Breaking the higher education logjam

Breaking the higher education logjam
14 Sep, 2007, 0030 hrs IST,Manoj Pant,
In the last few articles this columnist had argued that inclusive growth requires the universal dissemination of primary and high school education rather than higher education. In this, the government is well equipped to do the needful as more than 90% of the (primary) school-going population is enrolled in government schools.

All that is required is decentralisation of schools and eliminating political interference to ensure accountability. But, crucially, enabling participatory growth requires basic skills for which the groundwork is laid in schools rather institutions of higher learning.

The inability to appreciate this has led to a situation where the private sector complains of a lack of skilled labour while there is a growing army of the educated unemployed in most states. Last month, this column had shown that this is a problem of ‘inappropriate’ secondary education rather than a lack of universities. Yet, the mess in higher education continues.

To the government, the solution to higher education seems to lie in increasing expenditure. One example is the proliferation of distance education models. Typically, distance education is a means of reducing the expenses of face-to-face education in the standard universities without reducing the value of the basic degree. Distance education reduces the fixed costs of operating in the classical university mode.

This is hardly true in India, given the high costs of modern technology. Consider the rather absurd system now operating in India where every state is setting up its own open university. But distance education is supposed to be the alternative to setting up a host of geographically separated universities. Why then do we need an open university in each state? About a year ago this writer was invited as an expert in discussing the course content of the post graduate economics programme of the Uttarakhand open university.

When it was pointed out that a course content without emphasis on quantitative methods would be meaningless, one was told that with quantitative courses there would be no takers! And when one suggested that perhaps then the course should not be offered, there was disbelief. That was the last one heard from the authorities!

It is even stranger that distance education is supposed to provide vocational courses, which crucially depends on hands-on practical experience. There is a pressing need for such courses, but here the private sector is far ahead of the state. As argued in earlier columns, the supply of vocational education must respond to the demands of the private sector which can vary on a continuous basis. Universities, however, are not geared to meet such demands.

What then should be the objective of higher education, particularly in our state universities? The main aim should be to further the R&D requirements of the country. Anyone who has followed the history of inventions will observe that more than 90% of such inventions first happened in universities and reported in scientific publications.

It is only later that the private sector came in to fund the application of such inventions to everyday life. Yet, the link between industry and universities is the subject of great suspicion in India. It is not surprising then that very few students want to study science at the university level and even China is ahead of India in the role its universities will play in promoting R&D.

Where then are we headed? The prognosis for state run higher education is grim. For, universities have become highly politicised. In less than one year we have ‘progressed’ from the case of the late Prof Sabharwal in Bhopal to the vice chancellor of Lucknow, who needed court intervention to function, to the recent banning of all student union elections in Uttar Pradesh.

To many students, university life has become a way of promoting their political careers with little regard for academic excellence. Surprisingly, it needed a Lyngdoh committee to discover this! Even more unfortunate, universities are judged today on the basis of populous quantitative indicators (number of students per faculty, number of PhDs produced, etc.,) rather than their contribution to promoting long term R&D efforts of the country.

Yet, India has one of the best structures of higher education, at least among the developing countries. The crucial issue today is the shortage of teachers, not universities. To use modern language, the problem is software, not hardware. Universities (particularly state universities) need to be given greater autonomy from state (and hence political) control as this is crucial to serious research.

Dismantling this structure and replacing it with one of dedicated institutes and private universities seems to be the current trend. As in other matters, ten years down the line we will look at China and wonder where we failed. But it is still not too late.

(The author is professor, Centre for International Trade and Development, School of International Studies, JNU)