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| Higher
Education |
 Round Table Discussion
on "Higher Education - Policy Options"
by Mr. B.S. Baswan - Director General, Indian Institute of Public
Administration; Prof Arun Nigavekar - Former Chairman UGC ; Dr. C.S. Venkat
Ratnam - Director International Management Institute; Prof. Devi
Singh - Director IIM Lucknow and Prof. Arun Kumar - Professor Social
Sciences-Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, JNU; in Espire,
A 41, MCIE, Mathura Road, New Delhi - 44.
30th JUNE 08
HIGHLIGHTS
Role of State
 A
public good is something in which the state has to invest while
merit goods are those in which the private sector deems it worth
its while to invest, and is ready, able and willing to do so.
A lot has been said about education being a public good, but this
is not the classical definition. Having said that in the hierarchy
of merit goods that we have, higher education ranks lower than
say, school education. Thus, the role of the State, is to meet
to a very large extent, the cost of elementary education. Our
Constitution provides for this. And as we go up the ladder, the
role of the State would gradually diminish. Of course, this doesn't
mean that State should not invest in higher education; it obviously
should. The question is, how far should it go?
- We are investing in IITs and IIMs, in Schools of Planning and
Architecture etc. The question is: how far should we go as a government?
There are issues involved; One, of course, is the availability
of resources with the government and the other is whether the
private sector is ready, willing and able to invest. Are we restricting
the private sector?
- There is a broad consensus that the government needs to remove
all the barriers to entry; market forces should be allowed to
take their due course, because no way government can bridge the
shortfall; there is no way that faculty can come unless you pay
them a competitive wage.
- The State has a role to play even in universities, especially
for the liberal arts and humanities. There may be resources for
this, but for the others where the market forces are there, let's
follow the American principle, lead, follow, or get out of the
way. So let us get out of the way and let there be a regular independent
National Knowledge commission.
- Education in general and higher education in particular in a
true sense is at cross roads in Twenty First century. The reason
being the new relationship that has emerged between education
and economy in recent times. Knowledge came at the centre stage
of economy and World started realizing the importance of knowledge
linked society and knowledge linked economy. Knowledge became
the unit of currency.
- What is the hallmark of educational system that makes nations
to be in driver's seat in new economy? Well if this is to happen,
nation needs legal and operational frame work that cultivates
and sustains open transparent competitions among institutions/universities
and also balances the aspirations of people, and this is crucial
for India, for access and equity. It should also have financial
support structure that allows every talented and needy student
to get educated in the filed of their choice. For last sixty years
Indian higher education system has predominantly remained public
system. The Government resources would never be adequate to fulfil
ever increasing demand for education. The inadequate governmental
resources, ever expanding demand for relevant and quality education
by the society and unwillingness of the parents to accept the
fact that quality does cost has created very complex and confusing
environment in the world of education.
The Government must accept the fact that education is both merit
as well as non-merit good. It can create a policy where in private
participation in education- across the spectrum, right from Primary
to Higher Education- is encouraged. This does not mean Government
need to withdraw from the domain of education. It should continue
to put in, and in fact more, money in education. It is also an
uncalled for perception that private participation would bring
cost escalation for society and the poor would suffer both in
access and equity.
- Government should create enabling policy structure that balances
both access and equity and at the same time promises quality education
to all.
Role of Market
- State should withdraw all subsidies and finances from the educational
sector and let educational institutions draw their own finances
from fees and grants. State must put all its money into primary
and secondary education, where there is a very huge shortfall.
The private sector may not find this area easily accessible, or
may not be interested in putting its money here.
- Government control over, and interference in education is stamped
with a UGC "certificate of quality." The establishment alleges
that otherwise, the private sector would spread unsavoury ideas
and material pornography, for instance if it were not for the
UGCs and AICTEs of this world.
- Why does the US have the best educational system in this world?
Because it is free and independent. Yes, there are regulators
within, but they are truly autonomous and not directed by the
State. Even granting the assumption that India is still a developing
country, the states' role should be limited to quality assessment.
We have this in the case of SEBI.
- These should be an assessment that mandates that everyone must
display it on the visiting cards, profiles or websites. This assessment
would certify educational institutions as being either worthy
or unfit for education, so that the public would know.
- If your child is unable to get into Delhi University, even after
scoring 90% marks, if it doesn't guarantee you admission, what
can be done? Do we dump these children into the well? It is no
wonder that they turn to private institutions to acquire education.
Good, bad or ugly, people are going to flock there because they
can in no way leave their children to fend for themselves. We
have to understand that a parallel education system exists, one
that fulfils people's needs in whatever manner. We have to meaningfully
respond to it.
- We also must focus our attention on capacity, especially with
reservations for different communities. Keeping the reservation
quota in place, for SCs, STs, or OBCs, we must also keep free
seats, similar to the system followed in the hospitals. You don't
need state funding for that.
Global Dimensions We can be globally competitive and the Indian
School of Business example proves that. In six years flat, the
Indian Business School has proved that is possible despite the
regulatory cholesterol from which it has suffered. For any institute,
being recognised within six years as one of the top twenty business
schools in the world is no mean achievement.
