A heavyweight — and undoubtedly welcome — advertiser on several national 24×7 English language news channels, the Noida-based Sharda University (SU, estb.2009) is riding high on the professional education boom. One of the new genre private universities empowered by state government legislation, SU is the brain child of Pradeep Kumar Gupta (44), a first generation edupreneur from Agra, Uttar Pradesh.Driven by self-belief and the passion to make high-quality professional education available to the short-changed youth of Uttar Pradesh (pop.180 million), Gupta — a science graduate of Agra University — began his career as a small-scale manufacturer of scientific instruments (for lab use) in 1980. In the course of business I visited numerous privately-promoted professional educa-tion institutions in the south, where I came across large contingents of north Indian students. This prompted me to think about setting up professional education colleges in Uttar Pradesh, says Gupta.
In pursuit of this dream, in 1995, Gupta constituted the Sharda Education Trust (SET), which promoted the Hindustan College of Science & Technology in Agra in 1996 and the Hindustan Institute of Management & Computer Studies in the same city in 1997. Thereafter, one institute of professional education was promoted every year — Anand Engineering College (1998), Babu Mohanlal Arya Samarak Engineering College (1999), and the Anand College of Pharmacy (2000). In 2005, SET diversified its operations into medical education, and also set up an administrative office in the new township of Greater Noida.
In 2009 when the number of students in SET institutions crossed 20,000, Gupta petitioned the Mayawati-led BSP government to enact the Sharda University Act, 2009, which has conferred full curriculum planning and degree-awarding powers to a new eponymous university which offers degree programmes in engineering, business management, medicine, dentistry and clinical research on its 62.3 acre campus in Greater Noida. After setting up several colleges of professional education which are grouped under the Sharda Group of Institutions, securing academic auto-nomy was the natural next step as the affiliating universities didnt leave us much room to innovate and excel. Therefore it was always my ambition to establish an autonomous university, says Gupta, who is keen to build SU into a model institution incorporating best global practices.
An active member and former president of the Delhi-based Education Promotion Society for India, who believes that greater private sector involvement in tertiary education is a necessary pre-condition of national development, Gupta laments rigid entry barriers which are discouraging private sector investment in higher education.
Most government colleges are experiencing falling enrolment despite heavy subsidisation of tuition fees. They are too set in their ways to change. Therefore greater private sector involvement is vitally necessary to meet the rising demand for quality higher education, says Gupta.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)