Reviving "the sick child of Indian education"
In the culminating round of a series of vice-chancellors’ conferences to celebrate
150 years of the establishment of the pioneer modern universities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, Union HRD minister Arjun Singh described India’s higher education system as "the sick child of indian education". Dilip Thakore reportsThe cosy conspiracy of mediocrity which is a defining feature of government dominated higher education in India received a jolt — although it’s far from being broken — on October 10 when in an unguarded moment, Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh described the tertiary education system as "the sick child of Indian education". This derogatory descriptive was made in the culminating round of a series of vice-chancellors’ conferences in New Delhi to celebrate 150 years of the establishment of the pioneer modern universities of Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai), during which VCs presented detailed papers to the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Planning Commission to finalise the Eleventh Plan (2007-2012) outlays for higher education. The remark threw a damper on the celebrations, causing considerable heartburn among the vice-chancellors of India’s top universities present on the occasion. The irony of Singh damning India’s higher education system which comprises 352 universities and 18,000 arts, science and commerce colleges whose syllabuses and curriculums are subject to the approval of UGC, as well as 1,346 engineering colleges, 958 B-schools, 320 pharmacy colleges, 90 hotel management and 57 nursing schools among other institu-tions of higher education which fall within the supervisory jurisdiction of the Delhi-based All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) — both of which are in turn supervised by the Union HRD ministry — was not lost on the captive audience of vice-chancellors.
"There’s no denying that the overwhelming majority of India’s institutions of higher learning are indeed the sick children of the education system. But vice-chancellors and heads of institutions are less blameworthy for this sad state of affairs than the Union HRD ministry and its handmaidens — UGC and AICTE — which rigidly control our syllabuses, curriculums, tuition fees, admission regulations and faculty appointments. Under the higher education supervisory regime essentially shaped by the Congress party which has practised a sort of bastard socialism for the past half century and of which Arjun Singh is a leading light, the academic and administrative autonomy of universities and all institutions of higher education — including private sector institutions — has been completely destroyed. Therefore if the HRD minister wants to find the cause of widespread sickness in higher education, which he has belatedly discerned, he should look in the mirror," says an embittered vice-chancellor who attended the October 10 conference and spoke to Education-World on condition of anonymity.
The septuagenarian HRD minister’s exasperated outburst condemning the higher education system, is probably the outcome of several inconvenient truths about the country’s moribund higher education system having been exposed by the media and Education-World in particular. For one, as has been repeatedly highlighted in this publication, the capacity in higher education ponderously built up over half a century, is grossly inadequate. Currently, a mere 9 percent of Indians (aggregating 10 million) in the age cohort 18-24 are enrolled in institutions of tertiary education against the European average of 40-50 percent, and over 80 percent in the US. Moreover with per capita spending on students in higher education in India estimated at a mere Rs.40,000 ($1,000) per annum, the quality of education dispensed by the rigidly controlled higher education system is appalling.
"All over the world high quality tertiary education is imparted in large universities with huge campuses and a critical mass of students and faculty. These big institutions can sustain large libraries, modern laboratories and advanced learning centres with adequate supportive infrastructure. On the other hand, higher education in India is fragmented and imparted in 18,000 small, ill-equipped and understaffed affiliated colleges which are in effect glorified schools. Nearly 89 percent of under-graduate students, 66 percent of postgrad students and 82 percent of faculty in higher education are in these colleges, rather than in universities. Although the number of faculty of professorial level is pitiably low, or even non-existent in some of these understaffed colleges, they conduct Masters, M.Phil and even Ph D study programmes. An overdue reform is to shift higher education from colleges to universities whose number must be expeditiously increased from 352 currently to 1,500 as recommended by the National Knowledge Commission," says Dr. V. C. Kulaindaswamy former vice-chancellor of the Anna, Madurai Kamaraj and Indira Gandhi National Open universities.
Against this backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that a recent (2005) study conducted by NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) and the New York-based transnational management consultancy firm McKinsey & Co discovered that 75 percent of graduates of the country’s 1,346 engineering colleges are unemployable, and only 10-15 percent of India’s 18,000 arts, commerce and science college graduates are near industry-ready.
EducationWorld would have liked to share further and better particulars of the NASSCOM-McKinsey report with our readers, but unfortunately NASSCOM expressed an institutional inability to part with a copy thereof except on payment of Rs.15,000, an offer which after prolonged deliberation this relatively impecunious publication — which unlike the IT software companies which bankroll NASSCOM does not enjoy the benefit of income tax exemption — declined to accept. Nevertheless, the salient conclusions of the study which have received widespread publicity have created great embarrassment within the HRD ministry and Indian academia. Hence perhaps the ministerial outburst.
