Higher Education Reforms in India

The number of institutions and enrollment in higher education continue their rapid growth, but the quality of this education remains uncertain. A small number of state-subsidized institutions attract a thin top layer of talent from each year's cohort. High selectivity of admission to these elite institutions provides a screen valued by potential employers. Domestic and foreign demand for the services of these few thousand students has created an inflated reputation of the overall quality of India's higher education. The number of such graduates remains small relative to the population and the demands of India's economy for educated manpower. Reliable estimates of value-added by higher education, beyond the screening value of admission to elite institutions, are needed to assess colleges and universities, and to guide educational policy.

Graduate education - the seed farm of higher education and scholarship - continues in an alarming state of disarray with respect to both quality and quantity. Pressed by budgetary constraints, the government appears to have decided on profit-oriented privatization of higher education as the solution. Political and business classes, with significant overlap between the two, see higher education as a source of lucrative private returns on investment. There is little theoretical or empirical evidence that supports the prospects of success of a for-profit model in building quality higher education. Some recent proposals hold promise of radical reform and renovation, including regulatory restructuring. It remains unclear whether the government has the wisdom, determination, financing, and power to push reforms past the resistance from entrenched faculty and from the political and business classes.

This is an abstract of a longer paper available for download: Sunder, Shyam, Higher Education Reforms in India (June 28, 2010). Yale SOM Working Paper. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1652277

Synthetic Gene Patents and Promoting Innovation

Congratulations to Dr. J. Craig Venter and Synthetic Genomics, Inc. for their breakthrough in modifying an existing cell with some synthesized genes. The news reports say that they have applied for a patent on their invention. The social goal of our system of patents is to reward innovation in the hope of improving our society. Improvements come in small steps, building on what is already available in nature or from prior inventions.

The innovation of Synthetic Genomics builds on the cells already available in nature for free. If a patent is granted for this innovation, it is only appropriate that the inventors enjoy the rewards of their hard work. However, to keep the process of innovation going, it is also important that the results of this innovation become available for free for subsequent improvements by others.  Future innovators should not have to pay for building on Dr. Venter's innovation. I hope that the Patent Office will be careful to give the same free ride to the future inventors that Dr. Venter has enjoyed on nature. Otherwise, we would have granted a legal monopoly on millions of years of accumulated achievements of nature to the first inventor, and end up strangling, not encouraging, future innovation.

Who Will Teach In Indian Universities?

Indian universities face the problem of talent and money. The garden of higher education in India has been left largely untended for over fifty years. When I have the opportunity to speak at Indian universities, I ask the students: Who would you like to be taught by "people as smart as you, or less so?

The students giggle, smile, even go red in the face, and someone would give the polite answer: We would like to be taught by people smarter than us. The inevitable next question is: How many people in this room filled with young talent plan to take up teaching as their work? Rarely a hand goes up, and if one or two hands do go up gingerly, they elicit derisive laughter, and those hands, too, promptly go down. It is a huge problem in India.

I ask vice-chancellors and deans about the ratio of average compensation for their fresh graduates and teachers and I get a number around three to five in favor of students. The government doesn't have the money and our friends in business think they can make money by delivering higher education. No Indian university stands among the top hundred in the world. Nobody in the world has yet found a way of delivering quality education without large subsidies from either government or business.

There is a widespread misconception in India that quality higher education can be delivered at a profit. How many of the businessmen setting up these shops will send their own children to schools which make profit? Only about 16 percent of my university's revenue comes from student fees. Yale is a private university. In India, people in teaching business seem to earn more than 100 percent of their expenses from student fees.

I suspect the source of this impression in India may be the conception of the essence of higher education being the bricks and mortar, and not the brains. Contrast this with the Vishwa Bharathi concept of higher education where one could sit under a tree and still learn and think of great thoughts. Attracting the best minds of each generation to teaching and scholarship is India's challenge.

I am glad to see that the current government in India is beginning to pay some attention to this long-neglected challenge before the system collapses for the lack of sufficient high quality talent in academia.