Commercial University Ltd in New Delhi offers degrees in commerce, one of hundreds of private colleges trying to fill an education gap as India's growth creates a middle class eager for its children to succeed.
The operation doesn't have a campus, nor are its degrees recognized by the government. Commercial University, based in a post office building between the capital and the sprawling streets of the old city, is one of more than a dozen institutions labeled as "fake" in an alert on the website of the University Grants Commission, India's college regulator.
Bogus degrees are a symptom of the crisis in India's higher education that prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to promise 1,000 new universities and hire S Ramadorai, former chief of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, to upgrade the system. Failure to prepare students for India's new industries risks squandering the nation's biggest competitive advantage -- the youngest population among the world's top 10 economies -- and has forced companies led byInfosys Ltd to build their own colleges.
"There is a need to bridge the gap between what is required to do the job and where the education system leaves the students," said Srikantan "Tan" Moorthy, head of education and research at Infosys, the nation's second-biggest software company. "Bridging that gap, in our experience, takes quite some effort."
Singh, Moorthy and overseas universities that want to build campuses in India are running out of time. India needs to add 340 million skilled workers in the next decade if the country is going to lift economic growth to 10 per cent, the prime minister said.
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