The Thiel Fellowship recipients for 2013 include India’s 19-year-old entrepreneur Ritesh Agarwal. Twenty under-20 achievers from all over the world receive a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 to drop out of college and focus on their own idea, research or self-education.
Awarded by the Thiel Foundation, set up by German born US-based billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel, Ritesh was selected from a pool of over thousand applicants from 50 countries and will be mentored by successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders, scientists, etc. during his two-year stint in the USA. Thiel Foundation believes in intellectual curiosity, commitment, risk-taking, grit, et al to become successful in life. It attaches no importance to a formal degree and that explains why it awards the prestigious fellowship to drop out of college. When this fellowship programme was started in 2011 it was received with an array of responses — critical and supportive. Within two years, Thiel Fellowship is getting more competitive than Harvard or Princeton creating a disruptive force strong enough to prick the education bubble. Are such initiatives strong enough to substitute formal education? Not in India.
There is a strong global move towards other forms of non-formal learning. The website notgoinguni.co.uk is a one-stop shop that provides apprenticeship for youth without a formal degree. Many universities, philanthropic organisations, corporates, et al are creating their own forms of non-formal education. According to the US department of education, the cost of education rose by 72% between 2000 and 2012 but the average earnings for US students with a bachelor’s degree fell by 14.7%. The value of a degree is expected to fall globally and definitely in India, given its poor higher education regulatory system that has a minimalist approach to quality, maximalist approach to quantity and partisan approach to statutory obligations. But do we care about the value of a degree?
Programmes like the Thiel Fellowship may be branded elitist. Indian versions of Thiel may elicit a strong “no-no” by any Union government of the day and by India’s largest NGO — the National Advisory Council — as higher education policy is strongly driven by the triple taraka mantra “Inclusive, Accessible and Affordable”. It is strange that there is no mention about the word “Quality” in the mantra! We are successfully producing more and more unemployable engineering and management graduates. Universities are now ranked by employers based on graduates’ performance at workplace and employers are slowly exerting pressure on universities to impart skills in their graduates. However, if the present mode of university education in India continues, employers may even look for alternative entry-level requirements.
Hardcore academics argue the need for applied and basic research in university campuses. Universities have traditionally been research platforms resulting in pathbreaking discoveries. Globally, university research is supported by outstanding faculty who are endowed with huge financial grants and intellectually vibrant student community. There is no doubt that such students cannot be prepared for their first job after their first degree. They are the future hope for academic research to create new knowledge.
In the last several years there has been a stentorian chorus from all stakeholders on the absence of any Indian centre in the list of top 200 universities of the world. A quick scan of the parameters used by the three popular ranking agencies — QS, ARWU and Times Higher Education — clearly indicate the dominance of research that receives over 50% weightage. Research productivity of India is not encouraging. According to a study by Thomson Reuters, India’s share in the global research output in 2010 is just 3.5%. With the McDonaldisation of IITs and NITs, whether India can hold on to the share is anybody’s guess. On the other hand, the Indian higher education enrolment figures establish the growing rate of undergraduate (UG) and declining rate of postgraduate (PG) enrolment. The research output of Indian varsities has minimal impact on a student’s UG experience creating an imbalance in the university ecosystem in which universities pursue and fail at both research and teaching. The tug of war between research and teaching will continue forever unless the components of the 21st century Indian university are unbundled and redefined to arrest the falling values of a conventional degree and research output.
There cannot be a time more appropriate than now to take stock of the purpose of universities and university education. The winds of change driven by technology and globalisation are blowing hard, changing the paradigm and shaking the foundation of 20th century university education. India cannot afford to be a sleeping giant. The need for a formal degree will never die down and no amount of Thiel Fellowship or other non-formal education opportunities will dampen the demand for formal degree programmes.
The antiquated regulatory framework is well oiled by second innings academics who are far behind the emerging trends of 21st century university education. Harvard University professor Clay Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation forms the very core of the 21st century Indian university. The demand for Indian higher education is so huge and diverse that all universities cannot be doing the same set of functions. We need to disrupt and break the warped logic of categorising all universities based on the same set of parameters. In short, policy makers need to think beyond the traditional frameworks and call for a multi-stakeholder approach in redefining university education and inventing new models. We need different types of universities, each focussing on the aim for which they are created. There is no point in comparing IITs, progressive private and public varsities with weaker ones. America never compares Harvard, DeVry or Phoenix.
In India, the policy makers driven by rhetoric want every university to become a Harvard or Stanford. It will never happen. Firms with large market capitalisation like Apple and Google were founded in the last 20 years. They harnessed the winds of change by leveraging technology and globalisation. Universities that charter the next generation of economic and social growth cannot afford to miss this wind. As the winds of change blow hard, the best build windmills while the rest build shelters. India needs to be the best.
The writer is Dean, Planning & Development, SASTRA University