The Hindu Business Line : Higher education: The quality issue

When an individual falls sick, only he and his family are affected. When institutions are affected, the ramifications are much more. And, when those institutions are in higher education, the economic prosperity of the entire nation suffers. Many a problem in higher education is directly linked to the inadequacies at the lower end.

Inadequacies in education

On October 10, the Union Human Resource Development Minister, while addressing a conference of vice-chancellors in New Delhi lamented about higher education and described it as the sick child, either by design or default. Ten days later, the same sentiments were echoed by the Union Minister of State for HRD at an academic function in Hyderabad. He expressed disappointment over the quality of college and university education, which “has not kept pace with its quantitative growth”.

While politicians have just started speaking about quality, academics, at least some, have been expressing their concern for quite some time. Most recently, for instance, the well-known economist, Prof. Pulapre Balakrishnan, in his paper (Higher Education in India: Will ‘Six Per Cent’ Do It?), published in the Economic and Political Weekly of September 29 affirms: “It is widely accepted by now that the quality of higher education provided by the government in India has not kept pace with the quantitative expansion. This may be inferred from the fact that young Indians who are able to finance the move have now begun to leave the country soon after they finish school.” On indicators such as the proportion of professors to doctorates from reputed foreign universities or the proportion of publications by Indian academics in top international journals, standards have taken the southward stride.

The professor stated that: “C. V, Raman’s Nobel Prize was won through experiments in the buildings of the Indian Association for the Advancement of Science on Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta, in the 1920s. By contrast, none of the academics of Indian origin who have won the Nobel Prize since then have worked in India even though they have been educated here.” The trend is also reflected in the rather dismal proportion of papers in international journals. Some years ago, for instance, I had pointed out in the Economic and Political Weekly that a pitiably low percentage of articles in top economics journals came from Indians working on Indian soil.

University Ranks for 2007

It is the lack of research accomplishments that have affected the global ranking of India’s 370 universities and comparable institutions.

The faculty of the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has been compiling and publishing, with no financial support from any external agency, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The ranking is based on the academic or research performance of the universities based on “internationally comparable third-party data that everyone could check”. The latest rankings refer to 2007.

Universities in the UK and US have high shares in the top 20 and top 50 ranks. Close to half the places in the ranks 51-100 and 100-200 are also taken by the UK and the US. A dozen developing countries figured in the top 500 list with just about 2 per cent within ranks 51-100. The proportion rises to 15.7 per cent within ranks 400-500 (Table).

Of the universities in India, just two — IISc and IIT, Kharagpur — appear in the 301-400 ranking. Three observations are in order. First, given the historical contact with the US and the UK, our universities should have done better. Second, the large base would have made it possible for at least a few universities to make it to the top ranks. Finally, an indirect inference is that there is no incentive for research excellence since anyone and everyone can become a tenured professor, unlike in some of the better known and highly-ranked US and UK universities, where tenure and full professorship require high levels of research accomplishment.

Aiming to be Global Best

It is heartening that at the Vice-Chancellors Conference, the vice-chancellors argued that leadership in universities plays a vital role in promoting quality and excellence and that they should be appointed on merit taking into account proven administrative and academic capabilities. The vice-chancellors felt that the search committees should comprise people of repute and other external forces should not be allowed to play part in the selection process. The inability to attract good faculty was expressed by almost every vice-chancellor.

Our universities must aim for standards which are affirmed by the world as the best. We are not alone in such ambitions. Even the highly educationally-advanced US is re-positioning itself to go for globally best educational attainments.

In a September 2006 report entitled “A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of US Higher Education”, the Commission appointed by the US Secretary of Education has made several recommendations including the following: “The United States must ensure the capacity of its universities to achieve global leadership in key strategic areas such as science, engineering, medicine, and other knowledge-intensive professions. We recommend increased federal investment in areas critical to our nation’s global competitiveness and a renewed commitment to attract the best and brightest minds from across the nation and around the world to lead the next wave of American innovation.”

It is anticipated that close to a fifth of the Eleventh Plan resources would be set aside for education. Much of the incremental funding would go for the promised 30 new Central Universities, eight Indian Institutes of Technology, and five Indian Institutes of Science. One wonders whether we are again going for numbers, unmindful of the enormity of the quality problem.

Two-pronged approach

The University Grants Commission should bring out a plan of action for raising the research standards across-the-board in consultation with top intellectuals of the world, in each and every subject. Such a plan should be two-pronged, addressing the issues of raising investment in research infrastructure and designing and implementing a set of incentives to encourage the university academics to publish in top journals and take patents copiously in diverse fields. The problem should be approached in due humility, devoid of arrogance, which is often a cover for incompetence.

(The author, formerly with the National University of Singapore and the World Bank, is a visiting faculty, Sri Sathya Sai University, Prasanthi Nilayam. He can be reached at bhanoji@gmail.com. )

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