COMMENTARY

in the supply of higher education and Some Issues in Higher Education d emand for it. The number of seats available in government-run institutions is much smaller than the number of peo- Shobhit Mahajan ple wanting them. In this environment of scarcity, other players enter the arena A huge gap in the supply of higher igher education is the fl avour of and there is a rush to start institutions to education and demand for it the season; there is scarcely a fi ll the gap, leading inevitably to an has encouraged private sector Hday when it does not feature on oversupply, as is becoming evident with the front pages of newspapers – the private engineering colleges not being participation, but a rigorous Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) ad- able to fi ll their seats. Like any other eco- regulatory mechanism has mission fracas, the stratospheric cut-offs nomic good that is scarce, market forces to ensure high standards and announced for admission to the Univer- rush in to fi ll the gap. affordability. More alarming is sity of Delhi, the foreign education pro- Except that there is a slight hitch – it viders’ bill, and so forth. turns out that education is not a market the serious shortage of faculty in While these issues are obviously good in our country. And this is true not institutions of higher learning, important, there are some aspects of just in an ethical or moral sense, but unequal access to the institutions, the higher education scenario in India even legally. One cannot run a for-profi t the non-availability of textbooks that have not caught the imagination of educational institution in India. Educa- the mass media in ways that others tional institutions can only be estab- in Indian languages and students have. Maybe these issues have never lished either by a charitable trust or as a who are ill-equipped to handle been highlighted because of the English- Section 25 company that is formed “for the rigours of college education. speaking elite bias of newspaper and the sole purpose of promoting com- television r eporting. merce, art, science, religion, charity or One issue that has been in the news any other useful object”. Crucially, “it though is the commercialisation of higher should intend to apply its profi ts or other education – the mushrooming of private incomes only in promoting its objects”. institutes, universities, colleges and even Thus legally profi ts cannot be taken out the growth of the coaching classes in- of the company but have to be ploughed dustry, like in Kota. The numbers are back into the institution. This means no astonishing – there were 100 private dividends or other monetary rewards to universities and 129 deemed universities the promoters of the institution. (mostly private) in India as of December Of course, that is not how the real 2011. This is a massive 36% of the total world works. Or else there would not be number of university-level institutions this proliferation of private degree-giving in the country. The number of private shops. What is done is fairly well known professional institutes is equally star- – huge under-the-table capitation fees, tling – there are more than 4,000 private over-invoicing of salaries of genuine em- institutions imparting professional edu- ployees, fake, non-existent employees cation. And the private coaching industry on the rolls, over-invoicing of capital ex- has been estimated to have a turnover of penditure mostly to associated compa- more than Rs 50,000 crore, though this nies of the promoters, consultancy and number must be an underestimate given perks to the promoters, and so on. the nature of the industry. This is then broadly the scenario in Shobhit Mahajan (shobhit.mahajan@gmail. Clearly, the higher education space in the private education space. One should com) is at the department of physics and India is becoming more and more priva- hasten to add that there are some excellent astrophysics, University of Delhi. tised. The reason is obvious – a huge gap private institutions of higher learning

