While there is a general consensus that education is the panacea to our present problems today, there is much disagreement on the approach. Should we go for a total revamping, or work within existing framework, should we focus on world-class institutions or higher education opportunities for all, to what extent should private and foreign players be allowed? These are the issues on which the debate has been raging for quite a while now but the polity, education and industry have not reached an understanding on these questions. This was quite evident at the FICCI Higher Education Summit, held in the capital on November 25-26. The theme of the summit was ‘Higher Education at Crossroads: Imperatives for Policy & Practice’.
Setting the tone for the summit, Amit Mitra, Secretary General, FICCI, said, “FICCI feels there’s need for fundamental revamp of regulatory framework, or we will fall back.” The key to revamping, he said, lay in incentivising key elements of higher education. He said outstanding professors were not incentivised. He suggested objective student evaluation to feed into salary component. In similar way, research component should also be taken into account for salary and promotion. Equally important, he said, was governance, and faculty should also be taking part in this. “Why do professors hate to take part in governance?” he asked at a press conference on the occasion.
He pointed out that none of the Indian institutions figures in the World’s top 100 universities and only two in the next 100 and wondered how do we achieve excellence. He pointed the report by Administrative Reforms Commission headed by Veerappa Moily, that states that the country must do away with AICTE. He also suggested reorganisation of UGC. He also expressed his wish that the Private University Establishment Regulation Bill, which has been pending since 1995, be fructified.
In his inaugural address, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, gave his response to the suggestions that Dr Mitra had given. He said much of what the stakeholders want — issues of quality, expansion and scale to equip ourselves for the challenges of new knowledge economy — is already addressed in the 11th Five-Year Plan.
He said that the planning process had identified the challenge. The government had brought in outside experts, reflected in the setting up of National Knowledge Commission and the commission had clearly charted out the course. A lot of what the Knowledge Commission had suggested had been endorsed in the Plan. So, Dr Ahluwalia said, “The correct thing in my view is to ask the government, what are you doing to implement the 11th plan.”
He made it clear that the reform would take time. “I have to recognise that… India’s economic reforms took a long time. So my guess is that the educational reform agenda will also move in the same way… The existing legislation introduced 10 years ago has not been passed…. (It was) certainly a legislation inadequate to the task, badly conceived, and had it been passed, it would have delayed decision making… for another 20 years. So I count it as the great victory of the system. That poor legislation has been abandoned. So, no apologies for the fact that we are taking time. Because this country does take a lot of time.”
He also clarified that since they were coming to the end of this government so the scope for new legislative action within the remaining six months was limited.
He also pointed at the lack of consensus among the key stakeholders in higher education – teachers and students. In economic reforms it was only when a loud and clear message went out from the industry, the key stakeholder, that government control should end, that economic reforms happened. “I regret to say that in education if you were to collect 500 university teachers I am not sure that you will get support.” Similarly, there was no consensus among students on reforms. “In a vague sort of way there is a consensus among parents but they want it free. So you want reform in an environment where I don’t think we have created enough of debate amongst the major stakeholders.”
He said, “The government has a very big role in coming clean on what it intends to do. We have come clean in some areas. It’s quite clear that we are going to expand scale if investment is made by the government in the public sector. It is also clear that we don’t want to simply fund and expand the existing system. A bill is being processed for setting up a few central universities. I believe that bill has greater elements of flexibility than in the past, which allow for movement of faculty from one university to another.” The bill also envisages achieving a degree on the basis of accumulative credits for individual courses rather than examinations given.
The summit saw speakers like David Johnston, President, University of Waterloo; Malcolm Grant, President and Provost, University College London; VN Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice-chancellor, IGNOU; Prof Pankaj Chandra, Director IIM-Bangalore, discuss higher education problems and solutions in great depth. Canada was the partner country of the event, and Earnst and Young the Knowledge Partner. On the Occasion, FICCI and Earnst & Young released a report on the Higher Education Sector.
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