Yet if tertiary education in contemporary India is afflicted with a debilitating sickness, Arjun Singh, in his second innings as Union HRD minister is perhaps more blameworthy than anyone else for persistently blocking reforms in higher education. For instance, despite higher education being able to accommodate only a mere 7-9 percent of Indians in the age group 18-24, the minister has stubbornly resisted liberalisation of the government-controlled admission and fees regulation regime, which would encourage private sector initiatives in higher education. A Bill to facilitate promotion of private universities countrywide has been pending in Parliament since 1995. Likewise several proposals to encourage foreign universities to establish satellite or branch campuses in India, which would quickly augment capacity in tertiary education, have been checkmated by Arjun Singh — an old-world socialist who doggedly believes in Soviet-style control of higher education to prevent capitalist indoct-rination of young minds. A Foreign Education Providers (Regulation and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill, 2007 drafted by the HRD ministry which is pending in Parliament, stipulates draconian terms and conditions designed to dissuade foreign education institutions from establishing campuses and collaborations in India (see cover story ‘Time to welcome foreign universities into India’, EW October).
The NKC prescription On June 13, 2005 the Union government gazetted a notification constituting India’s first ever National Knowledge Commission chaired by Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda, the charismatic technologist-visionary widely acknowledged as the leader of India’s astonishing telecom revolution which leapfrogged the number of telephone connections countrywide from 25 million in the mid-1990s to over 250 million today. The mission impossible of the Knowledge Commission: "to build excellence in the educational system to meet the knowledge challenges of the 21st century and increase India’s competitive advantage in the fields of knowledge"; modernise the country’s science and technology laboratories; promote knowledge application in agriculture and industry, and install e-governance systems towards "making government an effective, transparent and accountable service provider" among other objectives. On January 12, 2007 NKC submitted a 68-page Report to the Nation 2006 to the Union government, suggesting inter alia reform of the country’s moribund higher education system. Excerpts: The opportunities for higher education in terms of the number of places in universities are simply not adequate in relation to our needs. Large segments of our population just do not have access to higher education. What is more, the quality of higher education in most of our universities leaves much to be desired. The objectives of reform and change in our higher education system must be expansion, excellence and inclusion. I. Expansion 1. Create many more universities. The higher education system needs a massive expansion of opportunities, to around 1,500 universities nationwide, that would enable India to attain a gross enrollment ratio of at least 15 percent by 2015. 2. Change the system of regulation for higher education. The barriers to entry are too high. The system of authorising entry is cumbersome. There is a multiplicity of regulatory agencies where mandates are both confusing and overlapping. NKC perceives a clear need to establish an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE). The IRAHE must be at arms’s length from the government and independent of all stakeholders including the concerned ministries of the government. • It would be the only agency that would be authorised to accord degree-granting power to higher education institutions. • It would apply exactly the same norms to public and private institutions.3. Increase public spending and diversify sources of financing. • Since government financing will remain the cornerstone, government support for higher education should increase to at least 1.5 percent of GDP, out of a total of at least 6 percent of GDP for education overall.• It is for universities to decide the level of fees but, as a norm, fees should meet at least 20 percent of the total expenditure of universities.• It is essential to stimulate private investment in education as a means for extending educational opportunities. 4. Establish 50 National Universities. NKC recommends the creation of 50 National universities that can provide education of the highest standard. II. Excellence 5. Reform existing universities. The endeavour to transform higher education must reform existing institutions. Some essential steps are: • Universities should be required to revise or restructure curricula at least once in three years. • Universities must become the hub of research once again.• The appointments of vice-chancellors must be freed from direct or indirect interventions on the part of governments.6. Restructure undergraduate colleges. The system of affiliated colleges for undergraduate education, which may have been appropriate 50 years ago, is no longer adequate or appropriate and needs to be reformed. • The most obvious solution is to provide autonomy to colleges either as individual colleges or as clusters of colleges.• Some affiliated colleges could be remodelled as community colleges, which could provide both vocational education and formal education.7. Promote enhanced quality. The higher education system must provide for accountability to society and create accountability within. • There should be stringent information disclosure norms for all educational institutions.• It is particularly important to enhance the ICT infrastructure.• It is necessary to formulate appropriate policies for the entry of foreign institutions into India and the promotion of Indian institutions abroad.III. Inclusion 8. Ensure access for all deserving students. • Institutions of higher education should be encouraged to adopt ‘needs-blind’ admission policies.• There must be a well-funded and extensive National Scholarship Scheme targeting economically underprivileged students and students from groups that are historically socially disadvantaged.9. Affirmative action. A major aim of the higher education system must be to ensure access to education for economically and socially underprivileged students. • Reservations are essential but they are only a part and one form of affirmative action.It is important to recognise that there is a quiet crisis in higher education in India which runs deep. The time has come to address this crisis in a systematic and forthright manner. |
On the contrary, instead of augmenting capacity in higher education by facilitating indigenous private sector and foreign education providers to create admission options for the millions of anxious youth desperate to enter the much-too-few respectable institutions of higher learning — over 200,000 wrote the CAT (Common Admission Test) of the six Indian Institutes of Management last month, of whom only 3,000 will be admitted — late last year Singh (who as a senior minister of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance 17-party coalition government seems to have free run of the crucially important HRD ministry) piloted the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006.This legislation reserves an additional 27 percent of available capacity in Central government institutions of higher education, (i.e in addition to the 22.5 percent reservation in favour of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) for OBC (other backward castes) students. The constitutional validity of this socially divisive legislation (which was unanimously approved by Parliament in December 2006 because the OBCs constitute a massive vote bank) which generated widespread student protests across the country, has been challenged in the Supreme Court and is currently sub judice.
