Education sans frontier

The market forces suggest that education has to be branded and sold as a product of highly flourishing service industry of the world, say Prof. Ram Harsh Singh and Dr Vipin Bihari Gupta

University Grants Commission (UGC) in its 10th plan has identified the Export of Higher Education as one of the thrust area, framed a task force and is in the process of establishing Education Export Zone within the country and centres abroad. Perhaps, the basic question is whether the education has become a commodity, an article of trade? The answer is yes!

WTO is increasingly seeing higher education as a commercial product to be bought and sold like any other commodity and strongly ensuring that its import and export becomes free of most restrictions. However, the lobby of the activists who are opposing the commercialisation of higher education and want to maintain its pious form are afraid of this. They think that if WTO is allowed to proceed on its protocol then higher education in all its manifestations will become the subject of free trade discipline just like bananas or airliners and the universities would then be forced to think more like businesses and less like educational institutions.

Perhaps, universities, as their name implies, are actually open places. They are meant for the whole universe; hence, internationalism is already inculcated in their basic philosophy. The bothering issue is their commercialisation, which perhaps is inevitable. Reacting to this issue, the International Association of Universities has resolved that higher education institutions need to seize the initiative of the internationalisation rather than reacting to external globalisation forces, such as the market, in determining their actions.

Education export trade

The global export market of higher education is huge and growing. According to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Services Group it is estimated to be about US$30 billion. More than 1.8 million students pursue their higher education abroad every year. About 45 per cent of these students come from Asia with China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and India as the top five source countries. The demand for quality higher education is expected to further increase significantly because of growing middle class in Asia. For long, the developed countries have been the major players of this trade but now even the developing ones are striving aggressively. The following eye opening statements shall elucidate this:

Malaysia is planning to make education a major export activity. Focusing on Middle-East market considering that traditional suppliers of higher educational services, especially the United States, are nervous about hosting Muslim students and at the same time Muslim parents are uneasy about sending their children to countries which are now considered somewhat unfriendly, if not overtly hostile. Also planning to review its immigration policy so that the visas could be issued to not only the spouses and children of foreign students, but also to the accompanied cooks and other assistants of rich kids from Middle East.

The chairman of the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) recently announced that they are actively working to export education into international markets. Focus also includes corporate training for international executives and setting-up of overseas campuses.

In New Zealand, Victoria University generated $17.3 million last year from foreign students and won top education exporter award. The university actively markets in 13 countries including China, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Korea and USA. NZ High commission at New Delhi works as nodal agency for attracting students from India. In Australia, the education export industry is $4.2 billion and constitutes to be the eighth largest export sector. However, it’s worried over decline in its growth and is planning to support the marketing and promotion of education in the same way as it does for tourism.

UK earns pound 1.3 billion in fees and pound 1.4 billion from off-campus business from overseas students. Considers Higher education crucial to its economy.

Netherlands, France and Germany are striving hard to make their courses available in English.

USA has so far been the major player earning $12 billion last year.

Indian scenario

India, as of now, is one of the major importers (last year nearly one lakh students went abroad and carried more than $100 million with them) but it’s not difficult to reverse this trend. There are so many plus points with us that perhaps nobody can stop us from becoming the major exporter. This sector might follow the same pattern as IT did. India has several advantages include:

• Versatility in English, the international language. l Large pool of competent and low cost manpower.
• Low cost of living.
• Value-based rich culture.
• A democratic country of diverse people;

Now the history is all set to reiterate.

There are some problems too, particularly with the infrastructure, general standard of education, pollution, corruption etc; but these are not the culminating issues and could be managed by creating special zones. After all, India has institutes that are globally respected e.g. IITs and IIMs. India’s competence lies in the ancient knowledge sciences as well as in the modern and contemporary courses. However, our modern and contemporary courses are not superior enough to be sold to developed countries; hence, the natural markets for them are the third world or the developing countries.

The ancient knowledge sciences are the potential areas for target market of the developed world and one such area of immediate attention is Ayurved. There is a special interest growing worldwide in the holistic systems and amongst them Ayurved is emerging as the most favourite. The brisk growth of Ayurvedic-Herbal health-care products and services is self-evidence.

Banaras Hindu University and Gujrat Ayurveda University have already been attracting appreciable number of foreigners. To the extent, GAU has a WHO collaborative center — the International Center for Ayurvedic Studies — which offers courses exclusively for foreign nationals. The Rajasthan Ayurved University, Jodhpur, is also designing its courses to suite to foreign nationals. Interestingly, RAU is gearing to take a great leap towards enriching the ancient knowledge science ayurved and modern technology with each other and hence making the two even more palatable and useful for the humanity at large.

Undoubtedly, there are hesitations whether the education should be treated as a commodity or not? The market forces, which are the ultimate deciding factors, suggest that it has to be branded and sold as a product of highly flourishing service industry of the global world. And we, as up-looking country, should strive to seize our share.

Prof. Singh is the founder vice-chancellor of Rajasthan Ayurved University. Dr Gupta is Head, Dept. of Pharmaceutics at L M College of Science & Tech, Jodhpur