The Hindu Business Line : Education in India: Barely a pass-mark

Progress report... "Public budgets for higher education shrank drastically during the 1990s, without prospects for improvement in the near future." — R.Raghu

IN THE fall of 2002, International Higher Education published a study titled `Privatisation of Higher Education in India' by Jandhyala B. G. Tilak, a senior economist at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration.

In the study, Prof Tilak pointed out that the 1990s had witnessed "a major turn in the history of contemporary higher education in India" with the sustained efforts towards its privatisation.

The economist wrote: "The financial privatisation of higher education, through reduction in public expenditures and the introduction of cost-recovery measures were accompanied by policy measures toward the `direct' privatisation of higher education. Public budgets for higher education shrank drastically during the 1990s, without prospects for improvement in the near future. The Government of India's 1997 discussion paper on Government Subsidies in India provided a revealing insight into government thinking. For the first time, higher education (as well as secondary education) was classified in the discussion paper as a `non-merit good' (and elementary education as a `merit good'), government subsidies for which would need to be reduced drastically."

Prof Tilak's study ended with the following observation: "Transforming the Indian economy into an East Asian Tiger-like economy was the goal, yet government apparently thought it could afford to ignore higher education and leave it to the private sector — as if economic miracles could be created without higher education. Government seems to assume that even a knowledge society can be built and a revolution in information technology can be achieved without bothering to strengthen higher education institutions. These are untenable assumptions. The government also seems to be under the impression that it can withdraw from higher education and save its resources, leaving the private sector to fill the gap in the development of higher education. Not only are these assumptions not borne out by any evidence, they can be dangerous for the higher education system and the broader society... ."

Subsequently, in the summer of the current year, International Higher Education featured another study titled `A World-Class Country without World-Class Higher Education: India's 21st Century Dilemma' in which Philip G. Altbach, Monan Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centre for International Higher Education at Boston College, pointed out: "So far, India's large educated population base and its reservoir of at least moderately well-trained university graduates have permitted the country to move ahead. But the competition is fierce, with other countries rapidly upgrading their universities and research facilities."

According to Prof Altbach, India "is rushing headlong toward economic success and modernisation, counting on high-tech industries such as information technology and biotechnology to propel the nation to prosperity. India's recent announcement that it would no longer produce unlicensed inexpensive generic pharmaceuticals was bowing to the realities of the World Trade Organisation even while challenging the domestic drug industry to compete with the multinational firms. Unfortunately, India's weak higher education sector constitutes the Achilles' heel of this strategy."

"India's systematic disinvestment in higher education in recent years has yielded an academic characterised by mediocrity, producing neither world-class research nor very many highly trained scholars, scientists, or managers to sustain high-tech development."

We now have the `Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange' published annually by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in the US, which tells us that, in academic year 2003-04, there were 79,736 students from India studying in the United States, up 6.9 per cent from the previous year and that, for the third year in a row, India has remained the leading place of origin for students in the United States.

According to the report, the majority of the Indian students study at the graduate level.

The IIE report notes that, beginning in 1997-98, the numbers of students from India "have been increasing dramatically." Three years ago, there was an increase of 29.1 per cent, followed by an increase of 22.3 per cent and last year's increase of 11.6 per cent.

Two years ago (2001-02), India had surpassed China as the leading "sending nation" of foreign students to the US and this year's increase of 6.9 per cent has kept India in the leading spot, according to the report which adds that students from India now make up 14 per cent of all foreign students in the United States.

In a background analysis of the Open Doors 2004 data in relation to India, Prof. Jane E. Schukoske, Executive Director of the US Educational Foundation in New Delhi, observes that it "sends a resounding message that the US continues to welcome Indian students. . "Combining the ... demand and the value Indian students place on US higher education, there is bound to be a steady increase in students to the US once students are able to finance the education. In India, student loans are more readily available than ever before. Students find that the investment they make in US education is well worth it in terms of career opportunities."

However, according to Ms Vijaya Khandavilli, Educational Advisor, USEFI, the 2004 IIE Open Doors report on Indian students "is a mix of positive and negative facts regarding India.

"On the one hand, Indian students retained the position as the largest segment of international students in the US But the increase over the previous year (2002-03) is not as precipitous as it was in the earlier years."

Among the numerous factors underlying the moderation in the increase of Indian students in the US set out by Ms Vijaya Khandavilli is the following: "Within the country Indian education is riding a privatisation wave. Several private players have entered the high school as well as the post-secondary education market. These private schools offering excellent infrastructure and facilities attract many Indian families who can afford to pay the high tuition fees thus posing stiff competition to foreign universities."

And then again, she observes that the Indian student has evolved and transformed considerably and that while the majority of these Indian dream of education abroad, they are not in a hurry to "lap up" whatever offer that comes their way. Further, she says, Indian middle-class society is no more "unduly enamoured by the foreign-return tag" and that, if an equally good academic option is available within India, they choose that.

Be that as it may, the fact is that the IIE report holds no surprises. Clearly, India has failed abysmally in providing satisfactory higher (or, for that matter, basic) education to those who seek it. The privileged and the exceptionally endowed have been able to obtain it abroad. But this option does not exist for the vast majority who are neither. What is utterly unnerving is the fact that no political party, without exception, is interested in promoting education because an uneducated electorate is its best — perhaps sole — facilitator of an eventual ascension to and continuance in power.