The sins of snail-paced capacity expansion and letting loose the caste virus in campus India have been compounded by the obstinate refusal of successive governments at the Centre and the states to link students’ tuition fees with rising costs of education provision. Whereas in American universities tuition fees cover the entire cost of educating students, and in Britain most universities levy the maximum permissible tuition fee of £3,000 (Rs.2.4 lakh) per year, college students in India pay barely 5-10 percent of the actual cost of their education. For instance, in some of the country’s top private liberal arts colleges such as St. Stephen’s, Delhi and St. Xavier’s, Bombay, tuition fees have been frozen at 1950 levels by UGC diktat, forcing their managements to resort to levying modest imposts by way of development, library and laboratory fees. Even so the small minority of students in the age group 18-24 admitted into government and government-aided institutions of higher education pay no more than 10 percent of the actual cost of their education, all told.
This inequity of mainly middle and upper class students receiving heavily subsidised but poor quality education (because the universities and colleges are perpetually cash-strapped and pathetically dependent upon meagre government handouts), is compounded by the Central and state governments’ policy of blanket subsidisation of all students in higher education. Instead of targeting poor and needy students for subsidies and setting up a long-term loans scheme for the rest on the American and British models, lazy and inefficient education bureaucrats in New Delhi and the state capitals have resorted to the easy option of uniformly subsidising all students in higher education, which costs the country’s taxpayers an estimated Rs.40,000 crore per year.
Shockingly, the education of even the small number of 6,000-7,000 students who are annually admitted into the country’s showpiece IIMs and IITs is heavily subsidised, notwithstanding the marketplace reality that immediately after graduation they command an average annual remuneration of Rs.9.75 lakh — which is several multiples of their subsidised tuition-cum-residence payout. EducationWorld has consis-tently argued in favour of targeted subsidies for the underprivileged and a full-fees regime supported by a long term loans scheme for the majority of students enrolled in institutions of tertiary education.
With the Planning Commission having belatedly called for a rise in tuition fees to cover at least 20 percent of institutional expenditure during the Eleventh Plan period, UGC has reportedly constituted an expert committee to examine current fee structures in tertiary education to "arrive at a strategy whereby the fee for higher education is neither ridiculously low nor poses a barrier in equitable access to higher education," D. Purandeswari, minister of state in the Union ministry of HRD informed Parliament on November 19.
Against this backdrop of a much-too-small higher education system, plagued by perennial funding shortages, unwarranted subsidisation of students and a complex system of reservations which has injected the caste virus into the bloodstream of institutions of higher education, even the conservative justices of the Supreme Court who are dead set against the "commercialisation of education" — dread words in the socialist lexicon — are beginning to see the need for liberalisation of higher education, and a greater role for private sector participation.
