Date: 29/11/2022

Relevance: GS-2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Key Phrases: New Education Policy 2020 (NEP, 2020), Ministry of Education, Human Resource Management (HRM), clarity of educational vision, Strategy and policy on inclusion, programme choices.

Context:

• From over 60,000 (high-quality higher education institutions) HEIs in India, not more than 5% would be of high quality, and perhaps another 5% nearabout.
• There are a significant number of teachers and students in the other 90% who will more than qualify as high quality with that definition, but their HEI would fail on an average basis.

Definition of a high-quality HEI:

• The graduates from a HEI must have a good understanding of their area of study and the ability to apply it to address real-world problems as well as the commitment to be engaged citizens.
• The HEI must have real institutional strength, with clarity of educational vision and the organizational structure and processes to implement it.

Purpose of the HEI:

• A HEI aligns and energizes everything and its absence leads to incoherence and drift.
• This purpose must be at the core of three inextricably linked matters which must be taken care of by its founders.

Determinants of a High Quality HEI:

1. Programmes:
   • The founders must be clear about the programmes to be run by the HEI which must arise from the purpose.
   • ‘Programmes’ refers to diploma, undergraduate, graduate or other teaching programmes across disciplines or fields such as science, social science, engineering, etc.
   • The curricula must then be informed by the purpose.
2. Strategy and policy on inclusion:
   • There must be clarity on the policy of inclusion of the economically disadvantaged. This too must arise from the purpose.
3. Funding:
   • The founders must arrange for adequate funding to begin with and have a realistic financial model which they stabilize.
   • Many founders do not sort this out and the HEI struggles.
4. Appointment of the institution’s leader: Vice-chancellor or Director:
   • Unless the leader is entirely aligned with the purpose and values of the founders, it is impossible to develop a good HEI and sustain it.
   • With the right leader, the operating team has the best chance of tackling its multidimensional challenges.

Issues with the HEIs:

• Many founders of HEIs do not pay adequate attention to the details of how their programme and inclusion choices are connected with the financial model.
• Thus, they are unconscious of the core issue that HEIs cannot be financially sustainable just on student fees.
• Across the world, HEIs are able to recover only 10-50% of their expenses from student fees, and the rest is supported by returns on the corpus (endowment) or by public financing.
• That range of recovery from student fees is determined by the programme choices and inclusion policy.
• Programme fee is based on what other HEI’s offer, and more fundamentally on employment opportunities after that programme.
• Even at the top end of the range in India, say, engineering at IITs, institutions are able to recover only about 20% of operating expenditure from fees.
• Thus, the financial sustainability, programme choices, strategy and policy on inclusion must be finely crafted.

External factors determining the cost structure of HEIs:

• Faculty compensation constituting a large part of the cost is driven by salaries in the public university system.
• The faculty-student ratio must be based on what is educationally sound.
• Other operating costs include facilities maintenance, admissions and student activities.
• Any good HEI must invest a part of its faculty’s time in research, so they remain updated in their field else teaching suffers.

Conclusion:

• In summary, the founders must decide what programmes the HEI will run and how inclusive the institution will be.
• On that basis, they must generate a corpus that can sustain the HEI. This fine balance is not merely a financial matter. It strikes at the very heart of the purpose of that particular HEI.
• This balance requires continuous work till the HEI stabilizes, which may take 10 to 15 years.
• A similar situation exists with public institutions. In their case, the relevant government commits itself to supporting what the corpus would in a private institution.

Source: Live Mint

Mains Question:

Q. What are the various determinants of a high quality higher education system(HEI)? Discuss the various issues faced by the HEIs in India. (150 words).