All the private medical, dental, engineering and management institutions are not profit oriented!

Manoj Pant has article in today’s ET with some facts about higher education and FDI in India but entirely his ideas are not new, in fact how can any one expect anew idea from Marxist stricken university like JNU? 

• “……all the private medical, dental, engineering and management institutions are not profit oriented! 
  
• FDI in higher education will squeeze state institutions. This is probably the main concern. That public sector institutions hampered by state controls would not be able to compete with the foreign institutions. There is no “level playing field”. But the counter argument is compelling: if state-run banks could be subject to competition from private foreign banks why not state-run educational institutions? As in the case of state-owned banks (who also have a social commitment) is it not possible that state institutions would also improve their services with competition?  
  
• FDI would bring in competition. This is easily the strongest argument in favour of FDI. Today state-run higher education can accommodate only about 10% of eligible students. Even with the ambitious plans to have new central universities this figure would only go up to about 15%. As recent media exposes show, private institutions are fleecing students via both regular and capitation fees. 
  
• Many unscrupulous state institutions have aided this process via what are called “deemed (doomed?) universities” or “affiliated institutes”. As a consequence, the better students are looking for foreign pastures while the wealthier ones obtain dubious degrees. What is even worse, the dubious institutes (many linked with domestic schools) are tying up with even more dubious foreign institutes in granting “foreign” degrees. 
  
• That is really the problem. With insufficient domestic capacity, private institutions are having a field day. In fact, the principal opposition to FDI in higher education would really come from this private sector. As is well known, most of the private education providers have links to business and/or are owned by politicians. So who will push through legislation allowing competition? Which politician would kill the goose which lays the golden egg? 
  
• It is impossible that, in the near future, the state will generate sufficient capacity to raise the gross enrolment ratio in higher education to 30-35% as in most comparable developing countries. In fact, spreading the state control too wide might well result in decline in quality of existing state institutions. Historically, R&D normally emanates from universities and the Indian state can ill afford to allow things to slide here. But why bat for the private sector?”