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Cover Story

Council for Technical Education based most successful
(AICTE) — both manned by Central Indian-origin businessman
government appointees. Similarly, in mainland Europe who
official quality gradation of HEIs is relocated to India. Since
the province of the government ap- then, the number of Amity
pointed NAAC (National Assessment universities has multi-
and Accreditation Council) which in plied to 11 in India and 11
the 39 years since it was established, overseas, transforming
has accredited a mere 9,480 col- Amity into India’s premier
leges and universities (assessment is higher education multina-
voluntary). tional providing world-
The concept of academic auton- class higher education to
omy is absurd and outlandish to In- 100,000 students men-
dia’s Central and state governments tored by 10,000 faculty.
in which education ministries are Following Amity’s
dominated by politicians and bureau- Palety (left) & C fore research team leaders example, a spate of private
crats from India’s most educationally varsities modelled on
backward BIMARU states. accepted by “we are like that only” America’s prestigious Ivy League
The vice-like grip of government government and Indian academia. universities including Jindal Global,
over HEIs was loosened in the post- But this was not acceptable to the B.M.L. Munjal, Ashoka and Bennett
Emergency ‘magazines boom’ of the editors of EducationWorld – India’s (Haryana), Flame (Pune), Ahmed-
1980s. Several new-age, irreverent first education focussed news and abad University, Krea (Andhra
periodicals including India Today, features magazine promoted at the Pradesh), Presidency (Bangalore)
Business India and Business World turn of the new millennium. We re- and Plaksha (Mohali) among others,
began publishing annual rankings peatedly questioned the global peck- have sprouted countrywide, com-
of colleges and universities based on ing order and demanded accountabil- pletely transforming India’s higher
informed public opinion solicited by ity from the Academy. And one of the ed landscape. For the first time in the
using market research and opinion panaceas we suggested was to permit history of post-independence India,
polling techniques. These rank- the entry of foreign universities into school-leaving and postgraduate
ings polls indicated a wide variance India. Way back in 2005, we wrote a students have the option of availing
between official NAAC ratings and cover story (EW March) predicting globally-benchmarked undergrad,
public opinion. and supporting the entry of for- and in some cases postgraduate, edu-
Not that the neta-babu brother- eign varsities into India to stem the cation in India at half or less prices
hood which continued to lord it expensive outflow of Indian students abroad.
over Indian higher education cared. to offshore campuses, and to raise Not only have your editors enthu-
Despite the radical liberalisation of rock-bottom standards in India’s siastically welcomed this new crop
Indian industry and the economy in HEIs. That it’s taken 18 years for this of private universities with detailed
1991, the education sector continued proposal to fructify is a commentary cover features, in 2013, after the
to remain subject to the control-and- on how tardily the country’s educracy runaway success of the annual EW
command raj of the brotherhood. welcomes new ideas and proposals. India School Rankings introduced in
Meanwhile in distant London, Simultaneously around the turn 2007 (which have since emerged as
Nunzio Quacquarelli, a maverick of the new century, a bunch of clever the most detailed and comprehensive
edupreneur, launched the Times lawyers somewhat belatedly discov- schools rankings survey worldwide),
Higher Education Rankings which ered that education was a ‘concur- we introduced the elaborate EW
rated universities worldwide on rent’ subject under the Constitution India Higher Education Rankings
several rational parameters of higher of India, i.e, that the States also had (EWIHER). Since the past ten years,
education excellence, totalled their the right to initiate education legisla- EWIHER has been ranking under-
scores and ranked them inter se glob- tion, and particularly sanction new grad colleges and universities in two
ally. The reality that not a single of greenfield private universities. separate issues of this publication
India’s 1,000 universities was ranked The first globally-benchmarked — one ranking the country’s best un-
among the prized Top 200 category private university to be established dergrad colleges and the other most
in the THE or QS (Quacquarelli fell under specially enacted legislation respected universities.
out with the THE management and by the Uttar Pradesh government As per established practice, to
introduced his own QS global uni- was promoted in 2005 in Noida by rate and rank India’s best HEIs,
versity rankings in 2010) was mutely Dr. A.K. Chauhan, the Dusseldorf- we partnered with the Delhi-based

42 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2023