More on Indian Higher Education:40 New Colleges

From today's Chronicle for Higher Education (subscription required):

India's university system, which the government has largely neglected in recent years, is now the focus of a reform and development agenda, the country's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said as he announced plans for several new higher-education institutions.

To ensure that at least a fifth of Indians age 18 to 24 go to college, up from around a tenth, Mr. Singh announced that the government would set up five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology.

Only 7% of India's 18-to-24-year-olds are enrolled in higher-education institutions, a proportion that is just half the average for Asian countries. In January a government report recommended that India increase its number of universities to 1,500 by 2015, from only 350 now, to raise the proportion of 18-to-24-year-olds entering higher education to at least 15%. (MP: In contrast, the U.S. has more than 4,000 colleges and universities.)

Mr. Singh lamented that almost two-thirds of the nation's universities and 90% of its degree-granting colleges were rated as below average in quality and that university curricula were typically not synchronized with the needs of employers or job seekers.