The continued emergence of?more non-accredited institutions in?India flies in?the face of?government efforts to?contain them and is?symptomatic of a?larger imbalance between supply and demand for higher education, scholars have said.

This month, India¡¯s University Grants Commission (UGC) warning students against enrolling in?so-called ¡°fake universities¡±, which are?not authorised to?give out degrees.

The warning, which included a list of 20 such institutions in India, is not the first such notice published by the UGC. There is a long-running problem of such institutions ¨C often of dubious quality ¨C cropping up in the country.

Academics said their continued existence and growth, despite government attempts to stamp them out, reflected both structural and economic factors.

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Saikat Majumdar, professor of English at Ashoka University, said fake universities were a ¡°widespread problem¡± in India, where ¡°corruption runs both deep and wide¡±. But profiteering organisations have a ready audience in India¡¯s massive young population.

¡°Of the section of people who cannot find spaces in the recognised education system, be it arts and sciences or professional [and] technical, those who can afford it go abroad, and some of the rest end up joining questionable institutions here,¡± said Professor Majumdar.

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An expanding middle class was now able to afford education beyond the country¡¯s state-subsidised universities, where ¡°competition is fierce, given the widely skewed ratio between applicants and available spaces¡±, he said.

And across the nation, education is highly coveted, not least as it is closely tied to later career prospects.

¡°The middle-class variant of this anxiety, driven by parents who have childhood memories of a severely limited, socialist economy with few jobs, is the obsession with the need for secure jobs, and hence they may easily fall for fake promises.¡±

¡°There¡¯s an absolute clamour for education,¡± agreed Shruti Kapila, professor of history and politics at the University of Cambridge.

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¡°It¡¯s also very lucrative. But there are no clear standards,¡± she said, adding that anyone, including local politicians and entrepreneurs, can set up a private institution.

While public universities do not come close to satisfying demand for education, top private institutions are highly selective and expensive ¨C ¡°prohibitive¡± for the middle classes, let alone the poor.

Youth unemployment, which is in the country, has also contributed to a rash of dubious colleges, with higher education becoming ¡°a?way of passing time¡­a?kind of?holding pattern in society¡±, Professor Kapila said.

Mousumi Mukherjee, deputy director of the International Institute for ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Research and Capacity Building at O.P. Jindal Global University, noted that the haphazard application of rules in various Indian states has not helped, either.

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¡°Regulatory and quality assurance mechanisms have also not been uniformly effective across all states with[in] the country,¡± she said. ¡°Hence, there has been a proliferation of poor-quality private institutions.¡±

Academics did not express much hope for improvement any time soon, with Professor Majumdar predicting that the problem would most likely worsen.

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¡°The more public higher education gets weakened in this country ¨C and the governmental onslaught on it is unrelenting ¨C private players will rise in importance, and a large proportion of them will always remain questionable and blatantly profit-seeking, including those which operate within legal parameters. There will always be fake ones.¡±

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com