China grasps tuition fees nettle
T uition fees chargeable by institutions of higher education — especially universities, colleges and institutes funded or aided by government — has always been, and remains, an explosive issue in India. However the world over there is an opinion shift in favour of loans replacing grants and subsidies because of growing awareness that subsidisation of higher — especially undergraduate — education tends to be at the expense of primary education.This trend is visible even in communist ruled mainland China. Comment education researchers Pamela N. Marcucci and D. Bruce Johnstone writing in Financing Higher Education — Cost-sharing in International Perspective (Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, 2006): "From free higher education to dual track to upfront tuition fees, China’s tuition policy passed through several, quite distinct stages. From 1949 through the mid 1980s, higher education was completely funded by the government who was, in turn, responsible for making the enrollment and personnel plans. College graduates were assigned jobs by the government and there was little room for personal preference in terms of type or location. The monetary returns for a university education were extremely low. "In 1985, a dual track tuition policy was announced in a policy document, Decision on Reform of the Educat-ional Structure. The document stated that higher education institutions could charge tuition to a small number of students who had scored below the cut off for public supported students. In 1993, the Chinese government announced the introduction of a one-track enrolment policy wherein all students would be charged tuition. By 1997, all regular higher education institutions charged tuition. The policy was reiterated in the 1998 Higher Education Law of the People’s Republic of China. At present, approximately 27 percent of the total recurrent higher education expenditure is covered by students’ tuitions." Against this, in government or government-aided colleges and universities in India, students’ tuition fees contribute between 5-10 percent of institutional expenditure. |
In two landmark judgements in T.M.A Pai Foundation & Ors vs. Union of India (2002 8 SCC 481) and P.A. Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra (Appeal (civil) 5041 of 2005), full-strength benches expanded the fundamental right of linguistic and religious minorities "to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice" under Article 30 of the Constitution to cover the majority community. Moreover in these historic judgements the court permitted priva-tely promoted education institutions to design their own admission systems (subject to their being based on merit), and (despite opposition to the commercialisation of education of their lordships) to levy tuition fees which would permit them to earn "reasonable surpluses". But following a somewhat confusing ‘clarification’ judgement of a five-judge bench of the apex court in Islamic Academy vs. State of Maharashtra & Ors (2003 6 SCC 697), the full-strength bench judgements of the court in the TMA Pai and Inamdar cases are being sabotaged by state level educrats, reluctant to relinquish control over the admission and tuition fees chargeable by privately promoted colleges of professional education. Confronted with snail-paced institutional capacity expansion, the plunging quality of higher education and the rise of caste-based animosities on their campuses, even establishment educationists are beginning to appreciate the logic of a greater role for private sector entrepreneurs in tertiary education. "To expand capacity in tertiary education, there is an urgent need for multiplying public-private partnerships. Admittedly the private sector will invest for profit. But the earning of reasonable profit for re-investment and sustaining education institutions has been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Moreover there is a latent culture of philanthropy in the private sector. To encourage philanthropy, political interference in public-private institutions should be sharply reduced," says Dr. R.P Singh vice-chancellor of Lucknow University, who has been waging a tough war against politically-inspired student violence and lawlessness in this 87-year-old university.
With distance lending perspective and clarity, it’s hardly surprising that Dr. Bhaskar Dutta, professor of economics at Warwick University, UK writing on the editorial page of the Times of India (November 7) unequivocally recomm-ends "a massive increase in private funding of higher education". "Except for engineering and increasingly large number of management institutes, the private sector has hardly any presence in the higher education sector. There are no Harvards and Stanfords or Oxfords and Cambridges in India, institutions funded largely by private money… the real reason for this is the widespread animosity towards private funding of higher education in India. This is more or less the declared policy of the Left parties. There is little doubt that most political parties share the views of the Left on this issue," writes Dutta.
A plea to liberalise and open up higher education to private sector edupreneurs and foreign education providers, to expand capacity in tertiary education has also been made by the high-powered National Knowledge Commission chaired by the Chicago-based NRI multi-millionaire Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda, who engineered India’s spectacular telecom revolution which has multiplied telecom connectivity in India from 25 million in 1995 to 250 million currently. In a famous letter written to prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh a year ago, Pitroda expressed "serious cause for concern" about the status of higher education which according to him can accommodate a mere 7 percent of the population in the relevant age group (18-24).
"The NKC has engaged in formal consultations on this subject with a wide range of people in the world of higher education. In addition we consulted people in Parliament, government, civil society and industry. The concerns about the higher education system are widely shared. There was a clear, almost unanimous, view that higher education needs a systematic overhaul, so that we can educate much larger numbers without diluting education standards. Indeed this is essential because the transfor-mation of (the) economy and society in the 21st century would depend, in significant part, on the spread and quality of education among our people, particularly in the sphere of higher education," Pitroda informed the prime minister in a letter dated November 2006.
