The opening of foreign university campuses is not going to help the situation- rather it is going to harm our cause- as they will attract our best talent to their institution, pay higher salaries and thus deplete our already starved faculty resources and inflict further damage on our existing strengths .Foreign universities are not benevolently coming here to upgrade our university system but instead to tap our vast student pool , to charge hefty amounts as fee and earn gigantic profits, writes former IAS officer V.S.Pandey
Recently the Indian government has opened its huge doors and invited Foreign universities to open their campuses here. Ever since the opening up of our economy in the early 1990s, this idea had been mooted, but the then governments had prudently negated it. In early 2000, while I was working in the then Human Resource Development Ministry, now renamed as Education Ministry, this call gained traction and there were competing arguments for and against opening of foreign university campuses in India. A regulatory framework was sought to be put in place for facilitating the arrival of Foreign universities but did not materialize. The question still foremost in this debate is firstly, what is the need of opening of foreign universities campuses here and secondly, is this move going to benefit India by improving the quality of our higher education system?
Education is all about teachers and students. To get good quality students in our universities and higher education institutions, we need to put good quality elementary and secondary education systems in place first. This is where we are lagging behind miserably as adequate effort has not been made in the past nor in the present to upgrade the quality of education in our vast publicly funded school system. Numerous reports by education experts and various commissions appointed by governments have been flagging the issue of underinvestment, lack of proper infrastructure, poor quality of teachers etc. -but to no avail. We did make primary education a fundamental right under the constitution, but despite that barring some miniscule efforts, no major improvement in the delivery of quality education is visible in the past few decades. The vast majority of students coming out of our education system and particularly from the state funded school system, suffer from sub standard quality. When critical inputs in our higher education system will remain so abysmal, the dream of improving the quality of higher education will remain distant.
The issue of upgrading our students educational attainments is not insurmountable. Other nations have done it -why can’t we? No nation has become socially and economically powerful without a fully educated and trained population-how long will our governance take to realise this? As the father of modern economics, Adam Smith had asserted “trained manpower are the silver and gold of any nation” , all the governments must give top priority to delivery of high quality education to their population. Presently an astounding 48% of the graduates lack employability skills- will this mismatch be corrected by inviting foreign universities or by updating the curriculum and skilling the students of our own universities?
Another aspect that has been consistently flagged by those running these educational institutions is non availability of good quality teachers. This is a blatantly false assertion. Governments recruit lacs of personnel every year to man various positions in its hierarchies through Public services commissions and other recruiting systems, the private sector hires lacs of professionals every year- but they never complain that they failed to find good personnel for particular jobs because they choose the best amongst the available. Unfortunately we hear this perpetual complaint from universities and other higher education institutions. Why? There are a large number of candidates fulfilling all the desired qualification- who apply for teaching positions whenever they are advertised by these institutions. Why can’t we select the best out of the available talent- as is being done by all other employers across the globe.
The question is when in every domain we are selecting the available brightest -so why are Universities not appointing the best? Numerous hurdles are obstructing the path of those who want to join the noble teaching profession- like a minimum first class masters degree, a Ph.D degree, teaching experience , published papers etc.-etc. Isn’t excellent grasp and mastery over the subject sufficient? I recall that when I had completed my masters and topped in the university, I was promptly offered a teaching position in the university, and this was the practice then in almost every institution of higher learning. The teaching calibre of my brilliant professors then- selected minus these new criteria- is sadly not the norm today.
The systemic decline of our institutions of higher learning is primarily due to the poor leadership at the top. Any institution progresses only when it is led by people of integrity, merit and vision. Today , barring a few exceptions, most of the institutions are manned by people who occupy the chair not on merit, but on connections , sifarish etc. Second rate individuals will select third grade personnel only.
In addition to that , our institutions are extremely deficient in utilising the existing infrastructure too. A study conducted in this regard came out with glaring data that infrastructure utilisation by our premier educational institutions like IIT’s, IIM’s, Universities is a poor 28%. The salient question is why a poor nation like ours has failed to efficiently utilise its scarce infrastructural facilities and why those running these institutions have not been taken to task for failing to utilise them optimally. The statistics are horrifying-whereas our utilisation percentage is 28% , developed countries have a utilisation percentage as high as 70% plus. This much for our poverty! We need to at least double the investment in our education sector without any further delay and direct the regulatory institutions like UGC, AICTE etc. to relax unnecessary norms and unnecessary regulatory oversights.
For decades, India has striven to place its universities among the world’s top institutions. Despite a humungous higher-education network and a long intellectual tradition, Indian universities rarely find themselves in the top tiers of global rankings. This is not for lack of talent- India produces engineers, scientists, and professionals who excel worldwide. The gap lies in structural limitations, governance issues, and persistent underinvestment that prevent institutions from developing into globally competitive centres of knowledge. India invests far less in higher education than most advanced economies. Even when resources are available, they are deployed inefficiently. Funds will be spent on buildings rather than on research equipment, or on short-term schemes that do not lead to sustained academic improvement.
In this scenario the opening of foreign university campuses is not going to help the situation- rather it is going to harm our cause- as they will attract our best talent to their institution, pay higher salaries and thus deplete our already starved faculty resources and inflict further damage on our existing strengths .Foreign universities are not benevolently coming here to upgrade our university system but instead to tap our vast student pool , to charge hefty amounts as fee and earn gigantic profits. Currently, only those nations with a very weak and minimal higher education system have granted permission to foreign universities. India does not fall in that category, so we need to prevent this racketeering in our national interest.
(Vijay Shankar Pandey is former Secretary government of India)
