CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA AND THE NEEDED REFORMS (Pages 156-165) by Dr. Ashwini Roy. A. S in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

Higher Education in India is undergoing considerable change. With 600 Million people in India under 25 years old, the system is under tremendous pressure to expand. India's young population has a huge appetite for education and as the growth in the size of the middle cases escalates, millions are increasingly able to pay for it. By 2020 India will have the largest tertiary-age population in the world and will have the second largest graduate talent pipeline globally, following China and ahead of the USA. India has now become a major player in the global knowledge economy. Skill-based activities have made significant contribution to this growth. Such activities depend on the large pool of qualified manpower that is fed by its large higher education system. It is now widely accepted that higher education has been critical to India’s emergence in the global knowledge economy. Yet it is believed that a crisis is plaguing the Indian higher education system. While the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) set up by Prime Minister calls it a ‘quite crisis’, the human Resource Minister calls higher education ‘a sick child’. There appears to be endless problems with the Indian higher education system. The higher education produces graduates that are unemployable, though there are mounting skill shortages in a number of sectors. The standards of academic research are low and declining. An unwieldy affiliating system, inflexible academic structure, eroding autonomy of academic structure, low level of public funding are some of its many problems. In the light of this background this paper tries to analyze the current situation and suggest the reforms needed. Keywords: Higher Education, young population, qualified manpower, National Knowledge Commission (NKC) etc.