When the obituary of higher education in India is finally written, ‘‘throttled by government regulation’’ will in all likelihood emerge as the prominent cause of death. While the government’s attempts to use higher education as an ideological football have drawn much comment, the slow and painful death that the education bureaucracy and politicians are inflicting upon, what should arguably be a critical sector for our economy, society and politics, is passed over in unconscionable silence. Most of us know the appalling facts: undergraduate education is a fraud committed by the state upon millions of students. This education does not make them employable or even give them basic skills let alone the opportunity to enlarge their horizons. You can go through most Indian universities without really needing to attend class, without having to write an essay other than in an exam context, without reading anything but third rate textbooks, with no inkling of what a good library looks like, with no encouragement to think for yourself and with nobody to help you express what it is that you wish to say. The best students are seceding with their feet by going abroad, and even the less deserving ones, would pay hundreds of times more to go to third tier institutions abroad than stay here. India is perhaps the only country in the world where employers look upon your degree with apprehension. Most of your market credibility is established by success in competitive exams or institutions outside the university. Given our human resources, higher education should have placed India on the world map; increasingly it is another sign of the failure of the state. There is plenty of blame to be passed around for this mess. Consider a few random facts. The University Grants Commission (UGC) and other regulatory bodies have over the years acquired a pretense of omnipotence that is staggering. Their approach to education can be summed up in one word: enforce the lowest common denominator as uniformly as possible across hundreds of universities. Despite the fact that the universities have statutory authority over their syllabi, the UGC, in the name of syllabus innovation has effectively, except for odd cases here and there, taken powers to design syllabus from those who actually teach it. I am privileged enough to be in a university, where teachers routinely make their own syllabi, and I suspect that the relatively better teaching record of this university has something to do with this fact. The UGC and similar bodies like the Council for Technical Education, again, in the name of supervision, are not even allowing private institutions to innovate. What is the point of having private institutions if they are not allowed the luxury to experiment? These bodies have a visceral distrust of the teaching community and of any innovation, unless it is sanctified by a small coterie of education bureaucrats. The UGC for instance can unilaterally decide that under the tenth plan it is going to fund certain areas, like consciousness etc., rather than other more pressing ones. Universities, irrespective of their needs or comparative advantage, have to fall in line or suffer financial consequences. This mistrust would be justified if the UGC could, in all conscience, claim that it has genuinely managed to save higher education. UGC recognition is no guarantee of even a minimum quality education. Rather than acting as an autonomous body, that acts as a buffer and protects universities from the dictates of the Human Resource D evelopment ministry, the UGC has often acted as its enforcement arm. Recently of all departments, its audit department has been sending out circulars to monitor compliance with the so-called model syllabus it is propagating. Take other mechanisms of control. In most states Vice-Chancellor’s offices have long been an appendage to the office of the Chief Minister. But increasingly, selection committees for professors, are de jure being made in Governor’s offices. The government even has designs on relatively insulated institutions like the IIMs. The appointment of government’s nominees is less a mechanism of accountability and more a means of harassment of universities. The Jawaharlal Nehru University has not had a Visitor’s Nominee for almost a year. Without such a nominee, it cannot make appointments; dozens of posts are lying vacant and more unconscionably, hundreds of courses are going untaught, because the HRD ministry and President have not moved on this matter. As always, pedagogical considerations are the least important in making such decisions. The budgetary controls over the way money is spent has little to do with the objective of the institution. Universities have become largely employment schemes with wages and salaries consuming more than two thirds of most budgets. Infrastructure facilities, like libraries are, to put it mildly pathetic. The obstacles to creating such infrastructure are not only lack of financing. The rules by which funds are spent have the net effect of impeding any sensible planning; and the library staff in most universities is recruited to ensure that those with the least interest in books you get to control access to them. Indeed, most universities seem to be under the illusion that good infrastructure is unnecessary for universities. And under the present dispensation, universities have very little incentive to go out and raise their own resources. To those who fear relaxation of controls we can say only this: ask yourself, in good conscience, whether the risks of deregulation and more autonomy to teachers are any greater than those posed by the education offered in a majority of our universities. The teaching community has at least as much to answer for. Power flows to those who choose to exercise it. Universities have, for the most part, for the narrow and short-term interests of their office holders, chosen to sacrifice their statutory autonomy. Although most teachers work hard, the universities have failed to come up with mechanisms that can discipline those who do not fulfill even their minimum obligations. They have conspired to produce a system of perverse incentives that does not reward the diligent and is hostile to any differentiation amongst universities. Almost all of the agitational energy of teachers goes into protecting the tiniest of perks, or the grandest of ideological battles, neither of which has anything to do with education. As in most professional unions, the logic of numbers overrides the imperatives of excellence, and frankly, the better scholars have simply seceded from taking an active part in teacher politics. When was the last time powerful teachers’ organisations like Delhi University Teachers’ Association or the JNU teachers association made sensible and viable proposals for running their respective universities? When was the last time teachers debated education? In all other sectors of the economy, people are willing to argue for and accept less government control. Education is the only sector more tightly regulated than ever. It is a sign of the low esteem in which teachers are held that the public is quite cheerfully willing to countenance the idea that teachers should be held accountable to two species that ought to rank even lower: bureaucrats and politicians. (The writer is a Professor of Philosophy and of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi)