In its seven-page letter signed by Pitroda, the seven-member NKC constituted in 2005 with the brief to transform the country into a knowledge society in the 21st century, made several major recommendations for the "systematic overhaul" of the country’s moribund tertiary education system. Among them: increase the number of universities from the current 350 to 1,500 by 2015 to attain a gross enrollment ratio of 15 percent; change the "over-regulated but under-governed" higher education regulatory system by appointing an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE); increase public spending to 1.5 percent of GDP "out of a total of at least 6 percent of GDP for education"; raise tuition fees to contribute 20 percent of institutional expenditure; stimulate private investment; provide taxbreaks to investors in education; establish 50 national universities with ‘needs-blind’ admission policies; reform existing universities particularly in terms of revised curricula and improved research; restructure undergraduate education by inter alia abolishing the affiliation system; improve access and practice broader affirmative action (see box p.32).Looming lost opportunities Somewhat belatedly, the new Delhi-based Planning Commission which since the early 1950s has conceptualised and written up eleven detailed Soviet-style five year national development plans — to little effect since even in the early years of the 21st century India is a society of chronic shortages and inter-sectoral imbalances — has become aware that continuous under-investment in education and developing the country’s abundant human capital is about to extract a heavy price from Indian industry. Following liberalisation and deregulation of the centrally planned economy in 1991 and the country having moved into a higher 8.5-9 percent GDP growth orbit, Indian industry is beginning to experience a severe shortage of trained technicians and professionals resulting in unprecedented wage inflation.In its monograph An Approach to the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12), the commission highlights the connection between "substantial expansion and radical reform of the education system" and possibly lost international business opportunities in the near future. "While India’s young demographic profile has the country favourably placed in terms of manpower availability, talent supply shortages are emerging. This is extremely disconcerting especially for the knowledge services sector, which, over the last few years has emerged as a significant growth engine with demonstrated gains in terms of exports, employment and very visibly in urban development across several cities in the country. "Research has shown that so far, only a tenth of the global addressable market for these services has been tapped. With its early lead and strong fundamentals (demographics, economics, and expertise), India is best positioned to take advantage of this opportunity. Yet the unsuitability of a large proportion of the talent pool in the country could lead to significant lost opportunities. The NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2005 projections indicate that these will fall short by about 500,000 suitable professionals (representing an opportunity cost of US$ 10 billion or Rs.400,000 crore) by the end of the decade and in the absence of corrective action, this gap will continue to grow. "However, if current trends are maintained, the IT- ITES sector (IT-ITES alone of the knowledge sector) will need an additional 1 million plus qualified people in the next five years, and will generate exports of US $86 billion (Rs.3440,000 crore) in 2012. If the country is to capitalise on the huge opportunity in this and other areas of knowledge services, what is needed is a major thrust at all levels of education. Clearly, substantial expansion and radical reform of the education sector are called for to ensure that we are able to meet the quality and quantity of professionals needed by the country." Source: An Approach to the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12) |
The awareness that cash-strapped government colleges, continuing to provide ritual higher education designed to produce clerks and technical assistants, can’t possibly meet the needs of the rapidly globalising Indian economy growing at a pace of 8.5-9 percent, has impacted itself upon the top brass of the 28,000-strong Planning Commission, which every five years draws up elaborate Soviet-style quinquennial plans to allocate available resources for sectorally balanced economic growth. The effectiveness of the Planning Commission and of Soviet-style central planning per se can be gauged by the on-the-ground reality that pervasive shortages of housing, infrastructure, education and health services etc are the defining character-istics of the Indian economy, plagued by inter-sectoral imbalances. Nevertheless the commission serves the limited purpose of being an expensive think tank which provides policy advice and direction to the Central and state governments as well as the public.
Commenting on the need to drastically reform the country’s higher education system, the commission’s latest 103-page outline of the Eleventh Plan titled Towards Faster and More Inclusive Growth — An Approach to the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12) says: "The triple objectives of expansion, inclusion and excellence will require a substantial increase in resources devoted to this sector by both the Centre and the states. Successive annual plans will have to provide rising levels of budgetary support. This must be accompanied by internal resource generation by the universities by realistically raising fees. Simultaneously efforts will be made to develop wider merit-cum-means based loan and scholarship programmes through the banking system and other agencies."
Quite clearly given the unprecedented shortage of skilled technicians and professionals being experienced by Indian industry, which is all set to become more acute (see box p.34) because of the higher education system’s inability to produce minimally skilled graduates in sufficiently large numbers, under pressure from India Inc, alarm bells are belatedly beginning to ring in the highest offices of government. The era of fudging inconvenient issues such as liberalisation and deregulation of tertiary education, rock-bottom tuition fees, private sector participation and the entry of foreign universities, is over.
Suddenly there is a widespread new awareness of the urgent need to heal "the sick child of Indian education". The overwhelming majority of India’s 352 universities and 18,000 colleges are on oxygen and require intensive care. Failure to revive them will blow a large hole in 21st century India’s plans to reap its entirely fortuitous demographic dividend.
With Autar Nehru (Delhi); Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) & Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)