This article is authored by C Raj Kumar is the founding vice chancellor of OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana. He is a Rhodes Scholar.

India’s higher education sector has immense potential for making a substantive impact on the future of India. The demographic situation of India is poised to help us achieve higher levels of social and economic development. With more than a billion people who are less than 35 years of age, there is a natural aspiration for young Indians to seek opportunities to pursue university education. But this cannot be just an aspiration, it has to become a policy imperative. The National Education Policy (NEP) has envisaged an ambitious 6% target for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) investment in higher education but the reality is that actual investment is only 4%. The Gross Enrolment Ratio of India is 28%, although the aspiration of NEP is to raise this ratio to 50% in the next 10 years. This means that we need a large number of higher education institutions to be established at a relatively shorter span of time with significant investment at all levels.

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