Problems of Higher Education in India

If and when the fast growing crisis of higher education in India is recognized by government, business community, faculty, students, and the public, solutions to the problem would have to be devised from within. Outside solutions are unlikely to work, and will likely be rejected by a proud society.

Broadly speaking, solutions are needed for (1) attracting a significant number of top students from each year's class to universities as teachers and researchers (i.e., get India's Einsteins into universities instead of selling soap, trading securities, or writing computer code); (2) finding a way of financing higher education through a judicious combination of government grants, private philanthropy, student fees, and royalties from research--this will have to be accomplished without profit-seeking capital in higher education because nobody in the world has yet found a way of delivering quality education without significant subsidies; (3) persuading business and political communities and it is in their own best long-run interest to strengthen delivery of quality of higher education by abandoning their pursuit of profits from education in favor of donations; (4) improving the governance of colleges, universities and their regulators through training, legislation, and restructuring; (5) enforcement of Societies Act and transparent public financial reporting by all organizations and institutions of higher education; and (6) amendment of India's Constitution to eliminate the special status granted therein to the teachers.

How these and other goals are to be achieved has to be worked out through discussion and debate in India. On problem No. 1 listed above (attracting more of the top talent from each year's class into teaching and scholarship to do innovation in India) everyone in India seems to think that somehow the US and UK universities will solve India's problem. They can't and they won't. India (like China) is too big. These two countries have to solve their talent-in-teaching-shortage by themselves. Simply trying attract more people from US universities (on sabbatical, or otherwise) will not work, because about 500 other universities in India, and a few thousand others around the world are trying to do exactly the same thing. Many efforts amount to adding more straws to the same glass without adding any water to drink.

Yet, we do not get many bright people from India applying to "free" PHD education in US universities because selling "soap" offers more attractive "packages." And for Indian universities, PHD is a low priority, if they can attract bright students at all. Private universities have no interest in money losing propositions. So, most  everyone is chasing the revenue generating degree programs with little attention to the money-eating PhD programs, hoping that someone else will spend the money, solve the problem, and they can hire the PHD graduates to teach at their own institutions. For all universities in India, the number of PhDs getting science and engg. PhDs is no more than 7 thousand per year. There are some 3400 engineering schools alone.

Not surprisingly, I would like to see more attention to PhD programs, especially at government subsidized apex institutions. Further, revenue generation from alums and other benefactors to subsidize quality education should be a high priority. Quality faculty contributions are difficult to measure, and certainly not by the number of hours spent in the office. This calls for reconsideration of not only the culture of the Institute but also of the rules by which it is run. Civil service rulebook tends to kill off most innovation in Indian universities.

Banking: delivering money (or pizza) with a bite on the way

I go to my bank of twelve years in New Haven to request a wire transfer. What are the charges, I ask. No charge. It is an international wire transfer. They check the rules for my type of account again and tell me that there is no charge. Next day, I get an email from the recipient telling me the amount credited to his account is $35 short. I call my bank and learn that while they did not charge anything, their correspondent bank in New York might have, and that they have no knowledge of, or control over, the correspondent bank's charges. Perhaps they just send the money to the New York bank, and everyone in their supply chain is free to take a helping at the trough.

My request to speak to the bank manager revealed that he knew the correspondent bank charge to be $20, and thus inferred that the bank of the destination account must have charged the other $15 of the shortfall. He offered to send another wire transfer for $35 to make up the difference. The transaction not only required an initial visit to the bank branch to authorize the transfer, but also three follow up phone calls of more than 15 minutes to sort this out.

What is going on in banking? If I owe someone $1,000, and write them a check for that amount, how much will be delivered to their account? How much will be delivered to their account in a no-fee wire transfer promised by the bank? If one orders a pizza, how many of the slices should be expected reach the customer. Should one assume that the delivery-man and the door-man have the right to take bites on the way?

What about efficient execution of commerce. If the check-writer or the originator of a wire transfer cannot know how much of the amount sent will actually be credited to the account of the recipient, what amount should the originator send to satisfy his obligation to the receiving party? Should this be a matter of guess work, or multiple successive transfers each being subject to the same uncertainty? Is it unreasonable for the customers to assume that the wire transfer service being sold by the bank (in exchange for its fee) is to deliver the specified amount of remittance all the way to the recipient's account? Can banks be relied on to use plain English (and the Commercial Code) meaning of words, or should we let them wrap their practices in euphemisms and opaque correspondent relationships?

It used to be that banks could be relied on the keep their word on even large amounts. Has banking changed, or am I nostalgic about a nonexistent past? I hope someone who knows more about banking will come forth and illuminate the matter.

Renovating India's Higher Education

Yash  Pal Committee Report on Higher Education in India: A Review

The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (the Yash Pal Committee) has submitted its report to the Union Minister of Education on June 23, 2009. Given the wide-spread concerns about the current state and trends in India's higher education system, the report could not come at a better time when the new government may want to take major steps to improve higher education.

The Report, written by a panel of eminent educationists, identifies some major weaknesses of the current system that include disciplinary fragmentation and isolation, separation of instruction from exploration, proliferation of single-discipline institutes, erosion of autonomy and democratic spirit of freedom of thought, unattractiveness of careers in education to the talented youth, excessive commercialization, uneven accessibility, poor financing, governance and management, and excessive and inappropriate regulation of colleges and universities. Political pressures and control from the outside find internal resonance in the interested parties within these institutions, often generating resource and attention consuming litigation and many conflicts which are unrelated to their educational mission.

