Expert Comment

Fast-track India's Achilles heel

India is rushing headlong toward economic success and modernisation, counting on high-tech industries such as information technology and biotechnology to propel the nation to prosperity. Unfortunately, India’s weak higher education sector constitutes the Achilles’ heel of this strategy. Systematic disinvestment in higher education in recent years has yielded an academic system characterised by mediocrity, producing neither world-class research nor highly trained scholars, scientists, managers in sufficient number to sustain high-tech development.

India’s main competitors — especially China but also Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea — are investing in huge and differentiated higher education systems. They are providing access to large numbers of students at the bottom of the academic system while at the same time building research-based universities on a par with the world’s best institutions. The recent London-based Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of the world’s top 200 universities included three in China, three in Hong Kong, three in South Korea, one in Taiwan, and one in India (an Indian Institute of Technology, at number 4I — but the campus was not specified).

India has significant advantages in the 21st century knowledge race. It has a substantial higher education sector — the third largest in the world in student numbers, after China and the United States. It uses English as the primary language of higher education and research. It has a long academic tradition and academic freedom is respected. There are a small number of high quality institutions, departments, and centres that can claim to be a quality sector in higher education. The fact that the states, rather than the Central government, exercise major responsibility for higher education creates a rather cumbersome structure, but the system allows for a variety of policies and approaches.

Almost all of the world’s academic systems resemble a pyramid, with a small top tier and a massive sector at the bottom. India has a tiny top tier. Yet none of its universities occupy a solid position at the top. A few of the best universities have some excellent departments and centres, and there are a small number of outstanding undergraduate colleges. The University Grants Commission’s recent support of five universities to build on their recognised strength represents a step toward recognising the importance of a differentiated academic system — and fostering excellence. At present, world-class institutions are mainly limited to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), and perhaps a few others such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. These institutions, combined, enroll less than 1 percent of the student population.

The newly emerging private sector in higher education cannot spearhead academic growth. Several well-endowed and effectively managed private institutions maintain reasonably high standards. They can help produce well-qualified graduates in such fields as management, but they cannot form the basis for comprehensive research universities. This sector lacks the resources to build the facilities required for quality instruction and research in the sciences, nor can enough money be earned by providing instruction in the mainstream arts and sciences disciplines. Most private institutes don’t provide advanced training in the sciences.

Only public universities have the potential to become truly world-class institutions. Institutions and programmes of national importance have already been identified by the government, but are not adequately or consistently supported. The top institutions require sustained funding from public sources. Academic emoluments must be high enough to attract excellent scientists and scholars. Fellowships and other grants should be available for bright students. An academic culture that is based on meritocratic norms and competition for advancement and research funds is a necessary component, as is a judicious mix of autonomy to do creative research and accountability to ensure productivity. A world-class university requires world-class professors and students, and a culture to sustain and stimulate them.

A clearly differentiated academic system has not been created in India — that is, a system where there are some clearly identified elite institutions that receive significantly greater resources than other universities. One of the main reasons why the University of California at Berkeley is top class is that other California universities receive much less support. India’s elite universities require sustained state support. They require recognition that they are indeed top institutions and therefore deserve commensurate resources.

India cannot build internationally recognised research-oriented universities overnight, but the country has the key elements in place to begin and sustain the process. It urgently needs to create a dozen or more universities that can compete internationally to fully participate in the new world economy. Without them India is destined to remain an educational backwater.