Excellence in Higher Education
By Dr A K Sen Gupta

The Indian higher education is at cross roads. There are several reasons for the same. Notwithstanding the fact that India was one of the first colonial states and therefore one of the few privileged countries to have access to both spoken and written English, we have possibly lost the first mover’s advantage because of constant neglect of the education by the successive governments both at the state and the centre. Second, educationists and academicians have always been the among the most neglected cadre in the country both in terms of monetary compensation as well as recognition. While their American counterparts draw remuneration almost equal, if not more, than the corporate counterparts, the salary structure of the Indian academic community has been one of the worst in the country even by standards of the public sector. As a result teaching as a profession, though considered noble, has failed to attract any good talent. Finally, though India can take pride among the best professional educational providers in terms of IITs and IIMs in global parlance, the general standard of higher education (University higher degree or Ph.D.) needs a substantial facelift as significant mediocrity has crept in the system. This is in this background that the present article tries to revisit some of the pending agenda before the higher education in the Indian context.

The higher education in India has not been defined in any document. However, the understanding has been that any education provided after 10+2 level may be construed as such. Globally though there has been some attempt to bring about homogeneity in defining contour of education at various levels. The advent of GATS has expedited the process as there was a need to have uniform understanding of education and to come an understanding to what extent they are covered under the provisions of globalization. There has been considerable debate whether education services come within the purview of GATS. This is because of the Article-I (1.3.b) of WTO that talks about services (for the purpose of inclusion under GATS) meaning services in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority. The next sub-section (1.3.c) defines “services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority” as any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis nor in competition with one or more service suppliers. What it means is that if any services are exclusively provided by the government free of cost or at cost (not for profit) and there are no private players in respect of the said service, it shall be outside the purview of GATS. This is definitely not true for educational services in India and therefore they definitely come under the jurisdiction of GATS. The informal WTO Classification list (W/120) divides education in five components:

a. Primary education
b. Secondary education
c. Higher education
d. Adult education
e. Other educational services

The proposal submitted by the US to Council for Trade in Services (CTS) in 2000 included two more educational services to be brought under the gamut of GATS. These are:

a. Training services (vocational services), and
b. Testing services (evaluation of students as well as study material for designing and administering tests).

Though officially there has not been commitment till now by the government of India allowing opening up the sector (under any of the recognized four modes), there is an increasing demand to do so by the world community. This is particularly true for the higher education including professional education. The government has already been following the Automatic Liberalization (AL) route in respect of some of the sectors. Management education is one example where foreign university entrance rules under mode-III have already been framed. The UGC document of the X^th Plan has already acknowledged that the scenario for higher education is undergoing dramatic transformation and the Indian higher education providers (particularly the Universities) should equip themselves to withstand the pressures of the winds of the globalization.

Before we analyse the issues relating to how to bring in excellence in higher education, let us have a look at some of the facts and figures relating to education at a glance in India:

• Rs 25,000 crores per year is repatriated out of India for Indian students studying abroad.

• Rs 3,000 crores is the yearly budget of UGC.

• Rs 3,000 crores is spent by nearly 6 lac students trying to arrange and learn for the entrance examination of IITs / IIMs / top business schools in the country.

• Higher education is subsidized while we still have 350 millions as per GOI who are illiterate.

• The drop out rate between class-I to class 10+2 is nearly 94 per cent. The present higher education is therefore designed only for the balance 6 per cent.

• The present system puts too much emphasis on IQ and not enough into EQ (Emotional quotient) and SQ (Spiritual quotient).

• We do not seem to be adequately prepared for the open educational system that is likely to emerge in the world in a few years to come.
  (Source: i Watch, an NGO promoted by IITians)

The other side of the story is that that there has been phenomenal growth in quantum terms for higher education in India since independence. For example, students’ enrolment (formal and non-formal put together) rose from 62.17 lacs in 1992-93 to 93.14 lacs (50 per cent rise) in 1999-2000 (UGC Report). Types of institutes of higher education in the country during 1999-2000 are as under:

Source: Tenth Plan Profile of Higher Education in India: UGC

Notes:

1. The above does not include several institutions that are outside the purview of the university set-up.

2. The number has gone up substantially during last two years.

In context of number of suppliers India is reckoned today a country with highest number of institutions of higher education. However, the two most important criteria for higher education to sustain on a long-term basis are:

