Policy and regulatory uncertainty in higher education

In 2013 two of India’s regulatory authorities, the University Grants Commission and the All India Council for Technical Education, or AICTE, were locked in a turf war over who would control the country’s future engineers and managers.

This year began with the University Grants Commission, or UGC, announcing draft guidelines to regulate around 13,000 technical institutions across the country, including engineering and management schools.

The move was opposed by hundreds of business schools, which contended that the AICTE was best suited to regulate technical education. While the Ministry of Education watched silently, a consortium of schools threatened to get a stay order from the Supreme Court.

Belatedly, the government announced that it would introduce legislation that would reverse an earlier Supreme Court order and restore the powers of the AICTE to oversee technical institutions.

While the decision may bring immediate relief to thousands of institutions, it is just one example of the regulatory vacuum that higher education in India will have to contend with this year.

There is also concern that with 2014 being an election year, the policy paralysis at the centre may go on for some time.

In the absence of active government involvement, more private participation will be seen in higher education with industry playing a major role in supporting research and collaboration.

Regulatory vacuum

According to Harivansh Chaturvedi, director of the Birla Institute of Management Technology in Noida, shifting the regulatory control of 13,000 technical colleges from the AICTE to the UGC “would have proved to be a disaster”.

It “would have created a very difficult situation where important decisions would have been delayed by the state universities and there would have been lack of coordination at the national level”, said Chaturvedi.

For established institutions to expand and grow or for new institutions to come up under such regulatory confusion was impossible, he added.

“During the last four years a lot of hype and noise has been created by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. They proposed 13 bills to reform higher education without proper consultation with all stakeholders. Because of poor political support, these bills could not be passed by parliament,” he added.

Notably, the education ministry – which falls under Human Resource Development – had proposed several pieces of legislation, including one that would allow foreign universities to set up campuses in India.

However, it was unable to get support for the bills in parliament. Finally, in 2013, the education ministry announced that it would permit foreign universities to open campuses as non-profit companies under the Companies Act.

While the announcement was seen as a way out of a legislative freeze, there is still no clarity on whether an official notification has been published to implement it.

“The education ministry is almost paralysed and we don’t have strong leadership,” said Narayanan Ramaswamy, head of education at the consultancy firm KPMG India.

“It is a matter of grave concern that a lot of ad hoc announcements have been made in the past year. As an educational institute should I look at the ministry, the UGC, AICTE or any other regulatory body for support and guidance?” Ramaswamy asked.

“There is no single governance mechanism in higher education and battling this policy vacuum will be a big task for institutes this year,” he added.

India’s higher education sector needed a strong central government, said Ramaswamy. “Whichever government comes to power needs to focus attention on education.

“Sibal can be criticised for several reasons, but at least during his time there was a strong focus on education and debate around education policies,” he said, referring to former education minister Kapil Sibal, during whose tenure several policies were drawn up and the right to education became an act of parliament.

According to Chaturvedi, greater awareness is needed among members of parliament regarding higher education. “We will make an attempt to ask every political party to announce their policies on higher education in their election manifestos,” he said.

Private sector participation to grow

In the absence of implementation strategies on the part of the government, private participation in higher education in India is likely to grow in 2014.

Until 2000, it was largely the government that provided the infrastructure and support for higher education. “But government alone has been unable to keep up with the growing demand for skilled labour by industry. So more private players have stepped in and more will come,” Ramaswamy said.

Over the years, Indian industry has pitched in with support for setting up research laboratories, creating collaborative projects between faculty and students and getting research sponsored.

The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur has attracted Rs1.2 billion (US$19.3 million) in funding from a leading corporation to carry out advanced research in power technology.

A Rs50 billion (US$805 million) Indian corporate research and development fund along the lines of the National Science Foundation in the United States was recommended by the NR Narayana Murthy Committee on Corporate Sector Participation in Higher Education.

Industry has also partnered with the government on the prime minister’s fellowship scheme for doctoral research in science, technology, engineering, agriculture and medicine. Under the scheme, 100 fellowships will be given to selected candidates working on a research problem jointly with industry.

“Several small and medium companies have approached us to support the fellowships to take their research and development work forward. It’s a win-win situation for the industry and the scholars,” said Shalini Sharma, head of higher education at the Confederation of Indian Industry, or CII.

The CII has had to decline several requests from Indian scholars working outside India for support under the fellowship.

“We have too many young people to educate and provide skills. In the coming years industry will play a more active role in providing avenues for our youth in higher education, research and skills development,” Sharma said.

Chaturvedi cautioned that while private participation in higher education would increase, there would be a weeding out of low quality institutions.

“The trend of closure of unviable engineering colleges and business schools during the last two years will continue. Only good and resourceful institutions will survive. There will be mergers and acquisitions in higher education similar to in industry,” Chaturvedi said.

Notably, hundreds of business and engineering schools across India have either shut down or are struggling to survive due to lack of quality education, absence of industry interface, a declining economy and an excess supply of graduates.

Internationalisation

Over the last two years, several international collaborations have been signed between the Indian government and its counterparts in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Australia among other countries, mostly around research.

At the same time Indian universities and the education ministry faced flak for not making it into global rankings produced by organisations such as Times Higher Education and QS. The ministry asked institutions to be proactive in providing information sought by global ranking agencies.

Higher Education Secretary Ashok Thakur said that a workshop would be conducted to finalise a set of guidelines to take into consideration while providing relevant data to ranking bodies.

“There will be continuous interest from the global community in India as a higher education destination. We have the students and the market to expand,” said Professor Diptiranjan Pattnayak of Banaras Hindu University.

“However, this interest will wane if the new government that comes to power fails to provide a clear policy on higher education or a closely coordinated regulatory mechanism.”