WITH approximately 600 university level institutions and more than 31,000 colleges, ours is probably the single largest system of higher education anywhere in the world. In terms of student numbers, with an enrolment of nearly 15 million (according to the MHRD figures for 2010-11), we are the second largest. This is a remarkable achievement indeed, given the fact that no more than one lakh students were enrolled in higher education at the eve of Independence. Nonetheless, it is also a fact that our performance leaves much to be desired, particularly on the count of access, equity, quality and excellence.

Access to higher education, measured by the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) as being approximately 17% (NSS 64th Round for 2007-08), is much below the minimum desired level of 25-30% required to sustain economic growth at current levels. Even more disquieting is the fact that the low level of GER is highly skewed in favour of our social and economic elites. Even though women now account for over 40% of total enrolment, their participation across different disciplines remains extremely uneven. Similarly, though the participation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has witnessed a steady rise over the last decades, their GER is still significantly lower than the national average. The GER for the minorities, particularly the Muslims, is even lower. Both the rural-urban divide and the gap between the rich and poor remain alarmingly high.

It was to address these concerns that the 11th plan embarked upon a massive agenda for expansion and promotion of inclusiveness in higher education, with allocations for higher education during the 11th plan increased to Rs 84,943 cr (as compared to Rs 9,600 cr in the 10th plan) to ensure inclusive access to quality higher education. In order to achieve a steady growth of about 9% in general higher education and 15% in technical fields, the plan provided for expansion in the intake capacity of existing institutions and the establishment of a large number of universities, colleges and other institutions of national importance. Similarly, a series of policy initiatives were announced to remove regional and social group imbalances.

But most critically, the 11th plan also emphasized the need for reform, and provided for a series of new regulatory and governance measures. Its prescriptions in this regard were largely guided by the recommendations of the NKC. Lamenting the multiplicity of regulatory authorities making higher education over-regulated and under-governed, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) argued for the establishment of an Independent Regulatory Authority in Higher Education (IRAHE). In its scheme of things, the IRAHE was to take over the approval, recognition and regulatory functions of the UGC, AICTE, NCTE, MCI, DEC and so on, leaving the UGC to focus exclusively on funding functions, while other regulatory bodies were to be transformed into professional councils charged with the responsibility of prescribing standards for professional conduct and qualifications.

Soon apprehensions were expressed about the feasibility and desirability of the recommendations of the NKC, and the MHRD constituted the Yashpal Committee (YC) on Revival and Rejuvenation of Higher Education. It so happened that the YC too reached the same conclusions, albeit for somewhat different reasons. It argued that a multiplicity of regulatory authorities with overlapping and conflicting mandates have resulted in a compartmentalization of knowledge, and since the advancement of knowledge is at the fringes of disciplines, such stringent compartmentalization has been detrimental to higher education. Arguing for porous boundaries between disciplines, the committee made a strong case for all universities to become multi-disciplinary. Simultaneously, it also realized that the multiplicity of national level regulatory bodies is to be blamed for the present state of affairs in higher education and thus felt compelled to recommend the establishment of an overarching National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER).

 

Consequently, it is claimed that the reforms agenda that is being currently pursued in higher education is guided both by the NKC and the YC, although their respective chairmen, Sam Pitroda and Yashpal, have gone on record to express their reservations about the way their recommendations have been treated. As matters stand today, four separate bills – establishment of a national educational tribunal, establishment and regulation of a national accreditation authority, regulation of entry and operation of foreign educational institutions, and prohibition of unfair practices in higher, technical and professional educational institutions – have already been introduced in the Parliament and referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee. The fifth bill, seeking to establish the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), is slated to be introduced in Parliament soon, with the aim of replacing/subsuming/redefining the role of around 14 existing regulatory bodies. It is hoped that these measures will address the regulatory deficit by ushering in an era of effective and efficient governance in the various sectors of higher education.

 

Given the reservations about bringing health and agriculture education under the ambit of the NCHER, the aim of a single regulatory body for all of higher education may, however, remain elusive. Besides, some of the existing professional and regulatory bodies have already started evolving counter mechanisms to ensure that their spheres of influence do not get diminished – viz. the Bar Council of India is already contemplating an amendment in the Advocates Act to introduce a national level eligibility test for practicing law. And it is quite likely that other professional bodies, particularly those dealing with the practicing professions, may follow suit by justifying their actions based on their mandate to regulate standards of professional practice, codes of conduct and ethics.

