Private universities and colleges have an important role in the massive expansion of higher education in India in the last two decades. According to latest official statistics, there are 777 universities in India. Of these around 261 are private universities. Among the 38498 colleges, more than 77% are in the private sector. They cater to 67% of the total higher education enrolment in the country. However, not enough discussions are happening in the country about the status and role, especially the social impact, of these institutions. Recently, Pritam Singh, former director of the prestigious public business school Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, made an important observation about the state of private business schools in India: While certain private institutes have managed to break away from the stereotypes attached and emerged as quality Institutes, there are still several problems plaguing the private sector today. The most important one is that owners of private colleges consider them to be businesses rather than educational institutes. More importance is put on infrastructure rather than research work and the quality of faculty is bad. Quality faculty is not willing to take up such jobs because such institutes don’t pay well or give their teachers autonomy and freedom for research. Similarly, eminent Indian journalist T.J.S George had recently brought the pathetic state of certain private professional institutions in the country into public attention through his weekly column in the Indian Express. He questioned not only the commercialisation of education but also the institutional culture in private institutions by citing a recent incident happened in South India in which the chairman of an engineering college was hacked to death by a gang armed with sickles. This brutal incident was the culmination of a long-running gang war. George raised a very pertinent question in his column: what have people of this kind got to do with colleges of engineering and stuff? In India, the majority of private