on recruitment, partnerships, and revenue from this part of the world.
