Excellence is unique, not a brand.

"Can India build 20 Harvards in 20 years?" asks an editorial in the Mint. It is probably a figure of speech, meaning centers of excellence which will be ranked among the top universities of the world. Not one Indian university figures in the top 200 in the world, though we have 31 in the top 800. Trouble is that our politicians think that excellence comes from a brand and lots of institutions bearing the same brand will be equally good. Thus, there were 5 branches of the Indian Institute of Technology, but now there are 23. There was just one All India Institute of Medical Sciences, now there are at least 7, with plans to build more. They do not understand that universities are not consumer products, where a basket of products is sold under one brand. That is why companies spend huge amounts building brand equity. At the root of brand equity is trust -- that any product bearing the company's name will be good. A university cannot be made in a factory. It must have good teachers, top quality laboratories, libraries and research publications in quality journals. And it takes time. That is why there is only one Harvard, one Cambridge and one MIT. The top universities are completely autonomous, appoint their teachers and choose their students without interference from politicians. Harvard has an endowment of $32.7 billion, equivalent to Rs 2.2 trillion. Maybe, that is why job offers are shrinking for IIT graduates. China understood that excellence does not come from names. It merged small universities into larger ones and spent $2.56 billion on the top 11 universities in the first phase. "By 2003, China's share of Asian science and engineering articles had increased from 14.54% in 1998 to 22.43%; its number of undergraduate and graduate students had been growing approximately 30% per year since 1999; and by 2008, it was already churning out the largest number of PhDs in the world,...." In India,"Between 1950 and 2014, the number of universities has increased 34 times, from 20 to 677, while the number of colleges has increased 74 times, from 500 to 37,204..." "Unfortunately, a vast number of these institutions are little more than rubber stamps on degree certificates..." In short, they are cheating desperate students. To be top class universities need the best students from top quality schools. Only 39% of the poorest fifth of the children attend secondary school and 23% attend higher secondary education. Strangely, just 31% of the richest fifth of our students attend college. Why? Over 70% of children have failed Class XII board exams, 3 children committed suicide. What use is brand if you fail in school?