From Good to Great in Indian Tertiary Education: Realizing the Promise of the National Education Policy

Abstract

India has one of the largest and fastest-growing tertiary education systems in the world. The system enrolls 37 million students across nearly 50,000 institutions. The recently endorsed National Education Policy (NEP) aims at a further doubling of the gross enrollment ratio in higher education from 26.3 percent to 50 percent by 2035. Despite its size and growth rate, and the emphasis placed on tertiary education by Indian policymakers in recent times, the system has faced continuous challenges of equitable access, quality, governance, and financing, with the quality of inputs and outputs not keeping pace with the expansion of the sector. The World Bank has supported tertiary education in India through a series of engagements in technical education at the national level, and general tertiary education in specific states. The NEP’s proposal for broad-based tertiary education reforms as a key step toward transforming the tertiary education sector in India aligns with the Bank’s global tertiary education strategy and presents an opportunity for the Bank’s engagement in this area through analytic work, dialogue with key stakeholders, and strategic engagement with states and tertiary education institutions. Based on this analysis, the World Bank in 2020-2021 expanded its engagement in Indian tertiary education through dedicated analytical and advisory work in the NEP context. Focusing on the areas of access and equity, employability, digitalization, internationalization, academic careers, governance, funding, as well as quality assurance, the World Bank conducted a series of virtual events and prepared technical reports discussing the status quo in Indian tertiary education in the context of the proposed NEP reforms and international trends. The report at hand provides a summary of the outcomes of this work.