The Committee proposes a bold structural move in creation of a new constitutional body, National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), to takeover the responsibilities of the Universities Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education, and all educational aspects of 13 professional regulatory bodies such as the Bar Council of India. The Commission will be directly responsible to the Parliament, along the lines of the National Election Commission, to protect it from political interference.

The Commission will serve as the apex regulatory body in the field of higher education in India and seek to redefine the higher education through (1) developing a vision of higher education as reflected in framework for curricula, university benchmarks, international comparisons, educational policies including costs and pricing; (2) advising the union and state governments, (3) creating norms, processes and structures for entry, accreditation, and exit of institutions and programs; (4) developing sources and mechanisms for funding; (5) promote effective and transparent governance; (6) creating a national database on higher education; (7) promoting an environment to attract talented youth to education and research; (8) creating processes for richer environment for learning and exploration through softer interaction among students and teachers; (9) finding ways of gradually freeing the universities from the administrative burdens of affiliated colleges; and (10) reporting annually to the Parliament on the state of higher education.

This three paragraph summary does not do justice to the grand vision of the future of India's higher education that motivates this 94-page document. Every system, no matter how inefficient and dysfunctional, has plenty of beneficiaries. Threatened by proposals for reform, they stand ready with their inside knowledge to rip the reform proposals apart by line, paragraph and chapter. Where is the evidence for this? Prove it first. But as Samuel Johnson said: Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be removed.  The Government of India has a clear choice ahead "act now, or spend its five-year term dealing with the objections.

The Report can, however, be improved by strengthening some of its recommendations. It underplays the severity of shortage of talent in higher education and research and the weakness and consequences of the for-profit "investment" model of higher education for quality and innovation. It hardly mentions the responsibility of the business corporation in supporting higher education and does not adequately promote the benefits of regulatory competition in the vast Indian system. Let us consider each of these issues briefly.

Many of the ills of Indian higher education can be linked to the quality of talent in the field. A significant number of the best minds of each year's graduates will have to be attracted to instruction and research for the Committee's recommendations to have any chance of success. Perhaps the President of India could congratulate the top 1 percent of each year's undergraduate class through a letter, letting them know that as exceptional people, they are invited to pursue post-graduate studies with a government fellowship in any field at a university (in India or abroad) that admits them at any time during the five years following graduation. If even a small proportion of such talented graduates accept this offer of a Presidential Fellowship, we shall have significantly increased the flow of talent into education within a decade or so.

In addition to educating some 40 lakh new graduates, Indian colleges and universities also must also educate about 4 lakh new instructors each year. If undergraduate classroom is the wheat farm, the graduate program is its seed farm; whether we eat or starve tomorrow depends on the quality of grain saved as the seed. At present Indian universities grant some 17,000 PhD degrees annually across all fields and, in the judgment of many educators, of mixed quality. Graduate programs, like seed farms, are extremely expensive to run, and yield little revenue to motivate profit-making colleges. Profit-making companies do not invest in educating educators and exacerbate the problem in India. To create and sustain a good system of higher education, the Commission will have to have a "seed farm" division of its own to deal with the problem.

No university in the world has found a way of delivering quality higher education without government or charitable subsidy. Quality education is expensive, and anyone who can figure out a way of running a world class (or even average) university at profit deserves at least a Nobel Prize. Since none of the top 500 universities across the world is run without large subsidies, the source of widespread belief in India that investment by profit-seeking organizations "whether foreign or domestic "in higher education will help deliver quality education is a mystery. There is no such thing as commercially viable higher education beyond low-level vocational education.

While declining in relative importance, government employment is still important in India. Strict written definitions of qualifications for government jobs requiring specific subjects sustain the compartmentalization of education in universities. The Committee's recommendation on lowering the walls among the disciplines should be accompanied by greater flexibility in defining educational requirements for jobs and allowing greater role for judgment by the recruiting personnel for government.

The Committee's recognition of the diverse skills needed for management of various operations of universities calls for care in education, training and selection of administrators. Managing academic (programs, faculty recruitment and promotion, admissions, curriculum and budgeting), financial, facilities, personnel, government, community, governance, and fundraising operations of universities requires a diversity of skills. The NCHER would do well to help universities build such management capabilities and do appropriate succession planning. Improving the management of universities will help increase the chance of success in reaching the goal of university autonomy.

A great many institutions of secondary and higher education in India were created and are run well by charitable trusts. However, the same charitable trust has also become a veil for colleges run by operators who see them as little more than profit-making businesses. The Commission will have to make sure that the not-for-profit trusts are true to their legal charter and do not leak funds to their controlling parasites. Alumni of these institutions could be given a voice in helping the Commission evaluate the operations of colleges run by the trusts.

Finally, the proposed new structure of the Commission should have appropriate features to protect it from the conditions that led to failures of the structures is will replace. Monopoly regulatory power over higher education for a population of 1.15 billion presents a prima facie risk of getting mired again in inefficient procedures and rules. The Committee Report itself recognizes that one-size-fits-all regulation of higher education will not work. For this reason, the Government of India would be better advised to adopt a model of regulatory competition by creating not one but two, or perhaps three such commissions, each acting independently with jurisdiction over the entire country.  Absence of monopoly regulatory power will induce these commissions to compete, innovate by trying different models and ideas, allow experimentation, comparisons, imitation and rejection, and ultimately evolve a complex diverse matrix of institutions of higher education appropriate for a large fast developing country to support its ambitions to join countries of the first rank in the world.