1. Accessibility

2. Global standards in terms of structure and processes

While for the first India still has one of the better credentials, for the second much needs to be done. Herein lies the concerns about achieving excellence in higher education. The issues that need to be looked at greater depth are:

a. Regulation:

During the initial phase of development and even today for many areas / sectors, there was has been no central and single point regulatory authority for the various institutes of higher learning in India. Regulation has often been multiple and dependent on nature of the provider. For example, Government of India & UGC for the IIMs, Universities also UGC for the departments or affiliated colleges and, and so on. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) came into being in the 1980s under an Act of Parliament, to look into the developmental, quality as well as supervisory aspects only of management education. How far the experimentation of multiple regulation has been successful has always been a debatable issue. Education being a state subject, there has also been some conflict of interest between the state and central governments.

b. Governance Issues:

Institutes of higher learning are expected to be role models of corporate governance including ethical standard, openness and transparency. However, the ground reality has been that many of the institutions lack substantially in respect of many of the above areas. These include:

• Lack of involvement of Governing Council

• Absence of Academic Committees

• Inadequate student involvement

• Insufficient integration with the industry

• Lack of process orientation & quality

• Absence of collegiate spirit.

c. Faculty Issues:

One of the most important, if not the most critical, cornerstones of any educational set-up is faculty in terms of its adequacy, composition, and quality. The Indian institutes can not be termed to be in a comfortable position in any of the above dimensions. There are no core faculty in many colleges; some have very few and largely depend on outside visiting faculty. Some of these visiting faculty members are not committed ones from industry but simply free-lancers teaching across a large number of institutes without any dedication or focus. Student to faculty ratio is quite adverse (sometimes as high as 20-25:1) compared to international standard / norm of around 8:1. Barring a few top institutes / university colleges, majority of the institutes have a very adverse faculty structure both in terms of Ph.D. to non - Ph.D. ratio. Against the annual demand of about 10,000 Ph.Ds for teaching staff, India produces hardly 150 doctorates each year. This has resulted in poor quality of teaching process. The other observation is that environment in an institute of higher learning is expected to be informal and experiential where faculty is expected to play the role of facilitators rather than conventional teachers. Two reasons account for this. First, the students in such an environment are expected to learn more through reflection and assimilation of ideas / concepts and application of theory to solving business problems than mere understanding of tools and techniques. Second, the teachers in such a setting are expected to facilitate the process of learning compared to teaching what they intend to. My personal hypothesis has been that the imperial psychology of “I Centric Approach” is still deep-rooted in Indian scenario including in the educational settings. Therefore, the teachers are still considered as deliverers of knowledge from ivory towers of knowledge; there is absence of collegial atmosphere expected in an educational institution; the emotional bondage between teachers & students is virtually non-existent; and above all teachers are seldom considered as mentors, coaches and counselors.

d. Content, Curriculum and Process of Delivery:

What is taught in colleges is as important as how it is taught. The importance of content and curriculum in the context of an institute of higher learning can never be underestimated. Three important components of any content and curriculum are quality, relevance and flexibility. While the first two are an absolute necessity to ensure quality education, the last one is assuming importance in the emerging world where change has become the ultimate reality. Unfortunately in many of the institutes in India the course content lacks in all the above components the way it should be. Scarcity of adequate good faculty affects quality. Curriculum has often been found to be static for as long as a decade and therefore, lost relevance.  But the most critical dimension has been that bureaucratic set-up of many business schools has resulted in institutes devoid of agility to respond to change in terms of revision and upgrading the curriculum. Benchmarking with global and comparable institutes and constant internationalization of the curriculum and content is an issue that calls for immediate attention in a number of Indian business schools. Besides, there is an urgent need to move away from the traditional approach of teaching in classroom situation to being mentor and facilitator for facilitating the proceedings in a classroom. 

e. Faculty Development:

The most important criteria for a good institute to become globally competitive on a sustainable basis is creation of “intellectual capital”. Apart from providing the basic hygiene factors in terms of physical facilities that include residential, computing, and library facilities among others, this also includes creation of an academic ambience suitable for bringing out the hidden talent of the faculty to the fore. This is more importantly applicable for the newly christened faculty. However, barring a few top institutes, unfortunately, many of the basic hygiene factors are virtually non-existent or grossly inadequate. The classrooms are barely adequate and conducive for learning; there are no provisions for group learning / work; there is no or scarce budget for buying good books on management: the books that are available are neither the recent ones, nor they do contain latest information. More than sixty per cent of the institutes do not have hostel / residential facility that are imperative not only for extended classroom teaching but also for beyond-classroom socialization process. The computing facilities, particularly the Internet, play a very important role in facilitating the knowledge dissemination. Barring a few institutes that have the facility of 24-hours uninterrupted Internet / Intranet facility, many of the colleges have a very adverse computer to student ratio, as high as 8:1. Lack of adequate research orientation at the institute is the other critical issue. This is crucial in two ways. Firstly, the output of the research becomes input for the classroom teaching enhancing the effectiveness of the learning process. And secondly, it provides a good opportunity to the students who along with the faculty can play an important role in solving the real life issues of businesses. As a result of the above factors, mediocrity among the faculty fraternity has become a commonplace phenomenon. This can only result in creation of mediocre outputs by majority of the institutes. The other crucial lacuna in the system is that there is no adequate interaction between the institutions and the corporate. An analysis of the major innovations in the USA  in the social science (more particularly in the management science) reveals that these have come from the work by professionals who were involved both in corporate operations as well as attached to academic world. This is not true in the Indian scenario.

f. Research Focus:

Unfortunately there is lack of adequate focus on research in the Indian institutes of higher learning. This is a major area of concern as research (both basic as well as applied) is the most crucial area in which these institutes should concentrate. This alone can provide the cutting age by way of creation of new frontiers of knowledge. This has been the success story of institutes of higher learning in the US.

Future Agenda:

In the earlier paragraphs the historical perspective as well as both the macro & micro- issues facing the higher institutions in the Indian context was deliberated on. One of the important conclusions that can be drawn from the discussed above is that the post-independent Indian scene has seen proliferation of institutes without the commensurate focus on quality. Lack of adequate regulation has definitely a role to play in this regard. Having said so, it must be appreciated that India is a large country with a political democracy and any external control is always subject to criticism and scrutiny. Therefore, what is needed is to have a free-market determinant that, in course of time, will automatically take care of the aberrations and in the end only the better would survive. This free-market phenomenon has already started playing its role in the Indian economy in manufacturing and services sector, and soon its impact will be felt in the educational field as well. The increasing forces of globalization, the WTO agreements related to services (GATS), and impending privatization of Universities in India will only hasten the process of growth or atrophy of the institutes depending on their strategy, structure and processes. Accreditation, quality focus, cluster of the schools according to the market perception of the students as well as corporate are the eventualities that loom large and will ultimately differentiate between the better managed and other business schools. The strategic choice before the Vice Chancellors / Deans / Directors / principals particularly in the context of a developing nation like India is limited to one or more of the following alternatives:

• To become global on one’s own standing like IITs, IIMs, or

• To partner with global Universities / institutes in search of brand name / equity, or

• To maintain one’s unique identity but in a niche market (industrial engineering, agriculture, telecommunication, etc.), or

• To become a differentiator in the context of pedagogic approach, innovation, leadership in new frontiers or avenues to maintain a first mover advantage.

But one thing is very clear. India has a tremendous advantage in terms of substantial qualified manpower, a good number of English knowing population, a reasonably large middle class / upper middle class residents who believe in the philosophy & relevance of management education, and a number of world-class providers of higher education. This is in addition to the Eastern philosophy from where a good number of lessons can be drawn. This is totally different from a country like China or Southeast Asian countries where higher education is primarily a western-dependent phenomenon. Nevertheless, the market is getting complex, inter-dependent, and turbulent. New thoughts & paradigms are emerging with lightning speed. To update, create or disseminate knowledge is increasingly becoming difficult for all branches of social science, particularly management education. To succeed in this complex world of management education, the prescription for success would be a big challenge and new & innovative strategies need to be worked out.

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The author is the Director of SIES College of Management Studies (SIESCOMS), Navi Mumbai, and a management educationist. The views expressed are his personal and do not reflect the views of the institute.