The city advantage
The founders of the newly-created Ashoka University, a new liberal arts institution that aims to provide “an Ivy League education in India,” chose to acquire 15 acres of land in the National Capital region (NCR) than settle for a larger campus further away from New Delhi.
Why? An obvious reason may be that the founders are keen to establish a world-class institution sooner than later. For that, they need capable faculty members who are unlikely to be attracted to a location that is not well-connected and does not offer basic modern amenities. They perhaps also recognize that, despite all its faults and limitations, the NCR is the heart of India’s higher education.
If one looks at the geographical distribution of India’s best undergraduate institutions in arts, commerce and science, they are heavily concentrated – more than 90 percent of the top 50 institutions in each of the three areas – in Tier 1 cities (population > 25 lacs; 1 lac = 100,000 or 10 lacs = 1 million). The one half-exception is engineering colleges with 38 percent of the top 50 institutions located in Tier 1 cities. However, 82 percent of the best engineering colleges too are either in Tier 1 or Tier 2 cities (population 5-25 lacs). Altogether, nearly 80 percent of the top 200 institutions across arts, science, commerce and engineering are in Tier 1 cities – New Delhi (37), Mumbai (33), Bengaluru (26), Chennai (23), and another 34 spread across Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune.
Is it a coincidence that the best institutions are located in Tier 1 cities? Not at all.
Higher education institutions located in large cities are more likely to attract well-qualified faculty and better students. In 21st century India, it is to be expected that educated men and women, including the professoriate, prefer to reside in larger cities than in smaller ones. Large cities offer a wide range of employment opportunities, good services and basic amenities, including choice of schools and health care, active and diverse social life and overall, a better quality of life. The gap between the quality of life in New Delhi or Bengaluru and smaller Indian cities is enormous. And finally, there is the lifestyle factor. I am told that it is hard to find a half-decent restaurant that serves Chinese or Mughlai food in places such as Kharagpur and Rourkela (both Tier 3 cities in eastern India where two of India’s top 20 engineering colleges are located).
It is true that many good students and qualified faculty sometimes head to institutions located in smaller cities or towns if those institutions- such as IIT-Kharagpur or National Institute of Technology (NIT)-Rourkela- offer a supportive academic environment and good quality education. However, the number of such institutions is small perhaps because they are not able to attract the best faculty and students.
Higher education institutions in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities enjoy other advantages as well. Consider a big one – employment.
It is well known that India’s higher education institutions perform poorly in producing employable graduates. The 2013 National Employability Report by Aspiring Minds reported that 47 percent of graduates, including those in engineering and management, are not employable in any sector of the economy.
Furthermore, employable graduates from outside the top 30 percent colleges – as high as 40 percent of the total – have no way of signaling their employability to potential employers. It is quite probable that the majority of the bottom 70 percent colleges are located in smaller cities and towns across the country.
In contrast, higher education institutions in larger cities are located next door to employers. The largest employers in the country maintain a strong presence in the form of their head office and regional offices in Tier 1 or Tier 2 cities. They can and do recruit fresh graduates quite conveniently from neighboring higher education institutions. Of course, employers do send recruitment teams to Kharagpur and Rourkela. However, employable graduates from institutions which are not brand names like IIT, BITS or NIT or are not placed in national rankings, and these are more likely to be located in smaller cities and towns, miss out on such employment opportunities.
In sum, the location of an institution makes a difference both for the quality of education and employment.
India must re-think her higher education strategy
India’s government officials need to seriously re-think their higher education strategy if they want the country to make headway in raising the overall quality of education or to create world-ranked institutions. They need to build a majority of new colleges and universities in proximity to at least Tier 2 cities or faster-growing urban centers that are likely to become Tier 1 or Tier 2 cities over the course of the next 10-20 years.
It is also necessary to build many more colleges and universities in urban India because the country is experiencing unprecedented urbanization. It is estimated that 590 million Indians will live in cities by 2030.
It is important to understand, however, that not all Indian cities are equal. New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai have emerged as major centers of higher education also because they are more livable than other cities.
In sum, the importance of improving the quality of higher education in India cannot be understated. Nor can the intimate links between the quality of education and location.
The data is derived from India Today’s 2013 list of top 100 colleges in arts, commerce and science and Outlook’s list of top 75 engineering colleges. Thanks are due to Shaikh Sameer Aslam for his able research assistance.
Pushkar is a faculty member at the Department of Humanities and Management at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani-Goa. He has a PhD in political science (McGill University) and previously taught at the University of Goa, Concordia University, McGill University, and the University of Ottawa.
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