A New Kind of Global University

A New Kind of Global University

A private Indian institution branches out in the developing world
The modern campus of Manipal U. sets it apart from underfinanced public universities in India, where the private sector in higher education has grown rapidly.
In this sleepy town on the outskirts of the city of Mangalore sits a university campus that looks unlike most others in India.
The modern central administration building is made of red brick and glass. Buildings are air-conditioned. And the ground floor of the health-sciences library houses an Indian version of Starbucks.
Upon arrival, most of the 23,000 students are handed laptops through which they can get access to the Internet almost anywhere on the campus.
Manipal U. began in 1953 as a small teaching hospital and has continued to focus on medical education. Here, students learn about the human brain.
This is Manipal University, which has made a name for itself as one of the most successful private universities in a country where the private sector is more typically associated with shoestring operations of dubious quality.
Soon, Manipal may become well known across the developing world.
Its parent company, the Manipal Group, has over the past 16 years developed a network of campuses abroad, in Nepal, Dubai, and Malaysia.
In 2008 it added the American University of Antigua to its roster. And in January of this year, the Manipal Group bought a controlling interest in U21Global, an online graduate business school started by Universitas 21, a global university network.
Today the Manipal Group's international education operations bring in more than 50 percent of the company's revenue.
"We want to become a leading provider of English-language higher education in the developing world," says Anand Sudarshan, chief executive of Manipal's education division.
What is particularly striking about Manipal is that it is a company born in a developing country and focusing on students in other developing nations. As such, its evolution reflects a broader trend in higher education, where universities in India, the Persian Gulf, and even Iran are branching out to other parts of the developing world.
"Globalization has been unipolar, mainly by the U.S. and U.K., and if Manipal does this, it creates a much broader base for globalization," says Philip G. Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education, at Boston College. "It's good to have an array of choices, and it's good to know that developing and middle-income countries have the capacity and ideas to be players in the global education marketplace."
Manipal is spending heavily on global expansion. It is investing about $30-million to build a new campus in Dubai, where it has had a presence since 2000, and $10-million to enhance its Malaysia campus, which opened in 1997.
Last October, Manipal began developing a new campus at the American University of Antigua, which it bought from the New York-based Greater Caribbean Learning Resources, with an investment of $35-million.
A Modest Beginning
Manipal began in 1953 as a small teaching hospital with 100 students, one of the first private higher-education providers in post-independence India.
It was established by T.M.A. Pai, who was recognized by Ripley's Believe It or Not, the university says, for establishing the greatest number of educational institutions in his lifetime.
The late Dr. Pai was also a reformer, who believed that the private sector should step in where the government could not. In 2002 he won a landmark case against the state of Karnataka, where Manipal is located, which curtailed the scope of government regulation over privately financed educational institutions.
Over the years, Manipal benefited from the perpetually weak and underfinanced public higher-education system in India. Students who could not get into a public institution turned to the mushrooming private sector; Manipal's leaders were savvy enough to know what students wanted.
From medicine, the university expanded into engineering, management, and life sciences. It now runs 20 professional schools on its main campus in Manipal. Another campus, in the northeastern state of Sikkim, offers seven programs, including online education.
Yet Manipal's domestic expansion plans were limited by tight rules governing the private higher-education sector.
"We almost went international by default. We were growing and expanding in India, and then it became impossible to expand further in India," says Mr. Sudarshan. "When we got invited by Nepal and Malaysia to set up medical colleges, we thought that was an interesting and sustainable way to expand."
Manipal studies potential markets carefully. Places with a large South Asian population get close consideration since families are likely to have heard of the university. The company also wants to enter markets with a growing, aspirational middle class. Mr. Sudarshan says he is focusing now on emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.
Finally, Manipal's officials look for places where there is a demand for Manipal's core expertise: medicine and engineering.
"It is not risky for us; it is taking advantage of our capability," says Mr. Sudarshan of the company's expansionist strategy.
Mr. Sudarshan, who became head of Manipal in 2006, has a business background. He was a co-founder of the Microland Group, which started one of India's first software-services companies. In business circles he's described as a "turnaround specialist."
Building new campuses requires money, of course. So Manipal has designed its programs to ensure that tuition brings profit to the company, yet stays within accepted market rates.
"That is a challenge," Mr. Sudarshan acknowledges, adding that he has no cookie-cutter formula.
If a campus can't bring in a profit, he says, "we will kill institutions."
The company typically gives its foreign campuses two or three years to bring in a surplus over operating expenses. It expects them to bring in a return on their capital investments within eight years.
A Mixed Reputation
In India, Manipal has historically had something of a mixed reputation, but one that is steadily improving.
