University governance is not a bold title or heading for a numerical section of a statute or regulation punctuated with intent, decorated with words and truncated with relevance. Governance of a university involves the understanding of types of universities and their emerging roles in a knowledge-driven economy that rests on the foundational requirement of human capital and social development. The world over, university governance has been a matter of intense debate and the global experience has provided lessons from different models —Oxbridge (Oxford-Cambridge), Scottish, Humboldtian, American, UK’s Higher Education Corporation (HEC), National University Corporation Act of Japan. No discussion on Indian or Chinese model despite they being two of the world’s largest university education service providers and India with its rich legacy of being the world’s university one time. In the book International Trends in University Governance: Autonomy, Self-government and the Distribution of Authority edited by Michael Shattock, renowned scholar and project leader for university governance research in the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education at UCL Institute of Education, London, the author is unable to rate India and China and only calls for pointers from the Anglosphere or continental Europe insofar as university governance is concerned. Under these circumstances, a generic policy approach for university governance with a historical baggage that is disconnected with emerging realities will only lead to hit and run regulations to build world-class universities that will result in naught and none.
At a time when university governance is about designing a trajectory with an institutional vision, the Indian model seems to be created to handle organisational issues, making it a reactive piece of administrative architecture that responds to major decisions made at a centralised level making universities less competitive. If such ‘reactive and executive entities’ are characteristics of universities, they cannot find significant presence in the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, Times Higher Education or QS World University rankings. In the 2015 ARWU, 72 of the top 100 are from the US, the UK, Japan, Canada and Australia. Some of these have existing successful university governance models or have departed from antiquated governance structures that have minimum relevance in this highly competitive global knowledge economy.
That Japan, known for its rigidity, took a decision that dramatically changed the character of even public universities by enacting the National University Corporation Act (NUCA), 2004 must be an eye-opener. The three cornerstones of NUCA were: full autonomy, corporate management and public accountability, and third-party evaluation. Such a move was not branded as commercial, even by the traditionalists, but welcomed as an instrument for change that could catapult Japanese universities as pro-active progressives. Indian universities too need such reforms, including governance mechanisms. Governance is mistaken as control and the governance mechanism that is proposed (Deemed Universities Regulations 2016) is not only retrograde but also falsely assumes external intervention as proxy for accountability.
Indian universities—public and private—have a statutory and moral responsibility. There are bad private universities just as there are some bad public ones, and there are progressive private universities just as there are good public ones. Exporting or transporting governance structures meant for ownerless universities to owner-led ones is not the solution. In the interest of university education in India, the need of the hour is a governance structure that provides full autonomy—academic, administrative and financial with optimal checks and balances. Is anybody listening?
The writer is Dean (Planning & Development), SASTRA University
vaidhya@sastra.edu