At the beginning of India’s independence in 1947, there were 20 universities and 500 colleges while student enrolment at the tertiary level of education was 0.1 million. After independence the growth has been quite impressive .This has increased to 611 universities and university-level Institutions and 31,324 colleges as on August 2011.

Despite of high institutional growth, Indian Higher learning Institutions are still struggling hard to overcome their weaknesses, fulfill the aspirations of the people and to keep it in consonance with the changing need of a rapidly transforming economy & young democracy.

According to the recent world University ranking 2013 India’s higher educational institutions have once again failed to find a respectable place in the world’s top 500 universities.

In this paper, an effort is made towards understanding the major weaknesses of higher educational institutions of India. The Author in this conceptual paper has tried to highlight the need to re-engineer the higher education institutions in India, emphasizing upon the re-engineering, in accordance with the Institutions of higher learning of  U.K.