The Hindu Business Line : Impoverished in innovation

India and its institutions have the ability to provide world-class undergraduate education, and train highly skilled managers and designers. However, they cannot claim to have the ability to organise cutting-edge research; in innovation and invention we still lag behind, says P. V. Indiresan.

RECENTLY, IN Boston, US, different country representatives discussed the prospects of world-class research universities in their countries. We, in India, are doing fairly well but cannot speak with the same confidence as the Chinese and the South Koreans did, and share the apprehensions that the Japanese have of burgeoning competition from East Asian countries.

Undoubtedly, our higher education system can count several successes. Several of our undergraduate institutions have earned worldwide recognition. Recently, the US Congress went so far as to pass a special resolution commending the services rendered by IIT graduates to the United States. Most Fortune 500 companies have India-educated managers at top levels, even as heads. Many of those firms have established research divisions in India. Several Indian firms have developed complex products that compete with those from abroad. In the past three decades, three undergraduates trained in India have won Nobel Prizes. Sadly, all three did their research abroad, not in India.

Therefore, we can say that we have the ability to provide world-class undergraduate education, and that we have begun to train world-class managers and designers. However, we cannot claim to have the ability to organise world-class research; in innovation and invention we still lag behind.

The National University of Mexico claims that it has made the front-page in the prestigious journal Nature more often than any other university in developing countries. China claims astronomical incomes from technology parks. China increased its Ph.D. output in engineering from only four in 1983 to 6,242 in 2003. In India, the number of Ph.D.s awarded in engineering increased only to 739 from 139 over the same period. Although mere numbers do not tell the whole story, China still has twice as many highly-cited research publications than India has.

All top universities from both Latin American and from East Asian countries have huge enrolments, in excess of 100,000 students. IITs and the IISc are puny in comparison. It is not clear how far size is an advantage (or disadvantage). Great American universities are quite large. At the same time Caltech is quite small with an enrolment of barely 2000 students (half that of several IITs). Yet, Caltech has produced 31 Nobel Laureates. Equally prestigious Stanford has produced only 16 Nobel Prize winners though its enrolment is ten times larger. Stanford has nearly half its students among African-Americans and Hispanics. Apparently, support for disadvantaged students need not necessarily impede world-class research.

"Stratification" was a major issue that cropped up in the discussions in Boston. Should a country have stratified universities with a few institutions enjoying special privileges? Or should the stratification be intra-university with separate campuses for different level of students? When it came under political pressure to lower admission standards for students of native extraction, the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil started an entirely new campus for their benefit. (As a matter of interest, the University managed its own solution; it was not ordered about by the government the way the Indian government does.) In some other countries, different courses are offered with lower levels of academic demands for less able students. Can we have a similar solution in India too? When I was Director of IIT Madras, I introduced a B.Tech. (Arts) degree for the benefit of those students who could not cope with our mathematically-oriented programmes. The move was rudely shot down both by the government and by one of my own fellow directors. I was forced to drop the idea.

Not every IIT student has to be trained in advanced engineering design; not every MIT graduate becomes a researcher. There is scope in higher education for study at varying levels of complexity. Our education system is flawed in the sense we have a one-size fits all policy.

University of California has addressed this issue in a systematic manner by operating three types of Higher Education. At the top, the University of California (with further sub-stratification of the Berkeley campus which enjoys greater prestige than others) is a research university. At the second level are the state colleges concentrating on undergraduate education. Two-year programmes of community colleges provide vocational skills to make up the third tier. In India, we are "democratic".

In the eyes of the law, an engineering degree from a fly-by-night engineering college is the same as a degree from an IIT. Within the same institution, for a given course, all students study the same topics and write the same examinations. IITs are only a little better in the sense they offer a number of electives, but the mathematical skills required are about the same. India will do well to learn from other countries and institute intra-university stratification to match different levels of academic competence.

Talent alone is not enough. About science education in Brazil, Nobel Laureate Feynman has caustically remarked: "Everything was entirely memorised, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. . . I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams but nobody knows anything."

That criticism applies with much force to Indian education too. We will not perform world-class research or train our students to think innovatively until we release our students from the bondage of examinations.

As in India, in other countries too, private institutions train an overwhelming majority of students. Yet, the most prestigious ones are those run by the state. The US is an exception. Although there are several outstanding state universities, most prestigious universities are private. However, they all take care to support brilliant students from poor families with fees (and student assistance) fixed on a case-by-case basis. In India, in the matters of fees too, we have a virtual one-fee-fits-all policy. At the most, the law permits a two-tier system with one set of fees for "merit" students and another for students admitted under the management quota. Private universities in the US exercise absolute autonomy in the way they admit and the way they charge variable fees.

China now allows universities to pay teachers according to the exigencies of the market, the way American universities do. In India, a Reader's or a Professor's salary is the same everywhere irrespective of discipline and status of the institution.

Apart from the three basic freedoms of a university (freedoms to decide who will teach, what to teach and whom to teach), universities need a fourth freedom — to reward differently teachers from different disciplines.

The Boston Meeting came to no conclusion about private endowments. A former President of Harvard, the richest university in the US, has written graphically about troubles raising the money to meet Harvard's never-ending needs, and about the risk of improper commercial pressures. Top-notch American universities have managed to maintain a balance between academic integrity and commercialisation of education. Admittedly, it helps to have a few Nobel laureates on the faculty.

Admitting students from very rich families is a contentious issue that was not discussed in Boston. American universities do have a window for children from rich families who pay high fees. India is estimated to spend over Rs 10,000 crore a year in educating the children of rich parents abroad.

It is worth enquiring why a student whom MIT and Oxford are willing to admit should be denied admission to an IIT even after agreeing to pay international level fees. If a Scheduled Caste student with 18 per cent marks can be admitted, why not a rich student with 30 per cent marks, even if he does not make the merit list?

Apart from the considerable drainage of foreign exchange, is there not a social cost in making such youth (who are likely to take over leadership of inherited institutions) study abroad than at home? Dr Arun Shourie brought this facet of this controversial issue to my attention by pointing out that it is better to educate our future leaders rather than suffer the consequences.

Can any Indian university attract international level funding and yet enjoy both academic and financial freedom at the level Harvard and Caltech do? Should we have separate institutions to cater to disadvantaged students the way Sao Paulo has organised? Should a world-class university be compact like Caltech or should it expand like Stanford to attract substantial numbers of minority students too? Will Indian universities ever have the freedom to fix salaries of faculty on a case-by-case basis and fix student fees (and scholarships too) in the same manner?

Which is better: government funded and politically controlled institutions, or privately funded and commercially pressured ones? Should there be one Flagship University as is the case in most countries or should we have a large number vigorously in competition with one another as in the US? Should we have a window for rich students the same way we have for backward caste students but with academic skills not inferior to the latter? Or, even, should we have a research university at all?

(To be continued)

(This is the 153rd in the Vision 2020 series. The previous article was published on June 27.)

(The author is former Director IIT Madras. Response may be sent to indresan@vsnl.com.)

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