Loaded with faculty with foreign PhDs, these institutions promise credibility that the rapidly declining public universities have lost. https://thewire.in/education/caste-class-and-exclusivity-inside-indias-private-universities
Acquisition and demonstration of social-capital is essential for playing and winning the status-game. And in that game of participation and privilege, the most prized possession is one’s educational qualification. Quality, place and type of education determines class-positioning. No wonder, there has been an unprecedented boom in the rampant privatisation of higher-education in the last one decade, which is no longer limited to engineering, medicine and technical fields alone.
Private capital has entered and made steady inroads into the social-sciences – a bastion that was so far under the monopoly of public universities. It was unimaginable even 15 years ago to send your children to complete an undergraduate degree in humanities and social sciences in a private university in India that costs anywhere between Rs 15 – 50 lakhs. What was unthinkable has become quite a norm for a certain section of the urban elite and the middle classes, in a short span of time.
19/12/2023