Bringing Moocs to solve India's higher education problem

One of the big problem in India right now is to provide quality higher education to every one. One of the good step in that direction is the NPTEL program and they have done a good job of providing certification for their online courses. However this year just in Delhi there will be over 150,000 kids who will have a rough time getting admission in university as there are not enough number of seats. What government can do is to open a mooc university which will help not only in reskilling but can also provide everybody the opportunity to gain a certification and degree. Considering the success of Georgia Universities tie up with udacity to provide a legitimate degree and now Coursera jumping into that its high time we do this in India.  Edx is also providing the global freshman curriculum through Arizona State University. American Universities will be very reluctant to provide degree as the end product as education is a big business and this is where India can come in and fill the gap. Several factors work in our favor. We have a pressing need to educate large number of people and we can do it cheaply as we are doing with NPTEL certification.

    Take for instant the MITs free OCW program. Its been 10 years and still they haven't been able to provide all the video lectures for their courses and they are way behind India's NPTEL in terms of sharing their resources inspite of the massive funding they enjoy!

     Coursera when started initially had big and lofty goal of making the content available for free but inspite of thier best intention have now been struggling to provide the upper level courses.
     India will have to take a lead by providing the way to certification. The model could be where you can take exam and get the degree. The exams should be very hard and test your mastery and should be affordable. The goal is that anyone who has passed those exams has demonstrated the mastery of the subject.