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This paper draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2004-5, 2010 and 2012 to examine the recent expansion of higher education markets in north India. It focuses on a group of young men who attended university in the city of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Faced with dismal job prospects, they began to improvise, making money ad hoc by acting as small-scale political brokers on campus. However, some of them subsequently utilised these improvisational skills to try and attain loftier economic ambitions. As India's education sector was liberalised, they honed in on an opportunity to establish their own profitable colleges. Our paper points to a paradox that resonates far beyond India; namely, that the continued expansion of private education is, in some cases, happening in spite of and even because of poor job growth. We also extend recent work on the theme of improvisation. By examining long-run changes, we show that improvisation is not indelibly linked to the activities of 'youth', but rather a set of practices that they may perform and abandon as they move through the life course. As such, improvisation can serve as a staging post in the efforts of young people to obtain a more secure foothold in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the initiative of the University Grants Commission of India in setting up the Infonet Digital Library Consortium (The Information and Library Network) in order to provide access to scholarly communication to the academic community in India. Design/methodology/approach - The context of higher education in India and the expansion and establishment of universities under the five-year plan is given along with details of e-resources that are being provided. The usage trends of e-resources from various publishers during 2004-2007 are detailed. Findings - The paper finds that there has been a qualitative increase in overall usage, but use is also dependent on a high-bandwidth connection. Originality/value - The study provides evidence of increased use of consortial services for access to e-resources in Indian higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Center for Global Geography Education teaching workshop held in Bangalore, India, in March 2012 which served as a collaborative forum linking geography teachers in secondary and higher education in the USA and India. It considers the inclusion of the Advanced Placement Human Geography teachers from the USA and the building of global teaching content in collaborative teams as a useful way to connect geography teachers across institutional contexts. Based on a survey of workshop participants, it also highlights some of the issues that need to be addressed for further strengthening of high school–university linkages within national and across international contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from the first year of a UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), 'Widening participation: Diversity, isolation or integration in Higher Education?' Over a three-year period this project will explore issues of diversity and integration, social cohesion and separation, equality and discrimination as experienced by students and staff on higher education (HE) campuses in India and the UK. Initial findings suggest that separation of groups on the HE campuses studied is pervasive and ubiquitous. While some such separation may be for supportive reasons, convenience, or inertia, at other times it is due to overt discrimination on the grounds of race, region, nationality, caste, class, religion, age or gender. However, most respondents said that greater integration was both desirable and possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]