Indian government green signalled the foreign universities to start their study centres and universities in various cities of the country to meet demands for quality education, and to stop the brain drain from the country. The glamour of foreign universities is luring students as they visualise them as passports to settle abroad.

Globalisation has had a profound effect on Indian higher education. India is an emerging nation; for that it needs to establish knowledge-based society, which is not happening here. Private education sector is playing a key role to some extent in promoting higher education. But still implications of Indian private higher education sector are questionable. Every year number of colleges are being established which lack adequate facilities in terms of laboratories, libraries and quality lecturers. The ratio of students and teachers is very less compared to some of the Asian countries like Singapore, China and Japan.

Indian medical colleges are not in a position to produce enough doctors for population in rural areas. So called IITs and IIMs are producing trained graduates well enough to get employment abroad. Even these institutions are not in a position to produce researchers in India.

Only a few graduates are getting employment, most of the graduates from state universities and colleges remain unemployed due to lack of communication skills. This is a growing phenomenon in India due to poor quality teaching in higher educational institutions. There is a huge difference between western higher education system and Indian higher education system.

The universities in the US prefer to collaborate with private firms and other universities in order to promote academic research excellency and knowledgable scholars. Whereas Indian universities' story is different. Very few universities have signed MOUs with other universities. Interference of politicians in almost all aspects of Indian universities is a growing obstruction. The US universities recruite faculty members based on their paper presentation, quality research work in their streams as a parameter. But in India it’s a quite different process; faculty recruitment happens on recommendation of politicians and some other influential people.

The number of Ph.D scholars coming out from universities in India is very less compared to US and some other Asian countries. In the US universities, awarding Ph.D degree is based on well research, paper presentations and articles published in journals. Representation of India in science and technology research is very less due to a poor quality job oriented higher education.

Recently Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in an address at a CSIR award function, said: “We can not rest on our laurels. As a nation, we have not succeeded in mobilising enough private investment in science to raise our investment in scientific research to two per cent of GDP. We need to recognise that excellence has not percolated across all research and academic institutions. We have not been able to make an impact on a world-scale commensurate with our large scientific manpower pool.”