In order to have 50 per cent students in universities, India needs to double the varsities' strength to 2,500, NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam has said.
Delivering a keynote address at the Indian School of Business (ISB) here on Friday, he said though one university and two colleges were opened every week in the past ten years, only 29 per cent of the age cohort enroll in the varsities.
Subrahmanyam also said that with a huge digital infrastructure, India has become the biggest laboratory in the digital world where one can experiment at a scale.
"Today we have 1,200 universities and slightly more than four crore students, but that's only 29 per cent of the cohort age enroll in the university system. Actually, at least 50 per cent of the students should be in colleges.
"We need to double the colleges and universities in the country. The country needs 2,500 universities. It may look like a lot of universities are not up to the mark or whatever, but the fact is, you need those numbers