Dr Jitendra Kumar Das
Recently, Prakash Javadekar, the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, announced at a media briefing that the University Grants Commission (UGC) had decided to grant autonomy to 60 educational institutions, including few private institutions, across the country. It would be pertinent to recollect here that in the 1960s the IIMs and IITs were created outside the Indian university system to allow freedom and autonomy to them which was not quite possible under the university system then. That is, rather than to reform the university system at that time, the then Government created these independent institutions giving them full autonomy by keeping them away from any higher education regulator. And so, reforming the university system got by-passed.
Here the ‘autonomy’ would mean more freedom for institutes to start their own courses, create new syllabi, launch new research programmes, hire foreign faculty, enroll foreign students and set their fees. This in effect would mean no or negligible dependence on regulator, in seeking their permission, for various academic initiatives including decisions on fees. Autonomy must also be closely linked with accountability, lest it degenerates into laxity and non-performance, particularly for the public institutions. Thus, accountability must be defined in performance metrics to ensure obligation of these institutions are not mis-carried.
Even though many academics from public universities vehemently opposed this move – reflects their concerns with accountability issues – this initiative, otherwise, is a very apt move to liberate the higher education sector. Both public as well as private institutions stand to gain on a long-term perspective. Such autonomy should also be extended to other institutions who meet the criteria set for it to ensure positive and constructive changes are affected at India level on a sustained basis. Government should take further specific pro-active steps to encourage participation of good quality private sector players in strengthening Indian higher education.
It must also be understood that it was because of the vacuum left by the State, that the non-profit private education institutions stepped in to meet the ever-growing demand for higher education in India. It was these private institutions that made significant investments to make quality education accessible to a larger mass of people – fulfilling not just a need gap but contributing to nation-building as well. However, the private education institutions were heavily regulated and under control of Government agencies for various permissions leading to many reported mal-practices and corruption cases. Despite limited autonomy, a few private sector institutions have performed extremely well. Private education institutions must be looked at as complimentary forces and not competing.
Establishing new universities that must be progressive, innovative, and quick to adapt to new and ever-changing world landscape, needs careful planning and an understanding of the weaknesses of the current system. Ironically, the policy intervention to draw participation of the private sector to deliver quality higher education is not even at a discussion stage in India let alone being in a planning phase. With or without private sector involvement, India needs to modernise its higher education by following examples of USA, South Korea, Singapore and even China. It is ironical that when higher education is a peripheral activity, going by its budget allocation as a proportion of GDP, then the Government would want to give autonomy, but when it becomes an important activity with substantial grants then the tendency is to take away autonomy and not to leave things in the hands of the educators. The staff and officers of the regulator as well as other officers of the Government become powerful in monitoring expenditures, decision making and even policy framing. This typically reflects the current Indian system.
Quality education can come in only as a “pull” mechanism; it cannot be “pushed” for, a faculty cannot be forced to deliver quality. A comparison and contrast of private versus public institutions would help us develop a framework of regulation that aims at catapulting the higher education quality to the next level in an India perspective rather than from Government institution perspective.
It is, therefore, appropriate that higher education policy be framed such that its implementation pushes institutions towards an ever-improving quality in a virtuous cycle that fosters incremental improvement year-on-year. This is only possible if there is a robust feedback based transparent system with adequate capital and high caliber or research motivated faculty recruited on perform or perish model. Further, though not part of higher education policy, but considering the role private institutions/universities must play, Government may incentivize fund flow from the private sector.
Any bureaucratic process, akin to ‘red tapism’, of administration of Indian academia will further hamper the competitive edge for excellence in Indian higher education institutions. Understandably, as more bureaucratic hurdles are put in place, the private players would only become more cautious in their investments and involvement. If criteria-based autonomy is uniformly provided to public and private institutions, then there is no doubt that in a few years the public institutions may get a tough competition from private institutions as is seen in the industry sector, primarily due to difference in their efficiency delivery capacity. By providing funds and autonomy to a select few chosen institutions who may not have the intent to excel, must not become a case of trying to feed those who are not hungry and starving those who are already famished.
(The author is Director, FORE School of Management, New Delhi)
(Views are personal)
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