Land for institutions of higher education

The Punjab government has given ISB 100 acres of land in Mohali. BS is critical of institutions of higher education appropriating vast tracts of land:

Why do India’s institutions need so much land, and that too subsidised by the taxpayer? In an increasingly urbanising India, with land costs going up, the idea of large campuses, and of ones far away from city centres, should be discouraged. Some of the world’s best educational institutions function out of tall buildings in city centres. The only purpose large campuses serve is to preserve greenery and forest cover! If private institutions wish to acquire land, they should pay for it, more so if these are institutions that charge hefty fees and have well-heeled trustees, like the ISB does.

Why would they want 100 acres to build a business school that houses 500-odd students? Government-run universities and colleges, which cater to thousands of students and offer training in a number of disciplines, often operate from much less land. Is it any wonder that people whose land is acquired by the government and given out free to others feel the way they do?

There are answers to the questions raised here. Renting apartments is not as easy or inexpensive as it is in the US and elsewhere- a new batch of 500 or 1000 students will not find it easy to find rental accommodation in the vicinity of a college. Housing faculty and students on a campus makes for smooth functioning of the institutions round the year despite dislocations in the cities in which they operate. Campus accommodation is one of the few attractions of an academic position at IIT or IIM and it remains one of the very few means of attracting Indian faculty from abroad.

That said, questions may be asked as to why ISB needs so much land when it uses a visiting faculty model. We also need to push the IITs and IIMs to scale up their capacities on the land they occupy.