Ivy League not the solution for higher education

America’s Ivy League and Britain’s Oxbridge cannot solve India's higher education challenges – the country needs a clear direction for higher education expansion, said experts debating the role of foreign universities.

Academics and industry experts at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) summit felt that Indian policy-makers were confused about what role foreign universities could play in strengthenng India's higher education landscape.

Identifying needs

While India needs to expand its higher education infrastructure to include research universities, teaching colleges and vocational training, it has to choose wisely to ensure growth across the sector.

“Only about 18% of students can access higher education in India. If we want to provide inclusive education then Ivy League universities and research-intensive institutions may not be the right choice,” said Rachel Davis, dean of the Delhi School of Business.

Research institutions were focused on cutting-edge research. Their priority would be to spend on niche areas and not on teaching undergraduate students, Davis said.

She added that Indian policy-makers were going with the visibility of a foreign institution rather than its mission.

“There are several non-Ivy League institutions in the top 200 in the US or other countries that are good for undergraduate teaching. Others offer good masters programmes and [there are] specialised institutions whose focus is research. India needs to pick the right partners to cater to its most pressing needs,” said Davis.

India is aiming for a higher education enrolment rate of 30% by 2020. According to government data, it needs to increase the number of universities from the current 621 to 1,500.

Affordability of elite institutions

Rafiq Dossani, senior economist with Rand Corporation in the US, questioned the affordability of an Ivy League education for students in India.

MIT and Stanford spend thousands of dollars per student, but Dossani questioned whether Indian students or the government would be able to afford the cost of tuition at these elite universities if they came to India.

Most Ivy League institutions have a faculty-to-student ratio of 1:6, but it would cost India Rs100,000 (US$1,830) per student per year to maintain a faculty-to-student ratio of 1:15, thus pushing up the cost of education significantly for students.

Notably, India has a foreign education providers’ bill that will allow foreign institutions to set up campus in India after it becomes law.

The bill has faced opposition from political parties, members of the ruling coalition and academics, who have called it an elite move that would serve only those who can afford to pay the fees. The bill has been pending in parliament for more than a year.

Anand Sudarshan, former CEO and MD of Manipal Global Education Service and director of Sylvant Advisors, said India needed to look at cheaper and more innovative models.

He gave the example of the US$8 billion community college rejuvenation plan in the US, arguing that it would be an eighth of the cost of university education and would prepare students for the market.

Teaching versus research

Research in India has been a neglected area and the entry of reputed international institutions would help improve the research landscape in higher education.

But India needs a large number of undergraduate and graduate teaching institutions, and improving the quality of classroom teaching was a key higher education reform, said Professor Narayana Jayaram of the Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai.

“More than infrastructure and students, we need to focus on teachers who stay in the system for 30 to 35 years. Indian universities have insisted on no training or orientation for teachers,” Jayaram said.

India should focus on partnering with leading teacher training institutions around the world to train its teachers and revive the teacher education curriculum.

Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the US, said India was putting all its eggs in the research basket.

“There are lots of very good American institutions that are not Ivy League. India cannot focus only on research when it has millions of students to educate. For instance, India needs to urgently upgrade its vocational education colleges,” Altbach told University World News on the sidelines of the conference.

Centre versus periphery

The foreign education providers’ bill was a classic case of policy being decided at the highest level without taking into consideration grassroots realities, said Professor KB Powar, former secretary general of the Association of Indian Universities.

“One of the reasons for the non-passage of the bill is that we are trying to bring in higher education reforms through legislation and forcing it onto the states, which form a crucial part of India’s higher education network,” said Powar.

Challenges faced by universities and colleges in small cities in India are radically different. While the official medium of instruction is English, teachers and students in many regional colleges are not proficient in English and thus find it difficult to teach or comprehend the curriculum.

“The curriculum itself is outdated and needs revision before it can match minimum standards,” Powar told University World News.

“These are local problems that need to be addressed by us. No foreign university can help us.”