- We should be open to recruit faculty internationally and welcome
students from all parts of the world and make this as a kind of
a global meeting point. I think there are some institutions, which
are on the take off stage, particularly some of the IIMs only
if you allow them the freedom to recruit both faculty and students
internationally and also give them the resource base that is required
on the lines of ISB, it is possible to achieve this benchmark
in the next three to four years. It is mainly a problem with the
mindset as such and the government restrictions in terms of whether
you can actually recruit faculty.
- Instead of competing with the Kelloggs and the Whartons, we
should create niche areas, where we as Indians are known to be
very strong. It would be worthwhile to examine whether we can
actually get into those niche areas where we have certain plusses
and the rest of the world recognises India's strength.
Faculty Issues
- There is no Ivy League business school in the world, which is
not manned by Indians, if not led by Indians. We only have to
use our network. Look at what China has done. China is inviting
expatriates or people of the Chinese Diaspora working in North
America to come back and work on American salaries, in China.
Look at the progress that it has made in the last ten years. Unless
we have that kind of strong determination and a concrete plan,
we will remain where we were. We must clearly recognise this.
In this country, in every other sector we have done well and our
global competitive position has been going up. The same is true
for education, but only in parts. There are islands of excellence
but if you look at the overall university system, some of the
best-known universities and the institutions have lost their sheen
over the period. That is very unfortunate.
Look at the technical education today, the situation becomes even
more critical and alarming because in technical education, there
is a clinical as well as a technical side of this profession,
providing greater market opportunities. Therefore, attracting
faculty becomes even more difficult whether it is management,
architecture or to some extent technical education.
- Over the years, you have seen a huge expansion in capacity when
it comes to starting new programmes and taking new students, but
as far as the faculty availability and PhD programmes are concerned,
the pipeline has virtually dried up. In fact, the IITs have some
large PhD programmes but if you look at the distribution of students,
that is, engineering versus the sciences, it is very lopsided.
But we all know that globally, institutions are known by the quality
of their faculty and its students. And in our kind of situations
in management education for instance we are supposed to create
and transfer knowledge and at the same time, also influence practice.
Therefore, this involvement of the business and corporate world
becomes very important.
- Involvement of corporate world is only limited to coming and
recruiting people, speaking at seminars, and little beyond that.
What is the solution? How do we get more faculty, how do we motivate
people to join academics? Of course, salaries are an issue if
we look at international salaries, the average salary is about
$120,000 for business school teachers. Not maybe the top league,
but our top schools have to at least offer one third or half of
this after adjusting for purchasing power. A good idea, as one
of my colleagues here spoke about, would be to get some of our
expats to come and join our schools.
- The Harvards or the Stanfords of this world have become what
they are today because of the tremendous support that they have
received from the private sector, private trusts and the individuals.
The major reason is that US law provides for huge tax breaks.
Our tax laws do not encourage such philanthropy.
- What is happening to the regular faculty in this country? Unfortunately,
it is worrisome. The task is gigantic; regulation has a role to
play, it has to be more developmental, there has to be a serious
professional effort to raise the bar for the quality and the faculty
has to be put at the centre of all the processes and delivery
mechanisms of all these schools.
Quality
By rough estimate, the number of Diaspora academics would be around
ten thousand. The approximate numbers of Indians teaching in American
universities are six thousand. You can go to any institution of
repute, you will find Indians no longer just faculty members,
but as Deans of the institutions today.
- A person of Indian origin, if he acquires a PIO card or an
Overseas Citizen of India Card, does not need any visa or work
permit to undertake any work in India, except the government employment
and offices. So that is in fact, the biggest attraction that you
can have these people without any work permit requirement.
- Technology has made it easier. People do get sabbaticals and
other forms of leave to go and teach. In fact, they are encouraged
to go and teach in other universities. Particularly, since the
largest numbers are in the US and India is the flavour at least
at the moment, teaching in India or any collaborative research
with India would be very much encouraged by the university at
the other end. This offers phenomenal possibilities not for just
the faculty shortage that we need to meet.
- We complain that we can't increase the salaries immediately,
but we need to be sensible and practical. If one pays Rs5 lakh
to IIM faculty and a fresh graduate gets Rs10 lakhs after completing
IIM, it is difficult to retain people. Can we not allow sabbaticals
to public sector directors to come and teach? Similarly, we can
bring some IIM professors to the public sector, which is the domain
of the State.
- Our inputs are students; our entire process is carried by the
educational institutions where teachers, management, government
and everyone concerned is involved and our output is value-added
students. So the difference between industry and the education
sector is that all the three parameters in the education sector,
input, the process where the humans are involved and the output
are unpredictable. That is the biggest difference. No human element
can be predicted.
- Who are the beneficiaries of the educational system? There
are seven beneficiaries; the first and foremost beneficiary is
the student, because without students we cannot be here; second
come academics that is the teachers, third are the supporting
staff technical, administrative, they are also one of the beneficiaries,
the fourth are the parents because their children are receiving
education, the fifth are the funding agencies, government or private
or philanthropic organisations, sixth are the future employers
seventh and the most important beneficiary is society in general.
