On a cursory reading, the lengthy and tedious draft National Education Policy (NEP) seems to have some “feel good” effect owing to its passionate advocacy of increased public funding, condemnation of the currently acquired meaning of the word “autonomy” as freeing institutions from public funding, and its equally passionate advocacy of liberal arts education. It turns out, however, that the magnitude of increase in public funding it seeks is too modest for the restructuring and expansion in higher education it advocates. Anyway, it admits that the proposed policy does not involve any binding commitment towards funding on the part of governments. Its definition of autonomy does not envisage freedom from the market or the government and includes optimisation of resources. University autonomy and academic freedom popularly understood would become casualties to the changes in the regulatory regime and governance structure it lays down. The shallow instrumentalism of its advocacy for liberal arts education goes together with its uncritical assumptions about the role of educated workers in a “knowledge economy” and what it calls the “fourth industrial revolution”.
What is most jarring in the draft NEP is the absence of adequate stocktaking of the current state of higher education in India save the mention of an all-round quality deficit and suboptimal size of many institutions as well as a critical evaluation of the recent policy measures of the Central government. This is especially so since the draft essentially expands on and extends the various actions already under way.
Since the adoption of the National Policy on Education 1986-1992, a significant expansion of higher education has occurred more rapidly in the private sector, which accounts for the majority of students enrolled and does not provide reservation for deprived sections of society. In the face of systematic underfunding many public-funded institutions have been commercialised through increased reliance on self-financing courses. The increase in the number of teachers and the magnitude of infrastructure have not kept pace with student enrolments. In fact, many institutions of repute stand ruined since the number of sanctioned teaching posts got reduced even as student intake increased. In a significant number of institutions, there are either no teachers for various subjects or so few of them that teaching-learning is not feasible. Enrolment is reduced to mere appearance in examinations and acquisition of degrees.
The decline in standards in school as well as higher education has led to the emergence of a profitable industry involved in coaching students for examinations and for gaining entry into coveted academic programmes and institutions. This, too, has exacerbated the inequities. Remedying the declining standards will require a huge surge in public funding. Any belief that some magic formulae will improve quality without adequate input provisions is questionable.
Academic freedom and institutional autonomy have been eroded by a culture of bestowing favour on the compliant and punishing those among the academia who express critical opinion. Unless this is remedied, the expertise of the academia to critically evaluate and formulate academic programmes is bound to be wasted, and knowledge production and dissemination will get affected adversely.
In 2008, the University Grants Commission (UGC) responded to the decline in standards by advocating a uniform calendar and academic structure across the country. That structure is a semesterised choice-based credit system (CBCS) using the rhetoric of learner-centric education, which, according to it, allows wider choices across disciplines, discourages rote learning and makes students adaptable to newer challenges since they are to become proficient in how to learn . The policy, however, did not take into account the feasibility of CBCS or semester system in resource-depleted and dissimilarly placed institutions and offered no additional funding for the required increase in the number of teachers and infrastructural support.
In 2015, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) forced it on all institutions by centralising course-framing by the UGC, which lacks the academic expertise required for the purpose. The government set up SWAYAM, a Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) platform, empowered to examine and evaluate, partly as a substitute for teachers and classroom requirements, in the adoption of the CBCS framework. The lack of concern for provision of inputs so as to maintain standards combined with the specific emphasis on inter-institution credit transfer suggests that the idea is to create a unified education market in the country to facilitate private players, domestic and foreign.
Market as regulator
In 2016, the NITI Aayog’s draft Three Year Action Agenda 2017-18 to 2019-20 provided the theoretical justification for the government to withdraw from its funding commitment to institutions for inputs (adequate number of teachers with attractive salary and service conditions, infrastructure, and so on). It argued for market/consumers as the regulator, using a market-fundamentalist version of a questionable Outcome-Based Education framework initiated in the United States during the Ronald Reagan era and advocated by agencies funded by big corporates. The argument consisted of three claims: (a) that adequate inputs do not necessarily guarantee outcomes, (b) outcome measurement and outcome-based rewards and punishment for institutions and individuals are the surest recipe for quality outcomes, and (c) the government, therefore, should not concern itself with providing inputs and instead focus mainly on putting in place a system of outcome measurement and outcome-based incentives.
