Professional Documents
Culture Documents
GRK Murty
Globalization helps realize the benefits of free trade, and thus comparative
advantage and the division of labor. It is also supposed to enhance efficiency and
productivity . It subtly leads to growing interdependence across the world on a
number of dimensions that are pretty divergent – growing integration of the
world’s economies; speedy connection with almost no barriers; a growing
connection between all the segments of society; and increase in the speed at
which ideas and the people move around the world. Amidst these ground
realities, India too embarked on transforming its regulated economy into an open
market economy. With the launching of reforms, we are getting more and more
integrated with the world economy. As Jagdish Bhagwati, (2002) observed, the
resultant ‘growth’ from the on-going reforms is supposed to create jobs that ‘pull
up’ the poor into gainful employment by providing more economic opportunities.
It provided the revenue with which the government can build more schools and
provide more health facilities for the poor. It offered incentives for the poor to
access these facilities and also for the advancement of progressive social agenda.
Debates are going on about the extent to which societies should become global
and the degree to which they should modify their practices and policies to make
‘globalization’ work better for them. Amidst these upcoming demands for
‘homogeneity’ and ‘uniformity’ what is most baffling is that countries have also to
maintain a kind of ‘uniqueness’ about them to succeed in the global economy. As
Sztompka (1990) observed the emphasis is currently shifting to the alternative
types of comparative inquiry: “Seeking uniqueness among the uniformities, rather
than uniformity among variety” . And that ‘uniqueness’ has to be more in the
form of greater ‘competency’ than that in the rest of the globe at least in the
chosen field so that the country can enjoy ‘comparative advantage’ over others
that can ultimately differentiate its output from that of others and generate
market share. And that is where globalization is impacting our current educational
practices. If our educational system has to produce competent and employable
workforce that is easily differentiated from the rest in the global market, we need
to change our archaic laws.
The early growth phase of higher education was associated with colonialism. Its
access was thus partial and its teaching and research programs were mostly
defined by colonial state policies. It is only after independence, that the state
promoted education as an instrument of social development. We indeed had a
very impressive growth since then: the number of university level institutions has
increased form 18 in 1947 to 307 by the end of 2004. The student enrolment has
also grown impressively from 2,28,804 in 1947 to 94,63,821 in 2002-03. Despite
such an impressive growth in infrastructure under higher education which is rated
to be the second largest after the USA in the world, it hardly covers 7 percent of
the population which is lower than even that of developing countries such as
Indonesia (11 percent), Brazil (12 percent), and Thailand (19 percent). There is yet
another distorting phenomenon under higher education: the discipline-wise
enrolment of students is not that encouraging with enrolments into science
stream standing at 19.7 as against 42.7 percent into arts faculty and 20.7 percent
into commerce including management (Source: UGC Annual Report 2000-01).
The World Bank report of 1994 highlights the worth of higher education wherein
it is considered that institutes of higher learning benefit state and society in
several ways: they equip individuals with advanced knowledge and skills to
discharge responsibility in government, business and professions; produce new
knowledge through research and at least serve as conduit for the transfer,
adaptation and dissemination of knowledge generated elsewhere in the world.
The task force constituted by World Bank and UNESCO during 2000 has also
observed that higher education helps increase wages and productivity that
directly enrich individuals and society. As against these world opinions, the
ministry of finance opined in its paper on government subsidies (1997) that higher
education is a ‘non-merit’ good based on the reasoning that higher education
benefited individuals more than the society. The Birla Ambani report submitted to
the Prime Minister too suggested that government subsidies to higher education
should be minimal and the funds thus saved should be invested in expanding
facilities at the primary and secondary stages of education.
According to the census of 2001, the overall literacy rate in the country has gone
up by 10 percent during the last 10 years. It is therefore possible that around 8 to
10 percent of this freshly educated lot would seek admission at college level in
the next 8 to 10 years. As against the current capacity of 8 million college seats
created in the last 150 years, we would be required to create an additional
capacity of 8 to 10 million college seats in the coming 8 to 10 years. Obviously this
is a gigantic task that can not be addressed by government alone.
In the light of these facts, there is an urgent need for opening higher education
for private participation. The autonomous setup of universities in the US, that are
surviving on private income such as fees, donations and investments, is an
example how private investment can be channellized into higher education.
Majority of these American universities are said to be purely driven by hunt for
the best talent in the strictest sense of autonomy. As against this our university
system is known for micromanagement by the government to the extent of
defining admissions based on caste, gender, etc. The impact of these differences
in the two systems is quite visible: The American private universities like Harvard,
Stanford, New York, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Duke, MIT, etc., are well known
worldwide for their excellence in education, while except for a handful institutes
like IITs and IIMs we have very few such institutes to boast of.
It is essential that the functioning of such a central authority is transparent and its
decisions are not arbitrary. To ensure such transparent governance the authority
should prescribe its parameters for granting permission to establish a university.
Similarly, it should also make it known to the participating agencies as to on what
lines the performance of a university is assessed to declare it as eligible for it
continuation or not. There is also a case to reexamine the role of professional
counsels such as MCI, AICTE, etc., that have been established in the recent past to
oversee the functioning of medical and engineering institutes etc. These bodies
that have evolved their own rules for imparting higher education including
prescribing the necessary infrastructure etc., were at times found to function at
crossroads with UGC. This has only created disputes resulting in innumerable
court cases. Even otherwise, too many regulators are known to create more
problems than solve them. Taking a cue from the experiences it is time that we
had one central body to oversee the functioning of universities – both in public
and private management and evaluate them on prescribed quality parameters to
ensure excellence in education.
The public universities, at least some of the well known centers have excellent
laboratory and library facilities. It is also true that the private universities may not
be able to establish such excellent research facilities for carrying out fundamental
research ab initio. At the same time these private universities may not hesitate to
incur heavy cost on hiring highly qualified professionals as faculty. In such a
situation, it is in the pursuit of national interest, public universities can as well
think of sharing their laboratory and library facilities with the existing/prospective
private universities, possibly at a nominal fee. Similarly, the services of eminent
professors available with the public universities can also be made available for
guiding research scholars of the private universities.
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