Sunday Posts

I am having a conversion: It seems there is a case for setting up a Transnational Education (TNE) campus in India after all. I used to think that this was a bad idea. After all, foreign - particularly Western - universities wanted Indian students but did not want to embed themselves into the Indian society and economy. The TNE projects were exercises of 'crack-up capitalism', the neo-liberal project of creating extra-territorial communities. The education they offered were designed for a self-loathing elite which wanted to run away from India, offered by patronising white men who thought who knew better.  Nothing changed here: This is exactly what the TNE projects continue to represent. But the world has changed and the neoliberal ideas are now well past their heyday. We are in a world of '3 hards': Hard border, hard culture and hard money! The student mobility is reducing and one must find opportunities at home. At the same time, we now have a generation of Indian stud...

The opening of international university campuses in India has a distinct gold rush feel to it. There are 17 universities whose applications are already through and the projects are at several stages of implementation. Several are in the pipeline. The British universities were quick to move in, given their historical affinity. The Australians followed suit, taking advantage of the geopolitical bonhomie between the two nations. The Canadian universities, despite Canada being a top destination of Indian students in the last decade, were hampered by the rift between the two nations around an alleged state-sponsored assassination of a Canadian citizen. But they feel left behind, and will soon turn up in force at the India AI Summit in February, looking for deals. And, finally, the US universities, ever so inward-looking (international students at US universities make up only 6% of the population, compared to about a quarter in UK or Australia), are slower, but some, like the Illinois Instit...

India's employment data is sobering ( see here ). The pandemic has wrecked havoc and the structural problems of the economy - service sector dependence, uneven regional development and health and education challenges - are more evident than ever. Something needs to happen, and fast. To its credit, the government acknowledges the education challenge. Belatedly - it took more than 30 years - India has come up with a new National Education Policy. It is a comprehensive policy, which covers the whole spectrum of education and perhaps overcompensates the previous neglect by advocating radical change. As I commented elsewhere on this blog, it shows a curious mixture of aspirations, cultural revival and global competitiveness put under the same hood.  However, despite its radical aspirations, the policy document often betrays same-old thinking. One of these is India's approach to foreign universities. The NEP makes the case for allowing foreign universities to set up operations in Ind...

David Willetts, the UK Universities Minister, advised its universities to go overseas in search of students. ( EducationInvestor, 17th May 2012 ) Whether he, like his other colleagues in Government, seems to think that Britain is besieged by student migrants, or this is a statement of exasperation and frustrated acknowledgement that the current immigration policies will drive away the international students, is a matter of conjecture. He may draw comfort from the available data, which showed that in 2011, the 5% growth in the number of students coming to UK (total number 428,225) was far outstripped by a 23% growth in the number of students studying overseas for a British degree (total number 503,795), and particularly in programmes delivered through partner organisations (a growth of 40%) [Source: UKCISA ]. He may also point to various experiments in overseas campuses, the most celebrated being by the University of Nottingham's China campus, which, beyond its symbolic value, was ...