Private universities give India’s young people a second chance

The large protests currently being staged by Indian students, sparked by cheating in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, India’s nationwide entrance exam for public medical colleges, illustrate, among other things, the ongoing gap between demand for high-quality higher education and its supply.

That gap has existed for many decades but has become bigger and more significant over time owing to the phenomenal growth in the country’s youth population. The number of students in the country soared by over 60 per cent between 2010 and 2025, from 27.5 million to 44.6 million, but the government lacked the financial resources and commitment to build enough new universities or expand existing ones fast enough to accommodate them.

That left more expensive and, typically, less prestigious private universities to take up the slack. The number of private universities has risen by a spectacular 486 per cent over the past 15 years, from 87 in 2010 to 510 in 2025. It is now estimated that 70 per cent of students attend private institutions of some kind.

Indeed, in some newer industry-relevant and employment-centred professional disciplines, private universities are virtually the only option. This was the case in engineering during the 1990s and 2000s. At one time, undergraduate enrolment in engineering at private institutions made up 90 per cent of the total, and the dramatic growth and success of India’s information technology (IT) sector would not have been possible without these graduates.

Today, private universities are taking the lead in launching new programmes in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, data science and business analytics, cybersecurity and design. Public institutions, less attuned to market trends, are only slowly doing the same, hampered by bureaucracy and process.

So why don’t private universities get much credit? The first and most obvious reason is that they are far more expensive than public institutions – especially for the industry-relevant courses. Hence, the chance they offer to acquire cutting-edge skills is in effect limited to the relatively small number of students – in the context of India’s huge population – whose parents can afford high fees or who have access to student loans from public- or private-sector banks.

So too is the “second chance” they offer for those who wanted to study a more traditional subject at a public university but couldn’t secure a seat. However, that wealth bias is partially offset by a growing number of private universities offering full and partial scholarships on the basis of both merit and need (or sometimes only the latter).

The second reason why private universities are not recognised for the role they play is that many are predatory institutions that offer a substandard quality of education. However, it is also true that over the years, with some exceptions, the quality of education at most public universities has declined because of lack of sufficient funding, over-regulation and poor governance.

It is also true that in recent decades a new class of well-funded private universities have been founded by various Indian tycoons, such as Shiv Nadar, FLAME, Ashoka and Krea universities. These offer better-quality education than many public universities do. So the overall public-private quality gap has narrowed.

Furthermore, it is well established that learning takes place beyond classrooms. Peer interaction and self-study are widely considered important ways of learning that allow students to develop the necessary skills for employment. And while private universities typically have smaller campuses with fewer communal spaces than public universities do, this matters less in the digital age given that so much interaction is now online – while other common spaces, such as student hostels, are just as significant for social interaction as the traditional public university campus library.

The career prospects of students with degrees from lesser colleges or universities have also improved because of a growing trend among employers – especially at global tech firms, but also in other sectors – to care more about skills and less about university pedigree. A 2025 survey of 1,602 Indian professionals found that graduates from lesser-known public and private universities make up over one-third of the workforce at the Indian branches of global tech firms, such as Zoho, Apple, SAP, PayPal and NVIDIA.

So while the concerns about the quality and price of India’s private universities will not go away any time soon, it is equally clear that neither will demand for their services. The chance they offer to study in-demand disciplines makes all the difference to their students’ life chances. So expect their numbers to keep rising.

Pushkar is director of the International Centre Goa.