20 august 4, 2012 vol xlviI no 31 EPW Economic & Political Weekly COMMENTARY that maintain standards and provide high- argument is that the state should not be get enormous benefi ts from the state – quality education, especially in the pro- providing any kind of subsidy in terms of subsidised land, power, tax and duty fessional sphere. The following obser- land, power, and infrastructure. As long concessions for importing equipment, vations are not about these exceptions, as this is the case and as long as reason- and so on. In lieu of these, they are which anyway prove the rule. able regulatory requirements are en- obliged to provide cheap healthcare to The question one needs to ask is forced, and enforced well, on these insti- the poor to the extent of a certain per- whether this proliferation is necessarily tutions, there is no reason why their centage of their capacity. This, of course, bad. Interestingly, there are several growth should be curtailed. almost never happens. In the education reasons why it need not necessarily be so. An interesting parallel can be drawn sector, no direct subsidies or concessions with the healthcare sector where the are provided. However, this seems set to Compulsion, Not Choice huge growth in private institutions in change if the recommendations of the First, these institutions are not where recent years has almost mirrored the Narayana Murthy panel on higher edu- students go out of choice, in general. growth of private institutions of higher cation are accepted and implemented. Only when a student cannot make it to education. The correspondence can be The recommendations include provid- a government-run institute, say Delhi worked out in a pretty accurate way – ing free land on long leases, freedom University, would she consider going to the mushrooming of nursing homes in from regulation of salaries and huge tax Amity or Sharda University. And this is small moffusil towns is like the huge concessions for funding. If these are im- not just because they are, on an average, number of small degree colleges that plemented, the whole argument needs of poorer quality. It is also because these one sees, for instance, in Uttar Pradesh, to be rethought. institutions are exorbitantly expensive – the medium-rung hospitals are like private Another phenomenon increasingly typically a few lakh rupees per year. professional colleges and the fi ve-star, being noticed in the health sector is lo- After years of dithering, the govern- super-speciality hospitals are like private cal brain drain – some of the best talent ment has started to regulate the fees universities. And this growth has been from prestigious government-run hospitals charged by professional institutions. because of the massive mismatch bet- is moving to private, fi ve-star medical Thus, for instance, business schools can ween demand and supply of quality hospitals. This is not going to happen only charge an amount that the state healthcare services. in any signifi cant way in the education government fi xes, based on their ex- Of course, this is not to argue that the sector in the near future. Unless foreign penditure per student. But like what hap- state should wash its hands off these universities set up shop here. That will pened when capitation fees were banned fundamental necessities. It is a fact be a total game changer – the prestige, by the Supreme Court, promoters fi nd that the government hospitals are not the money and the facilities offered by ways around regulatory constraints. capable, either in quality or quantity, these would obviously persuade the best There is a positive side to these insti- to handle the healthcare needs of a faculty to leave. tutions. Many of them run courses which large majority of the population. The Thus private institutions of higher are non-existent or rarely found in state- solution is obviously increasing the learning are not necessarily bad and run universities. A diploma in apparel reach of state-run, cheap and good- apart from a rigorous regulatory mecha- design or export management is not quality healthcare. But that is not hap- nism, not much needs to be done on this something that would necessarily be pening at a satisfactory pace. Hence the front. It is important to repeat that this is available to a student in Delhi University. huge private participation in this sector, not an argument for the state to step This in itself is not something a priori which may be one of the fastest growing back from the sector. If anything, it is an bad – an economy as varied as ours does in our economy. argument to massively increase the state need a variety of skills and if these are There is, however, a difference. presence in the higher education land- taught professionally (a big if, of course), Whereas, on an average, government- scape to bring some balance to the this is a positive aspect. After all, instead run educational institutions are of higher d emand-supply equation. of thousands of students doing a plain quality compared to private ones, this is This leads us to other related issues. vanilla undergraduate degree in human- not true of healthcare. The quality of Even assuming that the resources can be ities or commerce, if a few hundred or care provided by the state sector com- garnered for a massive increase in state- thousand end up with diplomas in leather pares poorly, across equivalent levels, funded higher education, there remain technology, apparel design and the like, when compared with that offered by the issues of human resources. The fact is it cannot really be bad. Especially be- private sector. These statements are true that there are just not enough teachers. cause our state-run institutions have not on an average and just as there are some A premier university like the Delhi Univer- yet ventured into these areas. fantastic private educational institutions, sity has more than a third of its teaching So, should we argue that these degree- there are indeed well-run, effi cient and posts vacant. So just constructing new granting shops be abolished? Or should high-quality public healthcare providers universities and IITs will not necessarily we only insist that they be subject to and hospitals. help. We need to also undertake the more rigorous regulation of standards, There is another signifi cant difference. mammoth task of capacity-building – the and possibly fees? A crucial thing in this Hospitals, especially the big ones, usually classic chicken and egg problem. The

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Chinese, for instance, have undertaken rooms to IITs with world-class infrastruc- them totally at sea. So, apart from for- a huge capacity-building exercise over ture and faculty. mulae and technical terms, the lecture is the last three decades by retraining and Even for those who do manage to given in Hindi and English. sending students abroad for training. s ecure a seat in a college or a university, And this has paid off in an almost expo- either in the general category or under Books in Indian Languages nential increase in the number of some reservation, there are huge barri- A related issue is the availability of universities in China. ers to a meaningful education. These books in languages other than English. The really crucial issue in higher edu- range from language skills, and a lack of Once again, in the sciences, there are cation is not about private versus state text and reference books in their lan- just not enough good quality textbooks universities. It is about access – access guage to a very heterogeneous school available in any of the Indian languages defi ned in a very broad way of real op- education leading to a huge gap in infor- at the college level. This is not an issue portunities for everyone to avail them- mational and conceptual training. that concerns only the small universities. selves of high quality, meaningful edu- Language skills fi rst. In many parts of On a personal note, recently a student of cation at affordable rates. Defi ning ac- the country, the medium of instruction mine came to me with a query in a text- cess in this broad way, it is evident that at the college level, especially in the sci- book. I saw that he had, in the margins, the situation is very grim. The fi rst and ences, is English. This automatically with help from his fellow students trans- the most obvious fact is that there are places a large number of students at a lated every single sentence into Hindi so not enough seats in colleges for all disadvantage. The problem is far more that he could understand what was there. interested school graduates. Our gross widespread than just those coming from The non-existence of good reading ma- enrolment ratio at around 13% is pathetic small, moffusil towns. My own experi- terial in the vernacular was recognised when compared to what it ought to be ence at the University of Delhi, where I by the National Knowledge Commission, given the size of our economy. The world teach a class of about 300 MSc students, which recommended the setting up of a average is almost twice this number. testifi es to this. I have to teach bilingually translation mission to translate material And this number masks the massively because a large percentage of my students into Indian languages. Work on this has uneven quality of education – from degree just do not understand spoken English. begun, though it will be years before the colleges in small towns run in a few Lecturing to them in English would leave gap is fi lled signifi cantly.

