Education is the backbone of any nation. It helps the population develop itself and attain skills to represent the nation in a global job market. This is a very big reason why nations around the world make large investments in the education sector. Apart from its apparent role in improving the financial status of people, education has a multi-faceted approach to transforming the lives of people. 

Indian Education System

The education ecosystem of India has come a long way from gurukuls to modern educational institutes. We can definitely say that globalization has a big role to play in it. For centuries globalization has led to the progress of the world. It has changed the way we travel, trade, migrate, spread information and cultural norms, disseminate knowledge, and more. 

Needless to say, the Indian education system we see today is an amalgamation of decades and decades of globalization. Today, the Indian education system is composed of three components — Primary education, Secondary education, and Higher education. 

In the current scenario as well, the Indian education system is changing with the impact of globalization, liberalization, and privatization. This exchange is helping it become competitive and evolve in all spheres. This includes conquering the three biggest challenges of the Indian education system — expansion, excellence, and inclusion. Also, globalization has led to a shift in focus from traditional and cultural education to more emphasis on scientific and technological education. 

Impact of Globalization on Indian Education

It is an undeniable fact that countries that were emerging from poverty and weak economic structure had a great reliance on the private sector for providing education. This has led to some degree of commercialization of the education sector, thus making it an industry. 

With this, globalization is giving way to a free market philosophy, and that too explicitly. Commercialization of the sector has led to a spike in specialized institutes offering skill-based education. In view of globalization, many universities and colleges have started to up their education offerings – beating government institutions. This did increase the interest of students to study in private institutes. However, once the institutions start self-financing, there are no breaks or government provisions available to benchmark the prices they are putting on the courses. Meanwhile, the government struggles to keep up the quality of education and make education affordable. 

In this disparity, education becomes more accessible to the top layer of society, ignoring the need to uplift the social and economic status of people from all walks of life. As the job market becomes more narrow and precise about the skills it entertains, the polarization between the elite and non-elite becomes more and more apparent. 

Growing competition for seats

Meanwhile, there are entry barriers for the non-elite in the private institutions imposed due to the price factor; the number of available elite institutes adds up to another. There are very few globally accredited or recognized institutions, and hence there is very high competition among students for each seat. This has resulted in students looking for education opportunities abroad. 

Furthermore, universities and institutions abroad see India as a great market opportunity. They are likely to bank up the long-standing issues in the education sector and want to partner with Indian universities to increase their profits. 

Other challenges 

One of the biggest problems with the education sector in India is the mindset itself. The nation seems to still work on the principle of producing workers and industrial laborers. In short, they do not focus on knowledge workers but rather are happy with their image of being service providers. For India to combat the race of globalization, they need to change its viewpoint and make some informed decisions about changing its curriculum. They must keep evolving their curriculum to match the market. 

Some of the other challenges imposed by the globalization of education are: 

• Faculty shortage
• Quality of education 
• Incentive structure

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