How Amity University Broke Rules, Survived Adversities, and Came Up

Has any other Indian university broken as many conventions as Amity? Perhaps not. Firstly, Amity broke the venerated rule of having just a large campus and expecting students from everywhere to show up there. Instead, Amity went to wherever students were in plenty, and formed reasonable campuses. Secondly, in a nation where high quality institutions never advertised, Amity advertised as though there was no tomorrow. The Noida headquartered private university has also faced more serious adversities than perhaps any other university in India. How about a de-recognition of its B-School by AICTE? Amity has survived that after a protracted battle. How about extradition requests for its promoter by a foreign nation? Amity has survived that too, at least so far. Amity is not just surviving such adversities, but thriving to become India’s largest multi-campus private university with 1,00,000 students on its rolls. And this almost mindless pursuit of quantity has not come at the cost of quality. Though Amity is not the quality leader in most disciplines, Amity Law School and Amity B-School stand out as exceptions, while their engineering courses are also starting to get respected among the nation’s best. Can Amity continue this kind of performance for long? Seasonal Magazine identifies seven traits that makes Amity tick to find out whether it can continue in momentum, especially in the backdrop of too many private universities offering stiff competition to Amity in almost all cities they are in:

How Galgotias University Differentiates Itself Amidst Tough Competition

Nobody would disagree that the higher education scenario in India is getting overcrowded. Before the advent of private higher education itself, the country had a formidable portfolio of 42 Central Universities, 285 State Universities, 150 Deemed Universities, around 50 IITs/IIMs/NITs, and the thousands of affiliated colleges. But then, India is not only a vast nation, but the second-most populous country in the world. Demand for admissions clearly outnumbered supply of seats in most subjects, back then. To fix this mismatch came first self-financing colleges, and then, private universities. Today India has around 115 private universities. Has the tide finally turned, and is supply of seats greater than demand for admissions today? Most probably it is getting to that stage. Here is where the challenge lies for a private university like Galgotias University (GU), based in Greater Noida. If it has to survive and thrive, it has to differentiate. What GU has basically done in this regard is to play up their natural strengths, and fortify themselves in wherever they were lacking. Seasonal Magazine reports on the seven strategies of Chancellor Suneel Galgotia and CEO Dhruv Galgotia: