India must invest in education, human skills to be among top 3 economies: Experts

As India hopes to be among the world's top three economies in the next 15 years, it must invest in education and human skills, a white paper released by a think-tank of top business schools has said.

MBAUniverse.com, a think tank and network of leading B-schools in the country, organised the 10th edition of the Indian Management Conclave (IMC) and also released a white paper on the occasion.

According to it, India will have to double its GDP, like it did between 2000 and 2006, when the GDP doubled from 476 billion dollars to 949 billion dollars. This period saw strong spurt in management and engineering education.

Robust higher education focus leading to skilling and employability will help India to become a true services economy, the report said.

Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) target of 35 percent by 2025 and 50 per cent by 2035 is necessary, which only matches that of China and is still half of the US GER, it added.

The white paper also said the number of universities, which stands at 950, needs to grow to over 1200 by 2025 to sustain the GER growth.

"Brick and mortar educational institutions will have to ride the digital highway that Digital India promises to build, reshaping their focus towards distance, online and continuing education in addition to campus programmes," the report said.

Amit Agnihotri, one of the authors of the white paper said, "Population of India will reach 1.40 billion in 2025 which will require more colleges, universities, faculty and higher Gross Enrolment ratio."

"The draft National Education Policy proposes to increase the current Gross Enrolment Ratio of 25.8 per cent to 35 per cent by 2025 along with other key requirements which would contribute substantially to achieve the five trillion dollar economy goal," he added.