Even otherwise, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the NCHER may not effectively address the issue of a multiplicity of regulatory bodies in higher education – a bane that was lamented equally strongly, albeit for different reasons, by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) and the Yashpal Committee Report (YCR). The NCHER may have been conceptualized as an Independent Regulatory Authority in Higher Education (IRAHE) with a mandate encompassing all kinds of general, professional and technical higher education, but five separate legislations dealing with various facets of higher educational institutions are bound to create a multiplicity, if not conflicting set of regulatory functions. If the prior regulatory structures were detrimental to the healthy growth of higher education, the proposed regime is likely to be as chaotic, if not worse

 

Further, while changing the institutional set up may be a necessary condition in today’s context, the new regulatory structure alone may not bring about the desired result for the simple reason that all the problems of higher education cannot be attributed to deficiencies in its systems of regulation. They are equally traceable to the people who make up the system, to the processes and mechanisms whereby a regulatory structure takes effect and, most important of all, to the social context in which higher education exists and operates. However, given the fact that people and the social context are constants – for they can’t be changed in the short-term – it is processes that will make the difference. It is commonly argued that even the best policies often fail to deliver on the ground, not so much on account of defects in design as due to implementation issues. And it is here that we need to dissect our past experience in some detail to learn a few lessons.

It is not for the first time that the nation is embarking on reforms in higher education. Beginning with the Higher Education Commission in 1948, we have plenty of historical experience of reforming the higher education sector. The Radhakrishnan Commission (1948) which led to the establishment of the University Grants Commission (UGC); the Kothari Commission in 1964, which served as the foundation for the Education Policy of 1968; the New Education Policy (1986) and subsequent Programme of Action Document (1992), which brought about a paradigm shift in general, professional and technical higher education, triggering rapid growth in the new generation self-financed private higher educational institutions and leading to the establishment of many new regulatory bodies – the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), in its present form, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), the Distance Education Council (DEC), which are now being sought to be done away with – all these could be cited as major milestones as far as reform initiatives in higher education are concerned.

Should we include in the list the reports and recommendations of a plethora of other committees and task forces appointed by the MHRD and UGC (Gajendragadkar Committee on governance; Gnanam Committee on administrative reforms; Suneri Committee on the Gnanam Committee recommendations; Pylee Committee on fee policy; Punnayya Committee on financing of higher education, and a host of other committees that made recommendations on various issues of curricula, examination reforms, funding, governance, autonomy, accountability and so on), we emerge as a nation supremely concerned and eager for higher educational reform.

 

It should, therefore, be a matter of grave concern to unravel why our past efforts failed to transform the higher education system, and in what ways they failed. Six decades of such an intense experience of reforming higher education, at least at the policy level, should have resulted in a more realistic and informed assessment. But sadly, we know so little about our higher education system in objective terms that we often identify our problems wrongly and therefore end up with misplaced prescriptions.

For instance, to date no one knows for sure as to what the actual gross enrolment in the country is (the estimates vary from 14% to 18% for the last year 2010-11). So is the case that institutions of higher education in the country are, on average, too large and unwieldy to be manageable or too small to be academically and economically viable? The NKC, for example, felt that they are too large and need to be made nimble, whereas my data suggests that with an average enrolment of less than 5000 in a university and around 400 in a college, they are too small. Even more glaring is the lack of understanding as to how much by way of resources our public universities generate through student fees. The figures range from an abysmal below five per cent to a whopping 50% of their operating expenses.

 

Informed policy-making requires hard facts, which in the Indian context are conspicuous by their absence. To address the situation, the 11th plan had provided for an allocation of Rs 100 crore for the establishment of an Inter University Centre for Research in Higher Education, which unfortunately has yet to see the light of day. Consequently, our policy interventions have at times been guided by the personal understanding and perceptions of a few individuals. As a result, it is quite likely that we are not able to make a thorough assessment of our performance and thus end up either mistakenly identifying the problems or providing false solutions or both.

Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University or a few other select universities are not representative of an average university in the country; the case with regard to colleges is similar. The bulk of our colleges, even after decades of their existence, are still operating at sub-optimal levels, remaining under temporary affiliation for want of resources. Only a third of the colleges have been seen as meriting recognition under Section 12(B) and thus receiving development assistance from the UGC. So is the case with universities, as a large number of them are not able to meet the basic conditions of infrastructure, courses, faculty and students to gain UGC recognition, so much so that no more than 160 universities in the country are eligible to receive development assistance.

