B. Pharma, PGDPRA
Online published on 27 July, 2017.
India has emerged as a global leader and a strong nation. Education is the key to the task of nation building as well as to provide requisite knowledge and skills required for sustained growth of the economy and to ensure overall progress. According to the Census Data 2011, India is overpopulated with a population of 121, 01, 93, 422 which means India today is a powerhouse of talent of 121, 01, 93, 422 plus. In order to convert the population from a challenge to an opportunity, the area that requires immediate attention is education and training.
An academic revolution has taken place in higher education particularly in the past half century marked by a paradigm shift in scope and opportunity. Over the years higher education system has become an enterprise having much of business orientation with all its exposure to fierce competition at different levels of stakeholders. Indian education system considered as one of the largest of its kind in the world also faces/encounters enormous challenges in the new millennium. These challenges are diversified and manifold stretching from contemporary curriculum development, quality assurance and accreditation and ethical value propositions to policy planning and governance. In a technology driven society knowledge rewrites the fate of a nation and so does higher education. One of the major reasons for India's performance for being not that encouraging was due to suboptimal investment on higher education in the recent past. With unprecedented growth of knowledge typically in the area of information and communication followed by globalization shrinking the world into a global village, competitiveness has become a decisive force of growth. This necessitates massive investment on higher education so that availability of internationally acceptable highly skilled manpower can be ensured. But, this drive for internationalization of higher education is a highly ticklish and delicate move and should not be accomplished at the cost of identity of the nation as rightly quoted “Internationalisation of higher education is one of the ways a country responds to the impact of globalization yet, at the same time respects the individuality of the nation (Knight and Dewitt, 1997)”. As a part of India's integration into the world economy the role played by potential foreign participants need a special mention. The impact of potential entrants on Indian higher education system can be felt in most of the functional areas like access, equity and quality. Moreover, in view of the inherent lapses in the regulatory structure of the system, unregulated foreign participation may lead to unfair and exploitative practices; to mention a few high capitation fees, misrepresentation of courses and corruption in admission process which may further accentuate the functional and ideological differences. Thus, in order to ensure excellence and reasonable match between demand for and supply of globally acceptable labour, striking balance has to be restored between accessibility to world-class educational system and model exemplifying national value ethics and standards.
