Globalization and Transformation of Higher Education in India: A Paradigm Shift in the Policies of Development and Social Justice

Globalization is a process of change affecting simultaneously both the developing and developed societies in a variety of ways from ‘the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual.’ Globalization refers to ‘the increasing interdependence of the people across the world, it refers to the increasing impact of living and working in a single, global market place, but more fundamentally, it refers to a basic shift in the institutions of our lives’. As a result we can see a process of transformation in different institutions of the society. India has adopted the policy of ‘globalization, privatization and liberalization’ in 1991 in order to improve its economy. However, the process of globalization gradually extended to other institutions of Indian society. In the field of higher education a number of structural changes have been made in order to facilitate the process of globalization. In pre-globalization period, the higher education was mainly supported by the state, but in last two decades the number of self-financed educational institutions and private universities has been increased and these institutions are now in a competition with the state and central universities. Apart from these structural changes digitalization of the educational sector and success of software industry has not only transformed the structure of the technical and professional education but also changed the gender ratio in these sectors of higher education. The present paper is aimed to analyze the dynamics of the globalization in transformation of higher education in context of development and social justice.