Why They Won’t Come to Teach You From Harvard

Image: Courtesy: Virginia Tech

CLASSROOM FACT: Virginia Tech is among the few institutions that have shown an inclination to come to India

here is a story about how Cassius Clay changed his name to Mohammed Ali. There is an equally interesting anecdote about how Jagran Integrated Business School changed its name to Leeds Metropolitan University. Abhishek Mohan Gupta, director (marketing and strategic development) of Jagran Social Welfare Society, which runs Jagran Integrated, wanted to get his alma mater Leeds Met into the country. For five years, he waded through the maze of government approvals. No luck. Leeds remained out. And Gupta remained stuck.

He then used his last trick. He told the government that he wanted to change Jagran Integrated’s affiliation from Barkatullah University to Leeds Met. Nobody had made a request like that before. The absence of precedent befuddled the mandarins who govern higher education and they ended up giving it a go ahead. Overnight, the soul of Leeds Met entered the body of Jagran Integrated. Last year, 70 students were studying there in four programmes. This year, Gupta is ramping this up to 13 programmes. In a few years, Gupta wants to enroll 1,000 students.

That’s not all; Gupta thinks he can use the 36-acre campus even more efficiently. He plans to add two more universities, make student accommodation and food court common to all three and dub the whole thing an “education city”. He has been talking to Nanyang University, Singapore, and New York University for different programmes. He plans to use the same change-of-affiliation route, though things have now gotten easier. Thank you Kapil Sibal, Gupta must surely be saying.

The Foreign Hand that Won’t Work
Now that the Cabinet has approved the entry of foreign universities into India, expect education to go the way of the dotcom and the real estate boom that happened in the last decade. Shocking, no?  Totally.  This in spite of both the minister — Sibal — and the entrepreneur — Gupta — wanting to do the right thing.

If the minister thinks that by allowing foreign universities he can help significantly more Indians to  graduate then that’s not going to happen. If Gupta thinks that by rapidly scaling up his campuses he can deliver education of a quality that makes students employable, then that too is bit of a stretch.
Since the bill was approved, all of six universities have shown an inclination to enter India. Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Schulich School of Business, Boston University, Middlesex University and
Duke University.

But what about the big names: Harvard, Cambridge, Yale, Stanford? Don’t hold your breath. They won’t be coming. Not any time soon. That’s ugly reality #1.

Philip Altbach,  director, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, has been studying the foreign university phenomenon for a while. He says, “With the experience of some other countries, the ones who come in will be low-end, not the Harvards, Stanfords or the Oxfords. They may come in a small way: Just to build their brand or recruit students to come back to the main campus.” These storied institutions have built themselves over hundreds of years. They will not risk cutting down on quality. And add to that the danger of brand dilution. “Our world-class research programmes and our culture of multidisciplinary collaboration, which relies on having a critical mass of expertise in a variety of disciplines, cannot be easily replicated and transplanted elsewhere,” says John Hennessey, president, Stanford University. “We are loath to consider creating a satellite campus that would offer a degree programme that did not live up to the quality that we can offer on our home campus.”

Law of Large Numbers
Here is ugly reality #2. The number of students that India needs to graduate is so huge that foreign universities just can’t deliver those numbers. “Given the globally observed historical path that developed and more developed countries have gone through in order to increase their GDP levels, India needs to send 22 million people to college in 2014, an increase of 8 million from the 14 million that it currently sends. These students will become high-skilled labour force that will be required in order to support India’s growth trajectory,” says Karan Khemka, partner, The Parthenon Group, an education consulting firm.

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