Twenty or so years ago, it was considered to be on the lower tier of private institutions. These days, higher-education analysts give the institution more respect, although sometimes grudgingly.
"Over time it has become an established brand and created a place for itself," says Premchand Palety, founder of the Centre for Forecasting and Research, which ranks universities in India.
Mr. Palety says that when he was a university student, in the mid- 1980s, Manipal "wasn't thought of as a good place" to study. It was known as a haven for wealthy students who couldn't get into the top schools, he says.
Still, students did go there, he says, because they didn't have many options. Public higher education was so limited that at the institution where he studied—the highly regarded Punjab Engineering College—100,000 students competed each year for just 100 seats.
"So if you didn't get in anywhere good, private was the option, and private meant only Manipal. They charged huge fees and benefited because there was no competition in that space," Mr. Palety says.
The private sector has since expanded rapidly: There are almost 2,500 engineering schools, most of them private, in India. Manipal has responded by improving in quality.
"Now Manipal's character has changed and it has systems in place, like good infrastructure and a decent number of faculty," Mr. Palety says.
Many Manipal students chose to go there after they failed to get into the public institution of their choice. Public universities remain the most sought after, because of both quality and price.
At Manipal students shell out about $4,100 a year, and medical students pay $9,100 a year in tuition. By comparison, students at the prestigious public Indian Institutes of Technology pay $1,600 to $2,000, including housing. Students at India's premier teaching hospital, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, pay $80 a year.
"I had no other good choice left," said Archana (she uses only that name), a civil-engineering student who is graduating this year from the Manipal Institute of Technology, one of the university's two flagship schools. "I applied in several colleges, didn't get into many, and was on the wait list on one."
Manipal administrators freely acknowledge that their students aren't among the academically elite but argue that it makes their institutions stronger.
"Our undergraduate students have to work much harder than an IIT student," says Somnath Mishra, director of the Manipal Institute of Technology. Student quality "in IIT is higher than here, so here we also have to be very strong in teaching abilities. In IIT a teacher doesn't have to make so much effort."
Mr. Sudarshan, the chief executive, says he wants to improve the quality of Manipal's academic programs and the credentials of its faculty members. The university is placing more emphasis, for example, on research and publishing.
Only about 25 percent of its faculty members hold doctorates, which is typical of an institution of its academic caliber in India.
But professors in Manipal's engineering and medical programs without Ph.D.'s must now work toward earning advanced degrees at Manipal while they continue teaching at the institution, says H.S. Ballal, pro chancellor of the university.
Mr. Sudarshan says he wants the university to become an "elite applied-research institution," in part by trying to get more corporate- and government-sponsored research projects.
The Manipal Life Sciences Centre has been recognized by India's former president as a center of excellence in pharmacogenomics.
"We want to put Manipal on global research map," says the center's dean, K. Satyamoorthy, who until 10 years ago was a senior scientist doing research at the Wistar Institute, in Philadelphia. He joined Manipal University, he says, because he wanted the challenge of building a research institution.
Fifty percent of his faculty members have had experience abroad. "We look for people coming back from the U.S. and Europe where there is more research exposure," he says.
Still, for the Manipal Group, the ultimate measure of quality is the employability of its graduates. At its engineering school, 89 percent of students who will graduate this year already have jobs, many with top companies such as Microsoft India, Nokia, and Cisco Systems.
As its quality and visibility have increased, so have student applications. In 2009, according to G.K. Prabhu, Manipal University's registrar, the university received nearly 100,000 applications for 7,000 seats.
Ties With the U.S.
Manipal also has expansion plans in India. Thanks to a new, reformist education minister who is encouraging investment, the company sees tremendous growth opportunities here.
The Manipal Group is planning to invest more than $100-million over the next two years on additional campuses in India.
Mr. Sudarshan says that because Manipal pays well, he is not worried about recruiting in a country with a faculty shortage. Campus infrastructure and amenities are also a draw.
"Here the infrastructure you need is much easier to get because red-tapism is not there. Getting things in public institutions takes longer." says Mr. Mishra, director of the engineering school.
A retired army official with a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Mr. Mishra says he chose a job at Manipal over an offer to work at one of the IIT's because he liked the idea of heading a school that wants to move ahead in research.
Mr. Sudarshan also wants to build partnerships between Manipal University in India and universities abroad, through programs in which students divide their study between India and the United States, and through research collaborations.
Already the university has 40 such relationships with foreign universities, including 15 "twinning" arrangements with institutions in the United States, Britain, and Australia.
In the United States, for instance, Manipal University's International Center for Applied Sciences runs twinning programs with the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Miami, among others. Students in these programs spend two years on each campus and earn degrees from the U.S. partner.

Source Link: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Private-University-in-India/65907/