The emergence of Hyderabad as a major education hub augurs well for the proposed Telangana State. The city has quite a few technical institutes, management colleges, universities and research centres.
The capital of present Andhra Pradesh would give a head start for the new state in view of its strong institutional base and high literacy rate of 81 per cent. Incidentally, the district of Mahboobnagar, with the lowest literacy rate of 56 per cent is also in Telangana, as per the Socio-Economic Survey of Andhra Pradesh (2012-13).
INSTITUTIONAL BASE
Apart from Osmania University, the oldest university in the State, the city has three central universities, including the top-ranked University of Hyderabad . The Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Urdu University and English and Foreign Languages University make Telangana strong in specialised education as well.
Hyderabad now houses many institutes of global repute such as the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology , Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and the National Remote Sensing Agency, and a host of defence laboratories, and space institutes. The ICICI Knowledge Park and the Shapoorji Pallonji Biotech park offer lot of scope for research and entrepreneurship. They have attracted considerable talent.
The city and surrounding areas are home to a mix of top business and engineering institutes. The Indian School of Business, Indian Institute of Technology – Hyderabad (campus coming up in Medak district), Tata Institute of Social Science Research, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences, Narsee Monjee, ICFAI would continue to drive human resource development and knowledge base in Telangana State. In addition, over 250 private engineering colleges, medical colleges and nearly 50 business schools have sprung up in and around Hyderabad .
Beyond Hyderabad too , the National Institute of Technology in Warangal as well as the Kakatiya University can be catalysts to growth. Similarly, the proposed IIT, Medak and IIIT in Basar in Nizamabad district, can have a role in the spread of education in the region.
LOSS TO SEEMANDHRA
All of these have made Hyderabad is a preferred choice for the recruiters and companies intending to invest in Andhra Pradesh. The availability of a huge talent pool has attracted many IT pharma and biotech companies so far. It is expected that this would continue.
Losing Hyderabad would be big loss for Andhra and Rayalaseema regions as a substantial number of students regularly go to Hyderabad to pursue higher studies. While there is no central university in Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, Andhra University in Visakhapatnam has been a major centre of learning in addition to universities in Guntur, Ananthapur and Tirupathi. It will have to ramp up its focus on technical and management education to be recognised as an educational hub in the years to come.