The NITI Aayog argued that its prescription held for school and higher education in equal measure. It proposed census/sample testing of school students for evaluating schools, and punishments such as closure/merger/PPP (public-private partnership) takeover. For higher education it proposed a graded autonomy based on ranking whereby the autonomy awarded is gradual freedom from government funding and the power to carry out self-financing programmes and research. It also argued for a variable pay for teachers.
A Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) was brought in to allow a switch from grant-based funding to loan-based funding for all infrastructural needs. Although public outcry has forced the government not to seek full principal repayment of such loans, the principle of repayment from internal resources generated through market engagement has been instituted. Further, the government attempted to link pay revision of teachers to part-financing through revenue generation by the institutions where they are employed; this has also been rescinded for the time being in view of public outcry. The intent is to make teachers stakeholders in the project of commercialisation of education.
Under the General Financial Rules 2017, Central universities have been forced to sign a tripartite memorandum of understanding that requires them to simultaneously increase student intake and the ratio of internal financial resources generated to public-funded resources on a continuous basis, both by raising fees and reorienting themselves towards marketable activities.
Various policy measures that entail dependence on the market threaten knowledge creation by undermining core areas of knowledge that may not be immediately marketable and equity in access.
In order to meet the objective of 50 per cent gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education, the policy seeks largely capacity creation in existing institutions and through MOOCs. Expansion of public-funded institutions following reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) and now Economically Weaker Sections have already negatively impacted many institutions, and relying on the cheaper route can only have further adverse effects on quality. The MOOCs option suggests an unwillingness to invest in formal education. Instead of using the immense opportunity to broaden and enrich education, the draft NEP seeks to rely on this cheaper route with questionable quality implication in order to meet GER targets.
End of affiliations
The draft NEP proposes that all higher education institutions , private or public, are to be multidisciplinary and be given the power to award degrees, and large in size. It mandates an end to the system of affiliating universities and affiliated colleges. They are to be classified into three types depending on their functions: those primarily engaged in research and also imparting teaching, those primarily engaged in teaching and involved in significant research activities, and those which are primarily teaching institutions. All higher education institutions are to have liberal arts education providing for exposure to many disciplines and enhanced choices to students. The infrastructure and teacher requirement for expansion per se and the ability to offer multidisciplinary choices, including vocational and professional education, are huge, given the existing input deficit. In the absence of binding government funding to meet those requirements, quality is bound to suffer both on account of the increased input deficit and enforced commercialisation through the self-financing route. Integrating teachers’ education into multidisciplinary higher education institutions is an excellent idea but for the unsettled issue of public funding.
The discredited four-year undergraduate programme with multiple exit options after each year of study is the desired undergraduate structure in the draft NEP. Though multiple exit and entry options appear attractive, the infrastructure and teacher requirement are immense unless low-paid contractual teachers are to be relied upon, which the draft disapproves of. Meeting the requirements of satisfactorily educated students exiting at four different points would more likely than not be a nightmare in designing curricula. Research component/group collaborative projects/working and problem-solving in local communities are all desirable in themselves. Assessment of the accomplishment of each individual student in terms of a multitude of outcomes will require further increase in the number of teachers for it to be feasible. The pupil to teacher ratio cannot be ridiculously high as the suggested 30:1 but much lower than the 12:1 that is used for the Delhi University’s honours courses.
While allowing for choice of vocational courses and courses for other competencies could be a good idea, whether or not the requirement of fitting components of each of those in undergraduate programmes will impede professional competency or academic rigour ought to be debated more thoroughly.
Faculty as passive service providers
Each institution is to be governed by a Board of Governors (BoG) through a Chief Executive appointed by it. Internal component, including the proposed institutional leaders, will be just a third of the membership of the BoG, and the rest will be government nominees and persons supposedly representing “public interest”. The BoG, once formed, will nominate members. Elected representation is forbidden. The faculty is excluded from all decision-making and offices save some of them who will be identified on the basis of their commitment and expertise in governance and will be nurtured to rise up the ladder in institutional leadership. The principle of seniority or rotation for discharging leadership positions being replaced by identification of an education bureaucracy will be disastrous for administrative and academic functioning. The disproportionate power exercised by such a bureaucracy and other members of the BoG will negatively affect free and fearless exchange of ideas and reduce the academia to an agency that implements plans designed by the governors and leaders. The BoG, among other things, is to draw up an Institutional Development Plan (IDP), which is to become the basis for permission to operate, to be assessed and to be entitled for funding for the institution.
