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# When Nations Build Global Universities
- URL: https://theinstitutionalist.jetri.com/when-nations-build-global-universities/
- Published: 2026-04-26T18:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-13T07:24:03.000Z
- Description: India has the capital to build new universities. What it needs now is institutional ambition.
- Author: Shreyasi Singh
- Tags: Press

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e1/e2/e1e21761-39df-46cb-91d9-75e753319ad6/content/images/2026/08/SS_FE-1.jpeg)

This article was originally published in the Financial Express on April 27, 2026.

**INDIA IS ENTERING** a unique phase in higher education. New private universities are being announced, backed by philanthropic capital and enabled by a more permissive regulatory climate. At first glance, this may appear as a contemporary expansion. But history suggests it could be something more consequential — the early signs of a system-level inflection.

In the US, a comparable moment unfolded in the 19th century. Of the top 100 institutions today, 68 were founded in the 1800s. The activity was clustered: 53 of these were established between 1830 and 1880 alone. Institution-building emerged from a rare alignment of economic transformation, concentrated philanthropy, and a redefinition of what universities were meant to do.

The economic backdrop is instructive. Industrialisation accelerated rapidly, led by railroads, steel, and oil. By the late 19th century, wealth had concentrated in the hands of a small number of elite actors, and this capital was deployable. Universities require “lumpy capital” — large investments that cannot be assembled incrementally.

A relatively small number of industrialists and financiers did not merely donate to universities; they founded them. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, and Johns Hopkins created institutions through single, decisive acts of giving. Others, such as John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, funded multiple universities — helping define not just individual institutions, but the system itself.

Influenced by the German model, American institutions began to integrate teaching with knowledge creation, but did so through a private funding base. The state played a role. The Morrill Act of 1862 aligned higher education with economic needs, creating an architecture of philanthropic capital building institutions.

It is this alignment that makes the parallels with India suggestive. Over the past decade, new sectors like tech and financial services have created significant pools of private wealth. This wealth is increasingly concentrated, raising the possibility that a relatively small number of actors could shape the institutional landscape.

States like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana are easing regulations and creating space for new institutional forms. Signs are visible in multi-institution philanthropy and the rise of founder-led universities. Capital is emerging, and policy is beginning to move.

What remains less formed is intent: philanthropy that is not episodic, but institutional; not reputational, but intellectual in ambition. The risk is not failure but mediocrity at scale — campuses with world-class infrastructure, but without a clear intellectual centre of gravity.

India may be approaching a similar window. What it does now will decide whether this becomes a period of expansion or a once-in-many-centuries act of institution-building.