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla 171 005 Announcing Winter School on LIFE AND THOUGHT OF GANDHI Over the last three decades the scholastic, intellectual, political and social interests in Gandhiji’s life and thought has acquired a new urgency and depth. Gandhiji’s writings like An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments with Truth and Hind Swaraj have been subject of minute textual, philosophical and literary studies. The theory and practice of Satyagraha, constructive work and the institutions that Gandhiji established have come to be studied by historians, political theorists and commentators and chroniclers of social movements. Lives of Gandhiji’s associates and interlocutors like Mahadev Desai, J C Kumarrapa, Mirabehn, C F Andrews and Lanza Del Vasto have added to our understanding of Gandhiji. As a result of these studies our understanding of Gandhiana has emerged deeper, richer and nuanced. The Winter School seeks to acquaint the participant to this variegated intellectual tradition of thinking of and about Gandhiji. The School would seek to provide a non-fragmentary understanding of Gandhiji’s life and thought. Quite often we have come to look at political Gandhi as quite distinct from the Gandhi of the constructive work or see Gandhiji’s spiritual quest as distinct from his quest for Swaraj. The School would try to unravel the underlying relationship between seemingly disparate practices, utterances and writings. With this in view a Two week Winter School is proposed to be held at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla during 1-15 December 2012. The Winter School will be conducted by eminent scholars from several disciplines who will explore various aspects of Gandhi’s life and thought. Applications are invited from young College and University teachers/researchers from Humanities and Social Sciences/Journalist/ NGO activist in the age group of 22 to 35 years. A batch of 25 participants will be selected from amongst the applicants. Those interested may send their bio-data (that should include their academic qualifi cation, experience, research interest and area of specialization) along with the note of 200-250 words regarding how they perceive life and thought of Gandhi. All expenses will be borne by the IIAS. Applications for the above programme should reach IIAS on or before 30 September 2012. Those selected will be informed by 31st October 2012. Applications may be sent by email at [email protected] or by post at: Winter School on Gandhi Academic Section Indian Institute of Advanced Study Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla 171 005

22 august 4, 2012 vol xlviI no 31 EPW Economic & Political Weekly COMMENTARY Finally, there is a huge gap between some subjects. This is not to say academic particular course for which we fi nd what we expect our undergraduates to standards must be diluted. But is it fair students are particularly underpre- know and the skills that they ought to on students to admit them (because of pared. These classes will be optional possess and what the reality is. Thanks to reservations or otherwise) to colleges and without credits. They would be affi rmative action, a number of students and then leave them to their own devi- self-selecting, in the sense that only entering the university system are from ces to compete in a harsh, alien eco- those who think that they need to take not-so-privileged backgrounds. Some of system? Or should there be institutional them would take them. The rest would them are even fi rst-generation learners. mechanisms to empower and train these not bother because it does not fetch But a lack of preparation to handle the rig- students? These could range from reme- them any credit. ours of college education is not restricted dial classes in the afternoon or evenings, To conclude, the outlook for higher to those who have gained access through extensive preparatory classes during the education is pretty grim. Quantity-wise, reservations. It is far more general and vacations, or some other method to there are real bottlenecks in terms of widespread. How does one expect them bring all ill-equipped students up to resources and human resources. But, to cope with the huge demands that our speed. Exactly what form these would more signifi cantly, the much harder system puts on their comprehension and take is dependent on local conditions issue of quality will need to be ad- informational capabilities? and the availability of resources, both dressed. Otherwise, we might achieve Again, on a personal note, in my own human and infrastructural. higher numerical ratios, but they would department, we have witnessed, for Our department has been discussing not be meaningful for a vast majority instance, failure rates of around 80% in the need to have such classes in a of students.

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