Education Market Poised to Soar
Tuesday, 12th August, 2008:
New Delhi:Realizing the importance of revamping the education system in the country both in terms of quality and quantity, the government has decided to invest Rs. 85,000 crores under the 11th Five Year Plan period for the expansion of higher education facilities. But as this would still not be enough for a country with only 11% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) and the The General Agreement on Trade in Service (GATS) has also recommended removing all trade barriers in higher education and making it a global commodity, market pundits are expecting deregulation of the education market soon. The ratio of India's population and her higher educational institutions is very disproportionate as compared to most of the developing countries of the world (USA with a population of 300 million people has more than 2364 Universities whereas India with more than 1 billion population has around 370 Universities).
And in a country of more than a billion, 35% of whom are illiterates, only government initiative would not be sufficient to make it a knowledge based society. Considering the fact that 90 million students are already enrolled in the private schools and flourishing business of the coaching classes, the worth of India's education market is poised to soar. As preschool education has become an integral part of education in the urban areas, analyst anticipate a tremendous growth in this sector too. According to a CLSA report, the present worth of India's education market is $40 and over the next four years (i.e., 2012), the entire education space is projected to be worth nearly $70 billion, with nearly 40 per cent of the urban children going to pre-schools and some 90,000 private K-12 schools. Among colleges, there is expected to be an addition of 800 engineering, 300 MBA and 60 medical schools in India. With the increasing demand of education and technological advancement, various other education service providers are expected to get benefited. Thus apart from stationeries, preschool education, learning aids, e-learning business is expected to soar despite the slowdown of IT and some other areas of India's economy.
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