Extreme circumstances bring uncertainty and numerous challenges. Indian Higher Education sector is one of them being posed with an uncertain future. India is a developing country with most of the population poverty-stricken. Many intricacies are generated with poverty such as unemployment, maladies, and much more but Education is posed as a solution to cut the roots of these predicaments. To transform the country holistically and socially, the government needs to transform the dynamics of education particularly, higher education. 

Higher education in India is the world’s third-largest after China and the United States in the terms of students. India has a great youth and workforce potential which is expected to become the largest in the world by 2030. Past examples have illustrated that CEOs of some big companies are Indians which are products of Indian Higher education. There is the capability of transforming developing India into developed India and if we overcome some of the influential challenges this is certainly possible. 

Here are the major challenges faced by the Indian higher education at various levels. 

1. Privatization of educational sector – Private Schools and colleges offer education at a very higher cost and demand donations. Many parents are compelled to abandon their child from higher education just because they are not able to arrange finances. 

2. Absence of Employable skills – Students are learning theoretical knowledge but there has been skills gap in different sectors. Recruiters find absence of employable skills from Indian graduates. This challenge should be overcome by introducing paradigm shifts in the curriculums. 

3. Prevalence of Quota System – India has great potential of meritorious students but somehow, a huge percentage of these students are restricted from the available educational opportunities due to the influence of quota system. Quota system is still is a controversial topic which experts believe that is not good if we want to uplift the higher education in India. It is believed that intelligence and merit is far more better than the group from which you belong to. 

4. Moral Issues of students – From the childhood, students are taught to prepare for those professions which have hefty salary package. This makes students money oriented from the very beginning of their career where a student mentality should be to learn as many as skills and knowledge as they can. They are told to study just to get a job with high pay which is like exploiting the future of our country with our own hands. 

5. Lack of research opportunities – We all have forgotten that the curriculum and course contents which we are teaching the generation Z right now were developed after extensive research in the late centuries. This is an alarming concern to increase the research opportunities to induce innovations. It has been witnessed that research publications from India are rising since last decade but still it saunters behind other countries with major percents. 

6. Faculty vacancies are still high – University Grant Commission (UGC), the committee for higher education has notified through the statistics that various teaching posts lie vacant which affects the teacher student ratio and sometimes, restrict authorities to give admission to more students. 

7. Low GER – GER stands for Gross Enrollment Ratio which shows how many students are enrolled at different levels for education. India has a GER in higher education sector of around 15% which is too low. This figure says it all about the number of students taking admissions for their higher education. They may be financial constraints or other restrictions which has resulted in such low percentage.