The resignation of India’s education minister after the NEET paper leak protests has triggered a national conversation on educational reform. The immediate issue is exam integrity.
But the larger issue is whether India has the institutional capacity to build a higher education system that matches its national ambitions.
In a recent article, author and journalist Pallavi Aiyar describes India and China as “nations of the exam.” In large, unequal societies, the competitive public examination is a ticket to a better life.
It is a promise that birth, wealth, caste, region and connections can be partially neutralized by effort. That is why a leak is a devastating breach of trust.
China’s exam, the gaokao, taken this year by 13.35 million students, is designed centrally and administered by provinces.
Aiyar describes exam papers moving under GPS tracking and police escort, question-setters being isolated in secure facilities, exam halls using facial recognition and signal jammers, and even AI companies throttling some tools during the exam window.
This machinery reinforces the public belief that advancement is governed by rules rather than influence.
India’s NEET crisis raises two questions. The first is procedural: can India run high-stakes exams with security, transparency and accountability? The Prime Minister has announced a high-powered task-force to overhaul the examination system.
However, exam integrity is necessary but not sufficient. That’s because of the second strategic question: even if the exam is clean, what kind of higher education system does it feed into?
The transformational experience of Chinese higher education offers lessons. A paper forthcoming in the Indian Public Policy Review by Konthoujam Sarda and this author argues that China’s rise in universities was the result of state policy, pursued over three decades.
In 2004, no mainland Chinese university appeared in the global top 100 of the Academic Ranking of World Universities. By 2025, Tsinghua and Peking had entered the global top tier, and at least six Chinese universities were in the top 100.
The first lesson for India is sequencing. Our higher education needs a strong foundation of literacy, numeracy and teacher quality at the school level. In China, 9-year compulsory education became universal by 2010, producing a large pool of qualified students for higher education.
The second lesson is concentration. China concentrated its resources on select universities and disciplines through Project 211, Project 985 and later its Double First-Class programme.
Project 985 began with only nine universities and later expanded to 39, with the explicit aim of competing with Harvard, MIT, Oxford and Tokyo.
Between 2009 and 2013, Project 985 universities received roughly 70% of national research funding while enrolling fewer than 5% of Chinese university students.
This is strategically important. India’s problem is underfunding, which is also thinly spread. This leads to ‘breadth without depth.’ India appears in the global top five in roughly 50 of 74 critical technologies tracked by ASPI, but leads in none.
While we need a broad education system, we also need a few globally competitive institutions in artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, biotech, materials science, energy storage, agriculture and climate technology.
The third lesson is performance-linked autonomy. The funding is tied to outcomes, periodic review and the possibility of demotion. The Double First-Class programme introduced competition in a system where elite status had become a permanent entitlement.
Indian universities also need autonomy from routine bureaucratic control. But autonomy must come with accountability for learning outcomes, research quality, governance and employability.
The fourth lesson is alignment with national priorities. Chinese elite universities were linked to industrial clusters and technology missions. This fed into its strength in critical technologies.
The fifth lesson is curriculum agility. In 2025, China’s ministry of education launched an action plan for adjusting academic disciplines and majors during 2025-27.
It calls for new disciplines in frontier technologies, reform of programmes with weak demand or declining quality, stronger interdisciplinary integration, incorporation of AI tools into educational content, teacher capacity-building and closer industry-university collaboration.
A separate ministry meeting emphasized AI literacy, specialized AI tracks and the use of AI in curriculum design and teaching. Indian universities are moving at the pace of committees, approvals and outdated syllabi.
In an age of AI, biotech, robotics, climate risk and geopolitical supply-chain shifts, courses must change continually.
China’s centralized system has serious limitations: academic freedom constraints, research-integrity concerns and regional inequality. But India can learn from its strategic clarity. What should it do?
First, secure exam integrity; without trust, the pyramid collapses. Second, implement examination reform urgently. Third, identify 50-100 universities and disciplines for deep, long-horizon investment.
Fourth, give them autonomy in hiring, curriculum, collaboration and research partnerships. Fifth, connect universities to local economies strengthening decentralization. Sixth, make AI, data and interdisciplinary problem-solving part of every serious degree.
China’s example shows transformation is possible when policy is strategic, patient and serious.