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TOP-RANKED UNIVERSITIES

PRIVATE GOVERNMENT
1 Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Karnataka 1 Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru
2 Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani 2 Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai
2 Amity University, Noida 3 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi
3 OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat 4 University of Delhi
4 Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication 5 Anna University, Chennai
Technology, Gandhinagar 6 Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), New Delhi
4 Thapar Institute of Engineering &Technology (Deemed University), 7 National Law School of India University (NLSUI), Bengaluru
Patiala 7 Delhi Technological University, New Delhi
5 Ashoka University, Sonipat 8 Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru
5 International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad 9 National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS),
6 Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Deemed University), Coimbatore Bengaluru
7 Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) University 9 Jadavpur University, Kolkata
8 Shiv Nadar University, Gautam Buddha Nagar 10 University of Mumbai
9 Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai 10 Panjab University, Chandigarh
9 ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, Hyderabad
10 Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune

and pharmacy colleges, but excluding are not permitted to describe them- for over five millennia until almost
medical and law colleges which are selves as universities simpliciter. In two centuries of the British Raj, the
subject to licensing and supervision all advertising and printed material, Indian subcontinent with its free trade
of the Medical Council of India and they must introduce themselves as and free markets contributed 20 per-
the Bar Council of India. ‘deemed-to-be’ universities. Secondly, cent of global GDP, was enabled by in-
In turn these supervisory and reg- unlike government/public universi- dependent India’s first prime minister
ulatory institutions are tightly con- ties they are not permitted to affiliate Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress
trolled by the Union education (for- undergrad colleges. It is this commu- party who were inspired by Soviet-
merly HRD) ministry. Thus for over nist-style reluctance of the State to style socialism which has since gone
seven decades higher education has leave academics to manage even the bust worldwide. In the event, academ-
been over-regulated by the neta-babu best institutions of higher education ics lost their status as independent
(politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood. that is the root cause of the also-ran intellectuals and became mere em-
Of the country’s 39,931 undergrad col- status of contemporary India’s HEIs ployees of the State and acquiesced to
leges, a mere 827 have been awarded in the QS, THE and other WUR league the loss of academic autonomy. The
limited autonomy. tables. outcome is the pathetic rankings of
In sum the vast majority of HEIs Curiously the great majority within India’s HEIs in global WURs.
are being micro-managed by general- post-independence India’s HEIs don’t Against this depressing backdrop
ist bureaucrats of the Union educa- seem to mind State control of the the promotion of a substantial and
tion ministry and their hand-picked academy even though there is a con- growing number of private universi-
appointees in an alphabet soup of sensus within the academy that per- ties established under special state
regulatory agencies — UGC, NCTE, vasive government control has ruined governments legislation — education
AICTE, MCI, NBA among others. The the country’s high-potential higher is in the concurrent list of the Con-
much prized autonomous status con- education system. This is because stitution with the Central and state
ferred on 827 colleges is restricted to communists, leftists and socialists — governments empowered to enact
academic freedom. In the matter of who accept State control of education legislation — offer the prospect of a
introducing new study programmes as normative and inevitable — mas- renaissance of India’s compromised
and levying tuition fees, even autono- sively infiltrated the academy in the higher education system. In the new
mous colleges are obliged to obtain immediate years after independence millennium, a spate of new genre
sanctions and clearances from affili- and almost completely supressed lib- private varsities — Amity, O.P Jindal
ating universities, and the state if not eral academics in favour of private Global, Ahmedabad, Ashoka, Shiv Na-
Central government. enterprise and free market ideologies. dar, B.M.L Munjal, Bennett and Krea
At the university level, even if high- This silent conquest of the Indian universities — promoted by enlight-
performing private universities are academy by confused Left academics ened industry and business leaders
awarded full autonomy by UGC, they ignorant of the historical reality that have sprung up across the country.

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