Higher Education in India is mixed with myriad educational issues. India has both public and private institutions of higher education. Comparably, India's public institutions are supervised and regulated by the government, while the majority of countless private institutions in India are unregulated and unaccredited by the government. Government ran colleges and universities are guided by very lax standards that are uniformly unregulated and in some instances corrupt. This contributes to poor levels of educational quality and the provision of below standard, inconsistent academic programs across the country.
In 2007, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed deep concerns regarding the "abysmally low" enrollments in the Universities and colleges of India, most likely due to their academic programs being rated below average for more than 90% of colleges and greater than 70% of the universities. The Prime Minister publically declared his fears that many supervisory faculty appointments in the state universities had become corrupt and infiltrated by decisions based on caste and communal recognition.
India's higher education system is comprised of 20 central universities, 215 state universities, 5 institutions established by the State Act, and an additional 16,000 colleges that function under these universities, in which 1800 are exclusively for women. India also has 13 universities that receive recognition as an Institute of National Importance. These institutions are highly acclaimed centers of excellence in research and academics and are recognized for producing highly skilled professionals. They are typically recognized by the government and receive some level of financial support from the government. Additionally, India has 100 universities that are considered deemed with full autonomy in setting course work, admission guidelines, fees, student instruction and in the employment of faculty. These numbers do not take into account the numerous private institutions that are operating outside of governmental guidelines, that are not recognized by the government and many times are operating without the governments knowledge.
Admittance to public colleges is very limited due to the minimal number of available academic seats for students. For example, 300,000 students apply annually to the countries engineering schools and only 3000 students are accepted, resulting in less than 1% of applicants being granted admission. Business schools in India have more than 150,000 students applying annually and the schools grant admission to nearly 1000 students, equaling less than 1% of applicants that are admitted.
India's population is 1.5 billion people in 2009. The comparison of India's population to the acceptance rate of students applying to colleges and universities provides evidence that India's post secondary educational system is unable to meet the educational demands of their population. Indian students are more frequently seeking study abroad opportunities to simply meet the supply and demand shortages of post secondary education opportunities in India.
