A study of supply chain and operations of iimb hostel mess to build an efficient not for-profit mess model

Abstract

India has one of the largest higher education system in the world with the number of colleges more than 17000 with an enrolment of over 1 crore students pursuing higher education in 2005. There has been a considerable improvement in the enrolment from one percent in early 1950’s to about 13% in 2003. The 13 percent is little more than average for Developing countries, which is 11%. But it is too low compared to 23% of world average or 36.5% for countries in transaction or 54.6% for Developed countries.1 There has been huge increase in the demand for higher education since the independence. However the increase in demand has not been matched by corresponding increase in the education infrastructure in term of educational institutions and other facilities. Due to the demand outstripping the capacity, a large number of aspirants are also denied access to higher education. This has led to a situation where institutions are required to manage more students than they afford, leading to pressure on the facilities particularly the State Universities, colleges –aided as well as unaided.