Higher Education in India: Three ideas

Higher Ed in India is a serious matter. 

It should be obvious, given the size of India's youth population, its importance as a major economy and democratic society and the competition it faces from the other rising powers in the region, primarily China. But education in general and higher education in particular were never taken seriously in India, except as an endless series of examinations. The primacy of examinations and middle-class obsession with exam results (Amartya Sen wrote a book titled 'The country of first boys') 

Over the last thirty years, the sector has been privatised, de-professionalised and badly regulated. The institutions often became the front for money laundering, and they were run by politicians, either directly or by proxy. There are ghost institutions without any real student, widespread corruption in regulation and ranking processes, fake degrees and professors without qualification: It is a big and profitable market, which can no means be called an education system.

There have been efforts in the recent years to fix things. The government has tried to improve the accreditation and ranking processes. Some good institutions have opened. Some foreign universities have been invited in, primarily to enhance competition. But most of these measures are designed along the twin axis of the Indian state - neoliberal market mechanism (competition will fix everything) and police state mentality - which has encouraged a sector dominated by special interests and encouraged a 'market for lemons' in higher education. 

But with Trump taking the neoliberal ideas to its next logical level - hardwired culture (that we are all products of our races), hard money (that Dollar should be treated like Gold, unquestionable basis of world's money) and hard borders (no immigration) - India needs to rethink its educational priorities. Gone are the days when people and skills could be exported and dollars could be earned to offer middle class voters a cushioned lifestyle: The more serious business of rebuilding a sustainable economy and a cohesive society must be attended to. There is an opportunity to do all this now - middle-class brain drain will take a hit because of the nativist turn in North America and Europe - to set things right.

However, I don't think India would be able to create a higher education sector fit-for-purpose by following the Western models. Anyone can see that the European and North American models of Higher Education are not working: They are financially unsustainable, socially divisive and created an entitled middle class devoid of entrepreneurial spirit. That they still survive is purely due to neo-colonialism, and their chief business is exporting their failed models to unsuspecting customers in the global south. While I am no fan of India's claim to be viswaguru (world's teacher) by default, and do believe that India has much to learn, I don't see the panacea of Indian Higher Education coming from following or copying the models in Western countries.

A few years ago, over a lovely lunch in Mumbai, I made this point to a senior functionary of the RSS: My point, then, was that India needs to learn from poor countries dealing with a large population - aka China - rather than Britain. But, today, I shall be more guarded about China too: I have become more familiar with the Chinese Higher Education sector and its managerialism and believe that India needs to think about its own needs and rediscover the idea of university on its own terms. 

I have a developing view on what that could possibly be. Particularly, three ideas, none of which has the slightest chance to be ever implemented, given that the Indian policymakers are firmly rooted in the Nationalist (and therefore, primarily Western) ideas universe. But, in the 'privacy' of this blog, I shall spell them out in any case.

First, an Indian university needs to be locally oriented. The biggest problem of the university educated in India is that the object of education is escape from the local realities. This is why the university educated is disconnected from the local needs and values. This is socially unsettling, as well as economically unproductive. Call centre or programming jobs won't save the Indian graduates; rather local enterprises, being doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs to serve the local community will. The escapist nature of Indian Higher Education is not only behind its own decline - good students want to migrate to better universities - but also it is key reason behind the social division and rootlessness of the middle classes.

Second, to be local, the Indian university needs to be more community owned, managed and valued. This is the opposite of what has been happening lately: The two major trends in Indian Higher Education right now are privatisation and central control. They are being run for profit (though these institutions are nominally not for profit) by individual proprietors and being regulated from afar by central authorities. That way, these institutions have the worst of both the worlds: They lack the public accountability, but also the market responsiveness that comes with being a business. There is no role any community - internal (students, academics or even administrators) or external (local government, civil society) - plays, marking the key difference with China. The public institutions are so politicised, at least in some states, that the political party leaders often make decisions about university exam timetables and holiday calendars. 

Third, in terms of outcome, Indian universities need a different measure than just pushing their students over a meaningless placement threshold. Most Indian universities, particularly those founded in the last twenty years, exist as a part of a global value chain - IT outsourcing! Their raison d'etre is to somehow certify the student and push him into one of the seats doing the grant work for the Western consumers. This could have been a fine aim for a technical training sector in a globalised era (of which India was a beneficiary, and which is now ending) but to create a whole system of higher education on this basis is simply unsustainable. I am not denying that not all institutions are the same, and good liberal education institutions do exist (and are perhaps growing), but this characterisation would apply to a vast number of institutions, representing most university students, particularly in the urban areas. This sole focus is even more problematic as this value chain is broken: The institutions are simply unable to reorient themselves to anything productive.

There needs to be, I believe, an Indian idea of the university, which is an unfinished project. I am a student of the history of universities in India, and I know there is an ongoing search for what this might mean. However, the idea of university has become monolithic lately, defining the university as a European institution (it is not; and if it is, then other parts of the world need something else) and moreover, a peculiar neo-liberal entity needed for shaping inner lives. Time to get serious about this is now: To rethink what an Indian university may really mean!