Globalization and Higher Education in India

The globalization is a process which is now transforming every sphere of our social, cultural and political life both in the developing and developed countries. Transnational flow of the capital, commodities and people is an essential feature of the globalization. This creates homogenization of higher education although in a very limited sense to enable the mobility of the potential population of the countries who opened their economy for global trade in last few decades. This requires the standardization of the education system in terms of content and quality of education throughout the world. In India, the system of higher education is highly fragmented and stratified and produces students of different qualities. A large number of students having different social background and different type of schooling up to secondary level also vary in their educational attainments as well as in their career graph. They usually fall short to the national and international standards. Only few institutions of higher learning have the capacity to produce the students who have potential to compete in the global job market. Thus, globalization poses a new challenge to make necessary structural and qualitative changes in the institutions of higher learning in order to cope with the changes taking place in the globalized economy of the country. The present paper analyses various dimensions of the intricate relationship between globalization and higher education in a developing society like India.