The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has recommended increasing the number of Universities from the present 350 (approximately) to 1500, almost three- fold growth. Clearly the Government cannot achieve this target alone. The Yash Pal Committee suggested that central schools and universities need to have enough money not for unnecessary frills but to function efficiently, with the requisite infrastructure. Most of the Universities suffer from fund crunch to run the show and the governments are finding it extremely difficult to keep funding. What is the answer? Private participation obviously. Failure of Postal Department has given birth to booming courier business, failure of present education system will give birth to booming education business. “Education is the best business today” says VG Krishnan, CEO, Global School of Management Science.
The present Indian education market is estimated at $40 billion and is likely to touch $80 billion by 2012. Kindergarten to grade 12 entails about $20 billion, private professional colleges entails about $7 billion, tutoring about $5 billion, vocational training about $1.4 billion, test preparation entails about $1.7 billion and pre schools around $1 billion. Private investment in education in India is growing at an estimated rate of 14% per year. Education has the potential to attract huge investments. According to industry estimates, the higher education market will grow three fold in the next 10 years to cross the $ 20 billion market. Regulatory hurdles are considered to be the major deterrent to the free flow of investments into this sector. “Non-profit requirements of schools and colleges, requirement of certification/affiliation to boards like AICTE, restrictions on foreign investments in higher education and lack of clarity on what is allowed and what is not, are concerns for investors” says Arun Natarajan of Venture Intelligence. A change of guard at the Union HRD Ministry coupled with the promise of reforms in education has made it more exciting for the investors. The investors are closely watching the reform proposals undertaken by the New HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal.
The total youth population (13-34) in India is expected to rise to 440 million by 2020 and imparting education to make them employable is simply not possible for the Government with the present infrastructure. The crux of the issue is that given a choice even the poorest parents evince greater faith in private schools believing that education in a government school does not equip their children with necessary livelihood skills. The Kothari Commission on Education had observed as early as 1964, “There is this segregation in education itself- the minority of private fee charging, better schools meeting the need of the upper classes and the vast bulk of free, publicly maintained but poor schools being utilized by the rest..
The north-eastern region of India is lagging behind rest of the country in education business as well. While national brands like Delhi Public School, Gurukul Sanskriti, etc have entered the region, technical education is yet to observe the spurt in business. The total number of seats of the engineering institutes in the region is very low at 1615 as against 4, 39,689 seats all over India. Tamil Nadu (80,417 seats), Andhra Pradesh (82,970 seats) and Maharashtra (48,250) seats attract huge number of students from outside their states and make good business. Skilled manpower availability is one of the important factors of attracting investments. Edupreneurs can infuse a revolution in the education sector. The north-eastern region being rich in human resources should unleash ample number of edu-preneurs to achieve social goals at a faster pace. Will the edupreneurs from the region be able to take the challenge of edu-business in the region.
(The writer is the Executive President of NECCI)
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