Director: Daniel C. Levy

Hostility toward For-Profit Higher Education

(Summary by Yingying Xu)

PROPHE Summary:
Sylvan Learning Systems, a private company operating higher education in several countries, shut down its new Indian campus-South Asia International Institute--due to the hostile regulatory climate toward for-profit institutions in the past year. This hostility was manifest in a summer 2003 Supreme Court decision. The decision then influenced accreditors and states in regard to all private, for-profit education. This made it impossible for the Institute's accreditation application to be approved promptly. Sylvan helped the students transfer to other institutions and financed their study elsewhere. It plans to continue studying approaches it might take in India, perhaps in cooperation with local private partners.

For the full story see the Chronicle of Higher Education, February 3, 2004. "Sylvan Closes College in India After Just a Year, Citing Hostile Regulators," by Goldie Blumenstyk.

PROPHE Observation:
Sylvan's setback in India is both notable and limited because it contrasts with Sylvan's striking successes in penetrating other countries. The Indian example underscores that private higher education-particularly for-profit-is not legitimized or secure in many countries. Even a country like India, which has heavily engaged in broader marketization and privatization, and which has traditions of political decentralization, shows in this Supreme Court case and related regulation that prevalent attitudes can bring on centralized decisions inimical to types of private higher education growth. Moreover, the recent government actions have thrown doubt into the functioning of India's already significant private higher education, leaving a possible gap between what exists de facto and de jure. Additional uncertainty surrounds the rules and prospects for private non-Indian penetration of the Indian domestic higher education market.