Doctoral education and the Political Economy of Private Universities in India

This article discusses how neoliberal market forces and the increasing dominance of ranking frameworks shape doctoral education in private universities in India. Based on thematic analysis of interviews with 25 doctoral students from three private institutions and analysis of policy documents on research incentives of 11 private universities, this study examines how processes of neoliberalisation along with the old hierarchical social relations shape the everyday conditions of doctoral work in private universities. We show how stipends, fees, working hours, publication mandates, and incentive structures function not simply as academic requirements but also as mechanisms of financial extraction, labour control, and institutional branding. In doing so, we argue that doctoral students in private universities are systematically positioned as low-cost, multi-purpose labour pools whose contributions are mobilised to compete in the academic market. This pressure includes pressure to generate ‘publishable units’ in a short time frame. Here, the private universities instrumentalise student research to climb ranking ladders and transform it into a scheme of metric accumulation and institutional branding. By analysing how national metrics are translated into internal incentive formulas and contractual arrangements, the study contributes to debates on academic capitalism and audit culture. The article adds to literature on neoliberalisation of higher education and describes how the Indian case both resonates with global trends and presents specificities shaped by the sudden expansion of private universities and national rankings.