Higher education is increasingly becoming a revenue-generating sector throughout the globe. The forces of globalization have rendered various economic benefits to the countries promoting international higher education. For instance, in 2001-02 foreign students brought in more than $ 11.95 billion to the US economy and in Australia, education has emerged as the eight largest export revenue-earning sector. India needs to awaken to the global trends and grab as much market share as possible to keep itself ahead in the knowledge economy.

Education is a big business everywhere else in the world. The education business in the world today is $2400 billion per year. That would be 4 to 5 times the size of IT and software. If we pick up just 10% of the world business, we would be able to increase our GDP to 50% in the next 10 to 15 years. We cannot afford to remain static by producing a mere handful of Indian engineers and management graduated each year. The education sector needs to be enterprising and favorable to attract the global citizens as well.

The total numbers of foreign students studying in India in 2002-2003 were around 8000. Though Indian higher education enjoys a good reputation for its standards; we need to refurbish the system to widen its reach to a larger population of foreign students. It would not be easier to attract students form countries, which have already established themselves in the education sector, for instance, USA, Australia, Europe etc. A proper marketing strategy needs to be adopted to sell the Indian higher education in the international markets. The competition would become worse with the increasing entries of various countries into this sector. An early entrant would probably get more time to establish the credibility for its quality standards.

Higher education in India would inevitably become an open sector facing the trade flow especially after General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS) regime. Education is identified as one of the 12 main services, which have to be opened up for free flow of trade between countries. Higher education would then inevitably become an internationally tradable service. However, the GATS would come into force by April 2005.

"India needs to gear up now to form a platform to launch its higher education in the international market as soon as GATS comes into force. The GATS agreement can only be applied to countries with public-private partnership. With increased public-private interface, high quality would surface with maximum good to the students," says Founder and President of Rai University, Vinay Rai. Interestingly, with trading in services allowed, the scenario spells for an increase in India's market share for education globally.