New India needs free and quality higher education

News: New York University’s NYU Grossman School of Medicine has become the first major American medical school to announce that it will pay the tuition fees for all its students admitted in its MD programme, regardless of their financial needs, from the 2021–22 academic year.

The Nordic Model

The Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – provide free higher education to their people.

In fact, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Germany also do not charge tuition fees from international students. Many of them have consistently resisted attempts to impose fees.

Importance of Free Education as learned from the Nordic Model

It ensures that students receive high quality education in the streams that they desire. This does not compel them pursue streams to earn highly so as to repay their student debt.

It ensures equal opportunities to all the sections of the society in the education system. For example, it promotes gender equality and assists students from lower socioeconomic categories to gain access to higher education.

The Nordic countries figure in the top of the world happiness index. For example, as per the World Happiness Index 2022, Finland ranked at No.1, Denmark at No. 2, Iceland at No.4.

What are the issues in Indian higher education?

There is an increasing demand for quality education and research in leading universities in India.

In India, the burden of tuition fees in professional courses is becoming unbearable. This has reduced professional education to a commodity rather than the noble service that it ought to be. The meritorious students are deterred from pursuing their degrees from world-class universities.

Educational loans have led to mounting debt. It will cripple the economy of development and public welfare.

What are the implications of a commercialized education system?

If students pay for education, they would be forced to earn from the degrees they acquire.

High fees make a profession become a privilege to earn rather than a privilege to serve and excel. For example, as per the NYU, “overwhelming student debt” is reshaping the medical profession which is bad for the health-care system. The debts prompt graduates to pursue high-paying specialties rather than careers in family medicine, paediatrics, and obstetrics and gynaecology.

Way Forward

A university system should foster an environment of learning in which world-quality education can be provided without taxing learners with the burden of tuition fees.

Education is a noble service and an investment to charter a bright future for humanity.

The NYU initiative and the Nordic Model should inspire many other leading universities to consider and value the student’s intellectual acumen rather than financial investment.

There is a need for reviving philanthropy and community support for higher education in India. For example, Corporates, generous alumni, and people at large can provide strong philanthropic support for higher education and make quality education tuition-free.

The government should declare such philanthropic donations to the cause of higher education and research tax-free.

The great management guru, Philip B. Crosby during the quality revolution in the late 1970s, advocated that “Quality is Free!”

Source: The post is based on an article “New India needs free and quality higher education” published in the ‘The Hindu” on 04^th June 2022.