Designed for market and political interference
The tasks of funding, regulation, standard setting and assessment/accreditation of all higher education institutions (private and public) will be entrusted to separate bodies. The regulating agency is to stipulate minimal conditions relating to outcomes and none with regard to inputs and processes. The standard-setting agency is required to lay down standards and quality framework. The accrediting agency is central to this regulatory regime insofar as it approves or disapproves the performance of institutions in delivering on outcomes and also is empowered to recommend steps it deems necessary for corrective measures. The funding agency is to provide adequate funds to public higher education institutions on the basis of their IDPs and accreditation success. The specification of outcomes and corrective measures is amenable to the influence of money and political powers. They can shape and alter the character and content of higher education. For a marketisation model to work, it would have sufficed to stop at the separation of the above-mentioned four tasks through autonomous agencies. However, the draft NEP goes further by bringing in an apex body called the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA) to be headed by the Prime Minister, with the Minister for Education as the Vice Chairperson. Similar apex bodies are to be constituted at State levels. The RSA will have decisive powers over the bodies funding, regulating, stipulating standards and accrediting institutions.
Further, the RSA will periodically conduct sample assessment of students. It has been observed by many that testing students as a mode of outcome measurement has resulted in schools in the U.S. compromising on pedagogy and focussing more on preparing students for tests. There is no reason why a similar phenomenon in school and higher education may not arise here.
Following the Outcome-Based Education framework, a concerted campaign supported by leading corporates in the U.S. called into question the accreditation procedure for taking into consideration more inputs and processes. It advocated that scholarship and other funding be based on outcome measurement. It led to the emergence of what is referred to as testing industrial complex, with a select few engaged in the business of test design, carrying out tests and selling preparatory materials for students appearing for the tests. Both census testing of students in schools and sample testing in higher education will involve huge expenses that would be met either out of the meagre government budget or by pushing the cost on to students. The proposal made in the draft NEP for entrance tests for undergraduate admissions to be conducted by the national testing agency will be a huge burden on the public and a huge gain for private companies that conduct such tests and coach students.
Absolute control over research
Instead of allocating research funds to institutions, the government is already diverting them to public and private sector institutions and individual researchers, for targeted research projects/areas identified by it as relevant, through a process of competition. The proposal for government funding as well as private funding, including funding through this centralised agency, undermines university autonomy. Provision for additional research funds for areas that the government considered to be of national importance have always existed. So is the case with private funding. But cessation of or reduction in research funding to institutions whose faculty and researchers determine which questions to investigate is an assault on the very idea of university where the most unorthodox and most uncomfortable issues are supposed to be open to question. Absolute control over research topics and who or what is to be funded by the government or the corporate is antithetical to independent thinking and democracy. The experience of Gujarat, where universities were given research topics by the government and its consequences, is something that has not yet faded from public memory. The Uttar Pradesh Private Universities Ordinance, currently under criticism for the government assuming powers to shut down universities if it considers the activities using their name to be anti-national, points to a much larger danger emanating from the proposal to have the RSA as the overarching apex body on education in the country.
It is only prudent to restore the health of existing institutions that have hardly any teachers and lack the necessary infrastructure. The implantation of a borrowed framework, notwithstanding our ability to trace its origin to ancient Indian practice, on a setting that is unsuitable for its fruition, may not only fail but also harm the surviving institutions of some quality. The governmental obsession with getting a few higher education institutions in some kind of world ranking should be replaced by attention to quality of education available to the mass of our students. A conception of “knowledge society” that ignores the rights and potentials of the mass of the youth can only be a corporate one.
Sanjaya Kumar Bohidar teaches economics at
Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, and has been a member of the Academic Council of the University and an office-bearer of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association.
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