Higher Education in India: An Analysis

Context:

The recent American investor Steve Woziniak’s opinion has highlighted the issues affecting Indian higher education system

Structure of Higher Education System in India

Fast Facts: Higher Education in India

According to AIHES 2016-17,

1. Total no of universities: 864 as compared to 799 in 2015-16
2. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER): 25.2 as compared to 24.5% in 2015-16. (Calculated for 18-23 years of age group)
3. State with Highest GER: Tamil Nadu (46.9%)
4. State with Lowest GER: Bihar (14.9%)
5. Pupil Teacher Ratio: 21
6. College Density (No. Of colleges per lakh population): 28
7. Only 1.7% Colleges run Ph.D. programme and 33% Colleges run Post Graduate Level programmes
8. 277 universities are privately managed
9. NIRF Rankings: IISc Bangalore ranked first, IIT Madras best engineering college

Critical Issues in Indian Higher Education

Enrolment:

• GER of higher education in India is much behind that of USA (85.8%) and China (43.39%)
• Lack of capacity to absorb the increasing numbers of students coming out of secondary education into the college system

Issues related to Inclusiveness and Equal Access

• Variation in GER between male -female, between SC, ST, OBC and other, between religious groups, economic groups, rural-urban divide
• Inter-caste/ tribes disparities prominent. For Scheduled Castes, GER is 19.9% and for Scheduled Tribes, it is 14.2% as compared to the national GER of 24.5%
• Muslims have the lowest rate of enrolment in higher education. According to AISHE 2015-16, Muslims accounted 4.4% of students enrolled in higher education although they comprise of more than 14% of India’s population
• Caste-based discrimination in universities leading to suicides. Example: Rohit Vemula case

Funds:

• Inadequate funding in higher education
• Budget for both IITs and UGC reduced in budget 2018-19
• According to Economic Survey, only 0.6-0.7% of GDP has been spend on research in India in the last two decades. Most of the funding has come from government rather than private sector
• This is very low as compared to 2.4% of USA, China-2.1%, Japan-3.58% and South korea-4.29%

Quality:

• Only 3 universities feature in to 200 of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2018
• Major reasons for poor quality:

1. Faculty:

• Vacant faculty positions,
• Inadequate teacher training
• High student teacher ratios
• Overload (teaching as well as clerical)
• Political interference in selections, appointments of vice chancellors and faculty

1. Curriculum:

• Outdated, irrelevant curriculum
• Theoretical in nature; low scope for creativity
• Gap between industry requirements and curriculum- low employability of graduates

1. Inadequate physical Infrastructure and facilities

Research:

• Poor fund allocation in research
• Low levels of PhD enrolment
• Few opportunities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research
• Low levels of industry engagement
• Low quality of research work
• Trends in quality of publications increasing slowly; India lags much behind USA and China

Regulation:

• High control and low on support and facilitation
• UGC has been accused of biased granting of funds
• Undermining independence of autonomous universities
• UGC’s flawed method of determining recruitment and career advancement of faculty: Academic Performance Indicator (API).

Private colleges and Deemed Universities:

• Arbitrary nature of fees; “capitation fees”
• Admissions manipulated- Management quotas
• Ill equipped to organize courses
• De facto management—the trustees of the sponsoring societies or trusts

Government Initiatives

1. Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE):

• Aim: Increase investments in research and related infrastructure in premier educational institutions
• The RISE initiative will be funded by a restructured Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA)
• Total investment of ₹1, 00,000 crore in next four years.

2. Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) Scheme:

• Aim: to enhance the quality of technical research
• Scholarship to 1,000 best BTech students each year from premier institutions to do PhD in IITs and IISc

3. IMPRINT India:

• Joint initiative of IITs and IISc to address major and science and technology challenges in India
• Aims to boost original scientific and technological research in 10 fields: (1) Health care technology, (2) Energy security, (3) Rural urban housing design, (4) Nano technology, (5) Water/river system, (6) Advanced materials, (7) Computer science and ICT, (8) Manufacturing technology, (9) Advanced security and (10) Environment/climate change

4. Global Initiative for Academics Network (GIAN):

• Aim: To facilitate the partnership between Higher Education Institutions of India and other foreign universities

5. Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM): E-education platform
6. Saksham scholarship scheme: Scholarship provided to disabled by AICTE to pursue technical education
7. Unnat Bharat Abhiyan: Higher educational institutions to provide solutions for transforming rural India.
8. Ucchtar Aavishkar Abhiyaan: To promote industry-specific need-based research
9. National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF): Ranking of higher educational institutions: universities, engineering, management and pharmacy.
10. Swayam Prabha: telecasting educational programmes in higher education domain
11. Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP)

Way Forward:

1. Adequate investment in education sector. Gap in investment to be filled by private sector
2. Setting up/expansion of existing educational institutions; Full capacity utilization of existing institutions
3. Providing necessary physical infrastructure; involvement of private sector in providing quality physical infrastructure
4. Dilutions of selections standards for teachers to be checked; proper training for teachers
5. According to Educationist P.Balakrishnan, API should be revamped to include only quality research and teaching. UGC should remove experience-related considerations for career advancement as it stagnates the best years of a faculty.
6. Revamping curriculum- making curriculum industry-oriented, updated and practical
7. Revamping traditional evaluation system. More focus on critical thinking, analytical reasoning,

problem-solving rather than memorizing and writing skills. Also, proper feedback to be provided to the examinee

8. Innovations in classroom teaching- use of ICT, introduction of credit based system for classroom participation instead of compulsory attendance
9. International collaboration to boost research and innovation
10. UGC should act as a facilitator rather than a regulator. More autonomy to universities to be provided