Foreign Education Providers Bill : Unlocking economic prosperity through innovation

How many Nobel Laureates (in Science and Economics) has India produced since Independence ?

None

How many Nobel Laureates (in Science and Economics) has India produced till date ?

One. The great CV Raman

How many Nobel Laureates were on the academic staff of Columbia University before or at the time when they got the award ?

57 [Reference]

As a country with more than 15% of the total world population and one that takes pride in learning sciences, isn't it a surprise that none of our universities have been able to come up with fundamental research that has been recognized by what is arguably the gold standard in excellence in sciences and economics.

If not fundamental research what about applied research. After all aren't the Intel's, Microsoft and Oracles of the world staffed with Indians ?

While our track record is slightly better here, none of them can be said to be because of our universities. Most of the successful "Indian" stories have had contributions from western learning and applying that in the Indian context. A speech by Narayan Murthy is definately worth reading here.

http://www.icbs.com/iit/learn-from-west-narayan-murthy.htm

In contrast to this if you look at the applied innovation in silicon valley and just take a few products that have come out of a single university (Stanford) the difference is striking.

Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo! all had their beginnings in Stanford and were result of academic research in Stanford being monetized as commercial applications. Today these companies together command at-least $200 billion in market capitalization.

Bottomline: Innovation and especially one coming out of academic research is crucial to a country's economic prosperity. The universities play not just a supporting but a enabling role in creating the innovations and the ecosystem around them.

If we look at the university landscape in India today, we "produce" undergraduates by the truck loads, post graduates in engineering : not many and genuine PhDs hardly.. Arguably this is because most of the educational institutes are still hostage to the "licence-permit" era in which incompetent governing bodies like AICTE dole out "approvals" for running production factories for engineers.

The result is that most of these approvals are then cornered by the "Education Mafia's" with political blessings, the standard of education falls and research is the biggest casualty.

There are almost 40 odd engineering colleges in Pune alone, yet none of them can boast of a PhD program of international repute.

Professor TT Ram Mohan argues in his blog that..
"The secret of the success of IITs and IIMs is that they attract the very best- and they do so because they are affordable"

I disagree. I also disagree that IIT, IIM or COEP for that matter impart top quality education. The secret success of IITs or IIMs is that in a populous country not short on talent the entry criteria of these institutions is so stringent that they attract the best. And since they attract the best they succeed whereever they go and bring repute to the institution. They attract the best because the "second" best institutes are those owned and managed by the "Education Mafia". Also due to the reputation of the Alumni the new entrants are guaranteed success just by association. This guarantee of future opportunities and not affordability is what attracts the aspirants to these institutions.

However as successful these institutions have been in creating successful individuals who have "succeeded elsewhere", these institutions (as compared to their repute) have failed in succeeding at fundamental or applied research.

This can change by competition. And the Foreign Education Providers Bill definately holds the potential to add competition to an industry which has been content in churning out semi-literate (and i count myself to be one of them) graduates. Now competition does not mean that it's the "foreigners" that will succeed.. it may well be the local universities.
The argument is not about the cost or the affordability but of innovation. If the "indian arm" of Stanford can undertake a research project funded by Google at a fraction of the cost and with the same quality that it takes in Silicon Valley, then the funding will come to "Stanford India".. If MIT(Maharashtra Institute of Technology) can demonstrate that it can more effectively utilize funds than the Indian branch of MIT (Massachucets Institute of Technology).. then so be it..

The bottom line is that the current "licence-permit raj" based education system will be replaced by a competition and merit based education system. Premium will be paid and demanded for quality of education and quality of research and people will pay for premium.

Isn't this the same reason why our private schools have succeeded. I am willing to pay Rs30000 per year as the fee for kindergarten not because it is cheap but because it is quality. Swaminomics has this interesting piece in which he has statistics on how as the income levels rise for the poor they are actually prefering to send their children to private and not government schools. http://www.swaminomics.org/articles/20080615.htm

Hope that this bill introduces competition in higher education and that competition in turn brings the quality. The moment india based universities (be they domestic or foreign) excel generating fundamental or applied research it's not far fetched to imagine the next Google or Cisco from the Sahyadri rather than Silicon Valley

Once that happens our economy will take a path of quantum and not incremental growth..