Thus, there are seven beneficiaries who are looking at the same
point but their aspirations, their demands and their expectations
are different.
- There have been debates about whether we should have an index
like the CRISIL index and whether CII and other bodies should
create that structure? There is a need to create bridges. We need
to create a bridge where the industrial approach and the model,
which we have developed, could be bridged.
-
Each institution should have its own built-in internal quality
assurance mechanism where it could be a combination of internal
self appraisal with unbiased informed transparent review from
external peers. It can be standardised by an agency.
- Access & Equity We need to clarify our vision of higher education;
otherwise it is empty talk. The question of access and equity
has to be situated within the issue of our vision, which itself
is linked to our understanding of society. If we do not have a
good understanding of our society, then we will not be able to
create a vision for education.
- Today, our vision is highly segmented and highly feudal in
outlook. The feudal view then also reflects in the kind of education
we impart. Our politicians, as has already been said by earlier
speakers are highly feudal in their attitude and so are our bureaucrats,
with exceptions. Our society is still very backward and lacks
dynamism. In what sense are we backward? In terms of research
and education. Why do we lack dynamism? Because we are not able
to grapple and solve our own problems and look outwards for solutions
to copy. Any society that is not able to solve its own problems
maybe characterized as lacking in dynamism.
- The number of people in higher education per thousand of population
in India is one of the lowest in the world.. It is simply because
of our very large population, that the absolute numbers are very
large even though in percent terms we are one of the lowest. Further,
we have very poor training in schools; so, quality mostly is very
poor. School education is segmented and quality is very uneven.
Government schools have rapidly declined. higher education was
not segmented but is getting more so today. Its democratising
influence is declining very rapidly. Why do I say that? Segmentation
in the schools has meant, the children of the rich go to better
off schools and the children of the poor to the government schools.
But at the level of higher education, everybody went to the same
kind of colleges, and universities, there was mixing together,
learning about each other and a democratizing influence. That
is now changing. This will have a damaging effect on our democracy.
- We must define the role of higher education very carefully.
It is to pass knowledge to the next generation to carry on the
task of society.. This is critical but not enough. It also has
to generate new knowledge so that society can advance. Both these
roles have to be performed very carefully. Thus, higher education
is about imparting dynamism to society. That higher education,
which does not impart dynamism to society is itself lacking dynamism;
it cannot pass on dynamism. So imparting dynamism to society is
the key.
- Autonomy and accountability are very critical. These are bandied
about as empty boxes. Accountability has to be in the long-term
sense of the society. It is not to the immediate context. Societies
continue for ages, societies don't disappear in 5 or 10 years,
so accountability has to be based on the long-term interest. And
only autonomous institutions and autonomous individuals can provide
such accountability. Dissent is the essence of higher education.
Without dissent, society would be lost, because after all, that
is what promotes new knowledge. How do you build in dissent into
institutions? It is only autonomous individuals, who will dissent.
Today, compliance is very important in institutions, in higher
education and that is why new knowledge is not being created at
the rate at which it should be created.
- Today, we treat individuals as cogs in a big machine or as
a sophisticated machine and not as holistic beings. The task of
higher education is to create a vision of a holistic society peopled
by holistic beings. How to achieve it? That is where the question
of access to all and equality of opportunity for all in the context
of higher education is very important.
- The specifics are that in changing the structure of the system
it is recommended that we should take education away from charity
except in cases of those who want to do charity. We cannot stop
them from doing charity. Take education away from society and
the trust regime and give it to the corporate sector.
Other Issues
- We should not ignore vocational education in higher education
because as I understood, vocational education is after class XII.
We have somehow associated vocational education as meant for only
dropouts of the society. We also forget about rural India.
- Youth of this country has tremendous aspirations and we have
to look at the entire educational scenario, not just higher education.
Today, we are only discussing higher education, which cannot be
talked of in isolation from the primary or a lower level education.
It has a very close relationship with the quality of that education
and the people who come to seek the higher education. The aspirations
of the people of this country are indeed very high.
- Whether it is education, health or housing, the lowest level
of a person in this country, the poorest of the poor, must not
be underestimated. He wants to educate his child in e best of
the schools. Today we have students coming from a very modest
background, but thanks to the government, they have loan schemes
from the banks. Resources are not a major issue today. Systems
can be put in place, there are good and bad institutions everywhere
in the world. Can we improve upon what we have today, can we provide
a better training to our people at all levels? How can improvements
take place?
- The best agents of this change do not remain in this education
industry, because of reverse filtration of talents. The education
sector loses out to the corporate world or lucrative overseas
markets. If you see various industries around the world and in
India, for instance, Mercedes, BMW or Rolls Royce, they charge
the best prices for the simple reason that they deliver the best
product. No one can question that. If the same pattern of education
can be adopted, and a corporate kind of a structure can be followed
in B schools and in other schools where similar benefits, perks,
and salaries can be given to candidates by generating enough profits,
things would change.
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