“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
– Malcolm X
It won’t be a hyperbole to say that well-educated minds build a nation, run it and ensure its progress. An investment in education is an investment in a better tomorrow and one that cannot be quantified in pounds and pennies. From a Human Development perspective, investment in bettering the of people -through healthcare, education and other public services—is not just the basis of the growth process but the very foundation of it. Countries like Norway or the Netherlands spend a great chunk of their GDP on education and are blessed with a high Human Development Index.
Unfortunately, in a country of finite resources and multiple needs, spending on education as a percentage of GDP has never been very high in India. Nor has our nation given much attention to the various malaises plaguing the higher education system. Most probably, the last government policy statements on higher education were the National Policy on Education (NPE) that was adopted by Parliament in May 1986 and the Programme of Action (POA), 1986, as updated in 1992, which have guided actions since the mid-1980s. It is not surprising but highly unfortunate that we are still relying on archaic policy to shape our country’s future.
To improve this sorry state of affairs, it is necessary to identify the key issues, build on the earlier efforts (especially initiated after studies by the University Grants Commission) and then plan the way ahead. The prominent problems that plague the higher education today are the low rates of enrolment, unequal access (both geographically and linguistically), abysmal quality of infrastructure and most importantly, the total lack of relevance of the subjects being taught in the modern industrial world. To ensure good education, the steps should be simply expansion with inclusion and ensure quality and relevant education. Multiple commissions and countless committees recommended reforms after reforms but all of them failed to bring about any substantive change in the core regulations under the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act.
However, the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, not the one to be deterred by failures and true to his penchant of tackling the most untackable issues appointed a committee at the Niti Aayog to recommend how progress could be made in this important area in June 2017. It was nothing short of a miracle that this committee was successful in forging a consensus around the reforms among its members, which included the top officials of Niti Aayog, HRD ministry, UGC and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and submitted its report to the PMO at the end of August 2017.
Armed with this report and its recommendations, The Narendra Modi led government, in the final year of its term and has presented a very pragmatic budget in spite of immense pressure for populist measures, has deftly and skillfully initiated the most far-reaching reforms for Higher education in India. Part of the credit goes to our human resource development (HRD) minister Shri Prakash Javadekar. Where one HRD minister after another failed to do anything meaningful about the various malaises, Shri Javadekar has now announced the most far-reaching reforms in higher education. The most striking feature of the reform is the promise of autonomy to the best performing institutions. The far-reaching changes are part of two separate Gazette notifications: the Graded Autonomy Regulations (GARs) 2018 and the Autonomous Colleges Regulations (ACRs) 2018. Another set of Recommendations in a third area, accreditation, have received approval from UGC but await a nod from the HRD ministry.
The GARs have broadly divided universities into three categories based on their National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) scores: Category I have more than 3.5 in NAAC score and universities listed among the top 500 in international rankings such as the Times Higher Education and QS; Category II has a score between 3.25-3.49; Category III with scores > 3.25. In a break from the past, Universities in Categories I and II have been granted considerable autonomy while those in Category III remain subject to the existing rules. The universities in Categories I and II are permitted to start new courses, programmes, departments, schools and centers and open constituent colleges within their geographical jurisdiction in self-financing mode. These universities will also be exempt from UGC inspections, offer attractive remuneration to talented faculty from their own resources and engage in international collaborations including hiring foreign faculty. The Decision-making authority has been shifted from the UGC to the various bodies of the university itself.
Moreover, the Category I universities will automatically come under Section 12B of the UGC Act without a UGC inspection. They will also have the freedom to open research parks, incubation centres and university society linkage centres.
For the autonomous colleges, the ACR 2018 has extended autonomy to a larger set of colleges so that they may evolve into high-performing institutions, maybe even independent universities in the long term. These new regulations make a concerted effort to minimize the roadblocks that the affiliating university, the state government, and UGC can place in the path to autonomy once an eligible college applies for it. Another reform which is currently awaiting the HRD ministry’s approval stipulates that an advisory council public figures and distinguished academics of unimpeachable integrity will be charged with empanelling the accreditation agencies. The universities and colleges will be required to contribute the fees to a central pool from which the accreditation agencies would be paid so that they are not able to influence accreditation agencies.
No doubt these reforms have immense potential and can make India, a knowledge powerhouse if done right. But an immediate roadblock in place is the presence of the UGC. The government will need to bring a new legislation to replace the UGC Act, 1956 to make these reforms permanent without which there is the risk of a future government reverting to old rules. The new legislation should also provide the necessary groundwork to replace the UGC by a less intrusive and more independent regulatory body.
