Date: 27/04/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Education, Human Resources.

Key Phrases: Higher Education, Poor Governance, Leadership Qualities, National Education Policy, Private and Public Sector, Opportunities and Challenges, Enrolment, Privatization,

Context:

• Despite having the largest base of 900-plus universities in the world, only 15 higher education institutions from India are in the top 1,000.
  • This is an alarming sign for the higher education system in India.
• For Indian universities to have even a fighting chance of being a player on the global stage requires governance approximating world standards.
  • Leadership is crucial to achieving world class universities in India.

Key Highlights:

• India's higher education system is the world's third-largest in terms of students, next to China and the United States.
• The fact that the universities of the West have largely remained free of the state even when they receive public funds is perhaps the single most important reason why they have succeeded, which in turn explains why India’s youth flock to them.
• India’s universities are haemorrhaging, and the political class responsible for governing them seems to ignore the long-term damage caused by the exit of the ablest from this country.

Issues in Higher Education in India:

• Ineffective Leadership:
  • Generally, governments don't aim to appoint persons of proven academic leadership to the universities.
    • Actually, they appear in their choice to be plainly guided by the expectation of political allegiance over all else.
  • It would be difficult to identify too many academics of proven excellence among the leadership appointments in India’s public educational institutions in the recent past.
  • The second point is that even the best leaders can achieve nothing if they are governed by rigid externally set rules.
    • In India’s higher education ecosystem, these rules appear mainly in the form of the ubiquitous UGC guidelines.
  • Academic leadership entails integrative abilities of breaking departmental silos, aligning different disciplines, and managing multiple stakeholders.
  • Most faculty and researchers have individualistic traits whereas academic leadership calls for collaborative and transformative skills.
  • Academic excellence demands integrative skills across teaching, research and academic administration.
    • But, chancellors/founders of universities and HR leaders who support them lack this ability.
• Absence of student evaluation:
  • The absence of student evaluation is the reason why in many of India’s institutions students complain that teachers get away with shoddy work or, worse still, with just not turning up in class.
  • Therefore, courses should be evaluated by students for content and delivery.
• Research evaluation:
  • Research evaluation is a more difficult task and existing methods remain contested even globally, but one thing is clear — the current practice in India’s universities based on the UGC’s Academic Performance Indicators(API) is flawed beyond repair.
  • Scoring of publications according to where a paper has been published is known to be misleading when it comes to judging the impact of research on the production of knowledge.
    • The practice of numerical scoring of research output must be jettisoned for a more holistic approach.
• Unsatisfactory Talent Sourcing of Faculty and Students:
  • Interviews for selection are often perfunctory, a mere 30 minutes for senior positions focusing only on the candidate’s past experience with no leading questions to assess their academic leadership qualities.
• Poor Governance:
  • One way to see the difference between regulation and governance is that while the former is preventative, exercising control to achieve its end, the latter aims to bring about an improvement in the existing state of affairs.
    • Given their colonial provenance, many of India’s public institutions are heavily loaded towards control by a rule-bound bureaucracy without the incentive to bring about a change for the better.
  • Governance is a casualty in most HEIs, as they ignore attributes such as participation, responsiveness, transparency, consensus and inclusivity.
  • Management of Indian education faces challenges of over-centralization, bureaucratic structures and lack of accountability, transparency, and professionalism.
• Political Factor:
  • Political influence is also a bad thing and an issue with higher education. Governing bodies do not want any political influence or interference in their affairs.
  • The dominant political leaders, now play a key role in governing bodies of the Universities.
• Investment in Building rather than People:
  • Unfortunately, promoters of most privately run HEIs invest in buildings, hardware and software rather than in people.
  • Little do they realize that students learn from inspiring teachers and not from buildings.

Need of Hour:

• Adaptation of Global Best practices:
  • Global best practices in the evaluation of academic performance are known, and India should take on board the best aspects.
    • In fact, it should, if Indian academics are to face a level playing field internationally.
• Rationalizing of Governing Rules and Funding:
  • It is the rules governing research rather than funding that is key to research output in Indian universities, though in some areas of science and technology funding could make a difference.
• Improvement in admission process:
  • A second area where current practices stand in the way of improvement is admission to courses of study and hiring of faculty.
    • Both student admission and faculty hiring prescribe, among other things, the minimum grade attained and the subject studied for the previous degree.
  • The UGC should leave this matter to academic bodies, requiring only that there should be external oversight in the selection of faculty.
• Give Importance to Technology in Education:
  • India has to embrace computer and high-speed internet technology.
  • Our educational delivery mechanisms should take the wealth of human capital to the masses.
  • The models of brick-and-mortar schools, colleges and universities will have to be integrated and interlinked with ICT.
  • The Governments should invest more in technological infrastructure that will ease knowledge accessibility.
• Conductive HR Policies:
  • HR policies should be conducive to attracting talent and creating a leadership pipeline.
  • One of the important pillars in Deming’s Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy is “Constant training and retraining of teachers” to avoid burnout syndrome by adding ‘on the job skills.
• Encourage Innovation and Creativity:
  • The system should reward those who deserve the highest academic honour.
    • The crammers should not be rewarded.
  • Our testing and marking systems need to be built to recognize original contributions, creativity, problem solving and innovation.
    • Ranks should be awarded accordingly.
• Train the Trainers Continuously:
  • A teacher is an entrepreneur and creator. The performance of a teacher should not be restricted to the classroom.
  • It needs to be opened up for the world to see with the internet.
  • There have to be leaders in teaching positions, not salaried people holding their mantle.
    • Hence, regular training is a necessity.
• Change the Aptitude to Teach:
  • Teaching jobs are widely regarded as safe, well-paid and risk-free jobs. Most of the teachers do not want to change.
  • As they become experienced, they get septic and do not even think of the nature and needs of the students.
  • Understanding the present generation is a necessity. Guidelines should be made in this direction.
• Foreign Collaboration:
  • Government must promote collaboration between Indian higher education institutes and top international institutes.
  • Government must also generate linkages between national research laboratories and research centres of top institutions for better quality and collaborative research.

Conclusion:

• For the university, neither infrastructure nor less stringent rules can be a substitute for the total freedom of expression geared towards attaining excellence in the production of knowledge.
• To reach and achieve future requirements there is an urgent need to relook at the Financial Resources, Access and Equity, Quality Standards, Relevance, and Infrastructure.

Source: The Indian Express

Mains Question:

Q. “For Indian universities to have a fighting chance of being a player on the global stage requires governance approximating world standards”. Comment (150 Words).