Cross-Border Higher Education in India: False Understandings and True Overestimates

The on going debate about the (World Trade Organisation) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) framework brings out conflicting views about cross-border education the world over. Between the enthusiastic views of trade promoters, at one end, and the sceptical reflections of academics with a traditional outlook, at the other, there are many different viewpoints. Academics who support the view that education should not be treated as a tradeable commodity argue that cross-border education should always have a revenue generation approach that would be to the disadvantage of developing countries. There are trade enthusiasts who are convinced that the commercialisation of higher education at the global level is unavoidable in the near future and that it is up to the countries to prepare themselves to benefit from the new opportunities of the global market. Sometimes strong criticism of these academics is based on false understandings. It is also true that the views of trade promoters might be equally wrong in some national contexts, based only on optimistic overestimations rather than on grounded realities. This paper explores these false understandings and overestimations that shape the arguments about cross-border education in the Indian context.