The Hindu Business Line : `Industry must subsidise higher education' — AICTE report does not concern IITs, IIMs: U.R. Rao

HIS report on how to inject some life into the Indian education system has stirred a hornet's nest. Prof U.R. Rao, former Chairman of ISRO and former Chairman of Prasar Bharati, who had chaired the committee that tabled a report on the AICTE-controlled institutions, clarified that "Our report on `Revitalising technical education' does not concern the IITs and the IIMs."

Speaking to Business Line, he said that the terms of reference for the committee was to look at the All-India Council for Technical Education's functioning.

"The AICTE has the total responsibility to ensure standards and norms for all the technical institutions, but this leaves out the IITs and the IIMs which are directly funded by the Ministry of HRD."

The 210-page report "actually devotes hardly three pages to the fee issue," he explained. On the other hand, the report has gone into detail on the rampant growth of technical institutions and the dearth of qualified teachers: There are 1,200 engineering colleges in the country and eight IITs, 924 business management schools and six IIMs. There is a dearth of 30,000 PhDs and 45,000 M.Techs in the teaching community, he said. He also talked about the "extremely high fees" charged by the self-financing institutions. "As a result, we are dishing out poor quality education and charging high fees," he felt.

Drawing a parallel from the US universities, he said that even in the best institutions in the world, the subsidies are very high. "The cost of higher education there is around $40,000 and the students pay not more than $5,000-10,000 as fees. And $40,000 is the per capita income of an average American." Extending the same logic here, his view was that the cost of higher education in India should be in the range of Rs 18,000, that being the purchase parity income of an average Indian.

On why the IIMs were targeted, he felt, "The Government has to be a model employer. It cannot preach to self-financing institutions a philosophy that it cannot follow itself. Therefore, right or wrong, he (the Minister of HRD) has taken that portion of the philosophy."

On the question of whether higher education needs to be subsidised at all, he expressed that this is where industry has a great role to play: "You cannot say that higher education must not be subsidised. Society and industry is benefiting from this education and so they must pay for it jointly. In elementary education, society pays along with the government, in higher education the industry needs to pay."