 

A large number of small institutions result in our scarce resources being so thinly spread that they hardly have any impact, with quality the foremost casualty. Thus, while exceedingly high cut-offs for admission in colleges of Delhi University has prompted many to suggest that higher education suffers from serious capacity constraints, I interpret it as the natural outcome of our failure to invest in the necessary quality for the huge spread of higher educational institutions across the country. Depending on the view that prevails, the policy interventions would obviously be drastically different.

Dated curricula, dilapidated infrastructure, dwindling intellectual capital and archaic administrative and governance systems are what today define most of the state universities and colleges affiliated to them, which account for over 90% of all enrolments. On an average, nearly 50% of sanctioned faculty positions in these universities have been lying vacant for more than two decades and despite tremendous increases in enrolment, new faculty positions have not been created. Under dire circumstances, these institutions have resorted to engaging teachers on contractual, part-time, visiting and guest lecture basis, which has adversely affected teaching and research. Even as regards centrally funded institutions, nearly 30% faculty positions are found to be vacant at any point in time. While some argue that this is due to the non-availability of suitably qualified teachers in the country, there is also strong evidence that vacancies in such numbers persist due to procedural lacunae. Obviously, research and publications have suffered.

 

Even more worrisome is the fact that teachers, who form the backbone of the higher education system, are hardly provided with the kind of workplace environment that they deserve in order to perform their assigned tasks responsibly. While workloads are defined in terms of teaching hours and stay on the campus, even the best colleges do not provide teachers with office space. At best, they have access to a seat in the common room and even that may be on a first come first served basis. One can well imagine the situation in colleges located in small towns and remote villages, when even in universities nearly half of the faculty members have no assigned workplace, not to speak of other facilities. Classrooms, where faculty and students are expected to spend most of their time on campus, are invariably the drabbest, most neglected and least priority areas.

The best universities around the globe provide their teachers not only with administrative and secretarial support, but also an initial grant that is to be recouped over time through research and consultancy funding that they generate on the strength of such support. In India, you happen to get such facilities only if you engage in some administrative and non-teaching assignments. We stand to gain a lot by creating the necessary and sufficient conditions for teachers to work and then demanding performance on pre-specified parameters. We ought to realize that while substantive increases in the pay and perks of teachers may help attract quality talent, the lack of basic facilities at the workplace may soon frustrate them to the point where they may simply give up, barring a small minority who are intrinsically so motivated as to carry on despite all odds.

 

In terms of both internal governance at the institutional level and relations with the government, the higher education system leaves much to be desired. Over time, universities have been subjected to an adherence to rules, regulations, and standards that have come to be specified by regulatory bodies and government departments. Over-emphasis on adherence to procedures has made the university administration all the more cumbersome and unresponsive. While universities obviously cannot expect to claim immunity from the law of land and public accountability, we need to evolve an outcome based model whereby universities are held accountable, not in terms of adherence to the currently prescribed procedures but in terms of accomplishment of pre-defined objectives. Such an approach may help make universities a little less bureaucratic and, in turn, enable them to devise their own methods and procedures to accomplish their aims. No less important is the need for according autonomy to schools, faculties and departments within a university, which so far is missing in most of them.

Often, the best solutions for promoting quality in higher education do not get implemented due to financial constraints. Our approach to financing higher education has at times been at variance with its proclaimed aims and objectives. We virtually nationalized all private higher educational institutions by bringing them into the fold of a grant-in-aid system during the first two decades of Independence. By the late seventies we started feeling the crunch, such that by the mid-eighties and early nineties, we resorted to an economy drive leading to a drastic reduction in resource allocations. It can’t be over-emphasized that adequacy and certainty of funding is critical for the efficient functioning of higher educational institutions. It is an established fact that, faced with a financial crisis, universities first sacrifice their non-committed expenditure. Since a major portion of academic expenditure falls in this category, it is no surprise that academic activities are the foremost casualty.

 

A recent study brought out by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFC) of the UK has found that the best ranked universities of the world are also those who lavishly fund higher education. Stanford with 11,000 students in 2008 had an operating budget of $3.2 billion and an endowment of $12.6 billion. The University of California system in 2009 had an operating budget of $20.84 billion for 2.26 lakh students. Caltech in 2008 had an operating budget of $2.35 billion for 2130 students. By this reckoning, ours is arguably the most economical and cost-effective higher education system anywhere. But if we genuinely wish to improve and join their ranks, we must be willing to invest in higher education on a per student basis at par with the best in the world.