More focus, funds needed on Higher Education

The HRD ministry with Niti Aayog is preparing a blueprint of bringing technical and scientific institutions under one banner. This should help in making the new body more vigilant and check inherent malpractices. Transforming higher education has been a long felt need, not just to gear up to becoming more relevant but to ensure matching up to international standards. How quickly this is accomplished and how it functions, will be keenly watched.

The University Grants Commission and the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTC) has been replaced with a single body. The proposed Higher Education Empowerment Regulation Agency (HEERA) is aimed at eliminating overlaps in jurisdiction and removing irrelevant regulatory provisions. This is a judicious move as renowned educationists have for long recommended closing down of multiple regulatory systems

The Government’s first major step was to make all Centrally-funded institutions, including IITs, to participate in international agencies ranking. Distressingly, only a few of the 600 universities and 32,000 colleges have yet to get letters of accreditation from the National Assessment & Accreditation Council (NAAC).

Another step taken was to allow Central universities to increase tuition fees across all streams to reduce dependence on government. This is fully justified in the backdrop of increasing costs of infrastructure development, salaries of teaching and non-teaching officials etc. Compared to private deemed universities, the fees charged by government universities are relatively meagre and the hike should strengthen finances and aid in improving services at par with global standards.

The Council for National Institutes of Technology and IISERs recently approved a 10 per cent hike every year for next three years.

Higher education must improve and keep pace with rapidly emerging economies, which unfortunately hasn’t happened till now. The reasons are varied and may include: lack of sincerity/skill of teaching staff; methodology of teaching; lack of total autonomy in most institutions; politicisation of education and growing violence in campuses; poor lab facilities in colleges and universities; little motivation for research in basic sciences due to few scholarships. This apart, reasons vary amongst States.
Additionally, there is need to give priority to research in science and technology as the country’s contribution towards scientific publications was a mere 3.5 per cent globally in early years of this decade-- way behind China’s which was 21%. The quality of teaching as also poor research output appears to have contributed to poor university rankings by international agencies like Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds.

Sadly, no Indian university figured in the top 200, while IITs appeared between 200 and 350. The universities of Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Pune were much below the 800 mark as against dozens from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and South Africa faring far better.

In the recent Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI), surveyed by INSEAD and Human Capital Institute, Singapore, India ranked 92 of 118! It also identified regulatory landscape and expenditure as significant enablers of a country’s talent competitiveness. The study unmasks the failure of institutions like AICTE, which in its own report stated that just 66% of technical graduates are unemployable and, as such, unemployed.

In recent past, talking to some Assistant Professors at the Academic Staff College at Lucknow, the undersigned found that students cannot be solely held responsible for skipping classes as academic standards were poor. According to them, teaching quality of some academic faculty-- most recruited from reserved category--, is so poor that students don’t find any usefulness in attending classes.

Moreover, they are not updated in subjects, as noticed in colleges in Bihar, Maharashtra and UP. There are also instances, though rare, where professors got their thesis written by ‘seniors or outside experts’, obviously by paying money. A junior professor from Maharashtra’s semi-urban area could neither communicate in English nor explain the main findings of his research and admitted that the thesis was written by an acquaintance. This is not a lone case.

If quality of teaching has to improve, there must be a perceptible improvement in knowledge and acumen of teachers--from colleges to universities. Simply concentrating on IITs, IIMs and IISERs wouldn’t help. As such, the new body should have four-five regional offices to keep track of all universities and, if possible, colleges and improvement has to be at grass-root levels.

Like IIMs, AIIMS, and many of specialised institutions, IITs are not quite effective and efficient model for today and tomorrow’s India. These focus only on science and engineering and students aren’t more than 0.5- 0.2% of the total enrolment. Some of the IITs have rightly added non-engineering disciplines.

While the setting up of new IITs is welcome, it’s necessary to transform some existing ones, specially the original five and a few others, to become world-class multi-disciplinary research universities. Further, steps on improving infrastructure and spending more on education are required. India spends around 3.90% of GSP compared to the international average of 4.4% (World Bank, 2012).

In PPP per capita terms, India spends around $2419 on tertiary education as against US spending of $10,888 and China of $17,851, as per UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2013.

Additionally, there is need to do away with political interference and give institutes more autonomy, as committed recently by HRD minister. Predictably, all efforts would be made to refurbish the existing education system with the help of a body like HEERA that may understand the tribulations from its origin.

Though for long there have been efforts in the realm of transforming higher education, the focus has largely been city centric, catering to the rich and middle income sections from where our policy planners mostly come. This has to change and higher education has to spread all over the country.

However, special focus may be given to a select 50 institutions or so to make them world class but that doesn’t mean that universities in rural and semi urban areas should be neglected. For this, suggestions of high level committee of Prof Yash Pal (way back in 2009) have to be heeded which, among others, called for increased funding for higher education and stricter regulation and monitoring of private entities and these need to be implemented at the earliest.

The last aspect should be on designing courses that are not pedantic but have the capacity to generate employment. Students from the lower segments of society need employment after completing their education and as such this aspect has to be given serious attention. All this would require more resources. There are 10-12 million people joining the labour market every year and there is need for job creators and not just job seekers. The start-up engine has to be supercharged.

In addition, our start-ups must address some of the looming challenges facing the nation such as water, energy, education, health, and infrastructure. This is where a transformed higher education system would be instrumental.

It needs to be said that a ‘Gray Revolution’ could help in overcoming the crisis in our higher education system and transform it in all the key dimensions – scale and speed, scope and structure, and excellence and impact.

It is about re-imagining the system -- setting the bar high, establishing a system with multiple pathways for students, dismantling meaningless regulations and giving more autonomy to institutions and attracting the best and the brightest talent to be faculty members.

By Oishee Mukherjee