Globalization & Its impact on Higher Education

1. Explain the concept of globalisation. Discuss how it has impacted higher education system in India.

Globalisation refers to the process of the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across international boundaries. It is principally aimed at the transcendental homogenization of political and socio-economic theory across the globe. It is equally aimed at making global being present worldwide at the world stage or global arena in each and every field of life. 

The 1980s and then 1990s have witnessed rapid changes in the domain of higher education. Internationalisation and globalization are on high agendas of governments and universities. Globalisation had changed the requirements of skilled, learned and educated manpower and industrial needs. Machine based industry needs skilled, innovative, feasible and new ideas. The global economy is now beginning to bear upon the international role of higher education. 

Universities are at present engaging in enrolling international students, becoming partners in inter-institutional schemes, and pushing forward in the drive towards globalisation, students, academic staff and curricula are transferred and exchanged between institutions, accreditation agencies ensure promptness in accrediting learning experiences and governments append their signatures to cooperative projects in higher education. In the context of the above changes, the universities must take the initiative in different arrangements for their future if only for their own good.

According to this perspective, universities have to envision their future in a most creative way in order to escape the trap of offering more of what already exists. The task facing people in higher education is to think beyond the constraints of conventional wisdom, if universities are to respond to the challenges and uncertainties of the new century, they must find fresh ways to do so.

Against the backdrop of globalisation and linking education to industry and the world of work, traditional degree programmes are increasingly be replaced by continuing educationa1 lifelong learning. Pure teaching is replaced by research base learning. Teachers are facilitators than the transmitters of the knowledge, 

Further it is not only the developments of globalisation and liberalization which played a crucial role in setting the aims, role and functions of the universities. Not only the universities, but also the role of government is also changed. Higher education need high rate of investment-in infrastructure, academic and research program, teachers- to cope with the challenges rising in this globalized world. The limits of universities which are hindering the high growth of higher education should be identified and eliminated. And accordingly, the role of societies in which universities functions should be set accordingly.

In this context universities should change themselves and should responded with sufficient speed at an appropriate levels to the technological, economic, social and demographic changes taking place in this globalized world. They must seek to engage in a wide ranging and critical dialogue within society to secure the conditions of both the future growth and sustainable development of both.