India needs to slash the number of universities and colleges

India is faced with two rather paradoxical challenges: its need to increase student enrolments but also to reduce its number of higher education institutions.

Those ambitions might sound contradictory until you examine India’s tertiary education landscape, where some 44 million students are enrolled at a staggering 58,000 institutions. More precisely, India has about 1,150 universities, 45,000 colleges and another 12,000 standalone institutions, which equates to fewer than 800 students per institution.

Dig deeper and you will see that only around 8 per cent of the 45,000 colleges have more than 2,000 students enrolled, and just 4.5 per cent have more than 3,000 enrolled. Compare this with China, which has fewer than 5,000 higher education institutions enrolling around 35 million students, and the US, which has around 4,000 higher education institutions enrolling around 16 million students.

Bigger universities or colleges would have many benefits. Students would have more vibrant campuses and greater opportunities for peer learning; and institutions would benefit from economies of scale. With the exception of specialised institutes, for instance, smaller colleges and universities generally find it harder to attract quality students, faculty and funding. Phasing out such institutions will also raise the bar for higher education and encourage competition among the institutions in the transformed ecosystem. And India’s regulator will find it easier to regulate and monitor quality in a smaller number of institutions.

Transforming the system by shutting or merging thousands of colleges is, however, a daunting task fraught with problems. Institutions with fewer students are often located in remote areas, where they play an important role in providing access to education. Shutting them down risks losing millions of students who might not want to migrate to larger districts and cities.

Closing an institution is also a lengthy process, which might take four or five years to ensure minimal disruption to existing students. Faculty and student morale and performance are likely to deteriorate during this transition period.

Privately owned and managed institutions operating at low densities are also bound to resist closures vehemently because they are sitting on large land banks and built infrastructure.

Nevertheless, India’s government has recently drawn up plans to cluster colleges operating within close proximity and merge existing institutions owned and operated by the same management. These schemes are steps in the right direction, but the government should go further. Guidelines and a timeframe for the closure of low-performing institutions or those with fewer than 500 or 1,000 students are needed.

These must be accompanied by a plan to transfer students to other institutions. Meanwhile, high-performing institutions should be encouraged to take more students, even if that means multiple intakes in a year.

Above all, a strong communication plan needs to be in place to articulate the benefits of undertaking such an initiative to students, parents and faculty.

At present, the focus in Indian higher education is on increasing enrolment to 50 per cent in the 18-23 age group by 2035, up from the current 28 per cent, a scenario that would create a sector of some 80 million students. It is, however, equally important to ensure students get enrolled in good quality, large and vibrant institutions.

Though merging higher education institutions and phasing out smaller institutions will bring a lot of criticism and ruffle more than a few feathers, the long-term benefits of having large, well-resourced institutions far outweigh the short-term pain.

Policymakers need to bite the bullet and implement measures to create such institutions for the benefit of Indian higher education in the long run.

Manigandan Ganesan is a management consultant and director at KPMG India. These are his personal views.