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Topic · 5 essays

Education & Skills

Essays on how India expands higher education and skilling — who supplies the seats, who teaches in them, who certifies quality, and whether a qualification reaches a job.

Politics is the promise. Governance is the delivery.

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6 essays in this category

Listed newest first. Each takes one architecture at a time and closes on a prescriptive view written for a practitioner, not a commentator.

NEWEST FIRST

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The span of the record

This category runs from 21 AUGUST 2026 → 28 AUGUST 2026. Where an argument rests on a dated series, the essay carries a data-vintage note under its dek.

21 AUGUST 2026 → 28 AUGUST 2026

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Part of a series

5 of these essays belong to a numbered series, where one architecture needed more than one essay to describe it.

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The essays

Every essay in Education & Skills, newest first.

All essaysInstitutions & ReformPolitical EconomyWork & LivelihoodsState CapacityFederalism & the NortheastGovernance & DeliveryResources & ClimateJustice & LibertyHealth & Human DevelopmentNational SecurityEducation & SkillsThe Fiscal SettlementThe Degree Settlement
01Education & Skills · SeriesThe Hope That Was Priced In — What Venture Capital Did, and Did Not Do, to Indian EducationIndian edtech raised about $4.1 billion in 2021 and $321 million in 2023, on Tracxn’s count. Byju’s, once valued at a reported $22 billion, entered insolvency over ₹158.90 crore owed to the BCCI. PhysicsWallah listed in November 2025 and is putting IPO money into physical centres. Venture capital brought cheap, wide access and a sales machine pointed at children. India regulates it as a consumer product, not as education.2 OCTOBER 202602Education & Skills · SeriesThe Degree and the Job — What the Apprenticeship Numbers Actually SayApprentices engaged under NAPS rose from 3.08 lakh in 2020-21 to 9.85 lakh in 2024-25 — real growth, set against 4.33 crore students in higher education. Two ministries run one statute, two evaluations report employment on incompatible definitions, and nobody publishes the number that matters: how many apprentices hold a job a year later.28 AUGUST 202603Education & Skills · SeriesThe Students Who Leave — The Outflow, Its Measurement, and the Campuses Built to Answer ItDepartures for study abroad fell from about 8.94 lakh in 2023 to 6.26 lakh in 2025 — a fall produced by visa policy in four other countries, not by anything India did. Asked what these students spend, the government told Parliament it does not maintain the information. Four foreign campuses now operate here under two regulators, and neither publishes what any of them enrolled.27 AUGUST 202604Education & Skills · SeriesWho Grades the Grader — Accreditation After the ArrestsOn 1 February 2025 the CBI arrested the chairman and six members of a NAAC inspection committee. The FIR describes ₹1.8 crore sought for a score above 3.65 and an A++ grade. Nearly 900 assessors were then removed. The response treated the assessors as the fault. The fault is in a design that makes a grade worth buying and cheap to sell.25 AUGUST 202605Education & Skills · SeriesThe Post Nobody Filled — Faculty Vacancy as the Binding ConstraintAs on 31 January 2025, 56.18 per cent of professor posts across India's central higher education institutions were vacant, on the Parliamentary Standing Committee's own figures. The shortage inverts the academic pyramid — worst at the top, worst again in reserved categories — and the ministry's position is that recruitment is not its responsibility.23 AUGUST 202606Education & Skills · SeriesWhere the Seats Came From — Private Supply and the Regulator That Did Not FollowBetween 2014-15 and 2021-22 India added 408 universities and about 7,000 colleges. On the Ministry of Education's own returns, 65.3 per cent of responding colleges are private un-aided. The expansion was overwhelmingly private. The architecture built to supervise it was designed for a public system.21 AUGUST 2026