Learning higher education lessons from China

In the early 1980s, India had quantitatively and qualitatively more infrastructure than China. Until the last decade, India’s higher education outperformed its Chinese counterpart – both quantitatively and qualitatively – and China retained its long-term lead in primary education.

But the situation is altogether different today, as China now dominates in ‘soft infrastructure’ areas too, which include higher education.

Higher education development in India and China closely parallels their economic growth over the past couple of decades.

Higher education in India struggles with moderate reactive growth, whereas China achieves higher growth and is proactive in its goals; in no small measure, this derives from the fact that the Chinese system is more directly focused on quality than India’s.

China is a unique case in higher education development. In 2010 China achieved a gross enrolment ratio of 30% in higher education, up from an abysmally low 3% to 4% in 1990. India barely improved its enrolment ratio in the same 20-year period, moving from less than 10% to 15% enrolment.

But these figures are somewhat misleading because they do not clearly show the effects of India’s population, which is younger than China’s. Fifty percent of India’s population is under 25 years of age and thus has not yet entered the tertiary sector.
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