Spotlight
New Delhi, 28 July, 2017
Higher Education
MORE FOCUS, FUNDS NEEDED
By Dr Oishee Mukherjee
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 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 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. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
|