The Indian higher education system has a crucial role in achieving the much-needed twin goals of economic prosperity and socio-cultural development. It is not new for India to lead the world in such outcomes. After all, Bharat’s ancient higher education centres such as Nalanda, Takshashila and Vikramshila were the forebears of modern universities.
The focus on holistic, scientific and value education made these universities global centres of learning. There was a well-knit link between education and economic prosperity, eventually leading to socio-cultural development. However, the Indian education system had drifted in recent centuries from those lofty earlier goals.
Today, when India is poised to become the third largest economy, the need to link higher education with socio-cultural development has come back on the government’s agenda. The National Education Policy 2020 offers the ingredients for transforming higher education and achieving the milestone of a Viksit Bharat by 2047, while leveraging the aspirational youth of the country. At the same time, it promises to take Indian higher education beyond the national requirements, restoring Bharat’s role as a ‘Vishwaguru’. Thus, NEP 2020 has a pivotal role in linking our glorious past with the promising future envisioned by the Prime Minister.
At the time of independence, India had about 20 universities and 500 colleges. Today, it has one of the largest higher education systems with about 1,170 universities and more than 50,000 colleges focusing on teaching and research in almost all fields.
Yet, India’s relatively low gross enrolment ratio (GER) has been identified as a challenge, especially when the country is bestowed with a large youth population. Even the proposed increase in GER from the present 28 percent to 50 percent by 2035 may be inadequate for the country with a growing young population. Moreover, increasing GER in itself will not be a solution, given the current challenges of not being able to produce employable graduates.
Several reports indicate the employability of the graduates is far below the required levels and an increased GER will turn out to be more of a challenge than an opportunity. Therefore, the quality of education offered to the students by providing knowledge along with a variety of skills shall not only make them employable, but also enable them to get mainstreamed into society. Higher education institutions have a growing role in promoting research and innovation to enable industrialisation through technology transfers.
India increasingly needs more ‘job givers’ than ‘job seekers’—a goal that can be achieved through innovation and a buzzing startup ecosystem, especially given the target of 50 percent GER. In addition, promoting Indian knowledge systems, cultural development, value education, and engaging with the community have significant roles in the overall development of the nation.
Thus, NEP 2020 focuses on the ambidextrous goals of increasing GER along with its underpinning requirements, while simultaneously improving the quality of education, research and societal engagement.
Need for a new governance model
The broader vision of higher education for a Viksit Bharat demands a progressive governance model. Configuring a nationwide governance model to ensure access, equity and inclusion, as well as the quality of higher education is of paramount importance. It involves developing a unified approach for transforming higher educational institutions into large multi-disciplinary education and research institutions, promoting India as an education destination, and integration and promotion of Bharatiya knowledge.
The absence of an appropriate governance model has limited the scope for leveraging the full potential of NEP 2020 and achieving success in the last five years.
The recently-introduced Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill proposes three new councils: a Regulatory Council to combine the regulatory aspects of all programmes of study, an Accreditation Council to govern quality assurance and ranking of institutions and programmes, and a Standards Council to maintain academic standards. The Bill primarily focuses on unification, harmony and autonomy, the very basic governance aspects required for the progressive higher education envisioned in NEP 2020.
The higher-education system is poised to become more multi-disciplinary in the near future. Universities are required to increase programmes to provide learners with opportunities for multi-disciplinary education and research. Now, a relatively large institution has to deal with multiple agencies for approval, extension and increase in intake. For example, it was an excellent idea to start the Integrated Teacher Education Programme to train the teachers along with specialisation in a particular discipline. An institution that wants to introduce the programme has to deal with the National Council for Teacher Education to meet the requirements of just one additional programme. The unification of three agencies into a single one offers standardisation of procedures, making the system robust and responsive to the emerging context. It also helps to optimise the resources used by the three agencies.
While these entities are brought together, there is a need to group similar activities performed by the three agencies. As per global practices, it is not desirable to have a single entity dealing with regulation, standards and accreditation. Separation of these functions will ensure that the objectives of the individual entities are achieved effectively. Further, such separation through councils will promote specialisation by drawing on best practices from the rest of the world. In the case of accreditation, its separation from other two functions are all the more important for assuring quality to the stakeholders.
Regulation and standards are focused on the institutional processes, resources, plans and actions. Globally, accreditation is normally kept outside the purview of regulation and standards for the very reason that it is focused on the outcome of the stakeholders such as students, industry and community. Adopting best practices from some of the leading countries in this field, the Accreditation Council will oversee the functioning of the independent ecosystem of accreditation that is assessing the quality of the institutions.
The three councils are expected to work autonomously, taking into consideration the expected objectives. However, based on the need for understanding ongoing common and mutual requirements, the Bill has ensured that VBSA shall have the presidents of the councils as its members, thus ensuring harmony.
There is an ongoing debate on centralisation of higher education governance by the government. The proposed recentralised governance is an approach to deal with the problem by combining the best of both centralisation and decentralisation. Recentralisation is not about retaining the complex and rigid structure that existed for decades. But it advocates a decentralised governance model where independent councils operate autonomously to achieve common goals through the central commission.
The proposed higher education governance model shall not only make entities lean and agile, but also promises to be effective in delivering value to the stakeholders.
The new Bill is a timely and vital reform as part of NEP 2020 to realign the Indian higher education system with the demands of a progressive economy and an aspirational society. The proposed ‘light but tight’ approach of the VBSA shall separate functions to eliminate regulatory overlap and promote trust-based governance. It is expected to transform higher education by providing an effective, enabling and responsive system of regulation to encourage integrity, excellence and public-spiritedness in higher education.
The nation requires a talent pool of students to help the country in achieving the vision of Viksit Bharat through outcome-based learning. The new Bill is expected to facilitate the students by providing opportunities for inter-disciplinary and flexible education with scope for re-skilling and up-skilling. It will also enable norms for credit transfers, equivalence and other related matters to facilitate mobility of students.
In addition, the public disclosure mandate related to infrastructure and facilities, faculty, fees and others by institutions will ensure availability of resources commensurate with the fees paid by them. It also ensures students with free access to a fair, transparent and robust grievance redress mechanism. Wherever required, the penalties proposed under the Bill will ensure students’ interests are not affected or cause any monetary consequences. Therefore, VBSA is poised to promote enhanced student experiences.
The empowered multidisciplinary higher educational institutions will be expected to have institutional development plans covering educational, research and societal goals, while maintaining compliance with national standards and regulations. The plan also includes initiatives, resource allocation and timelines for institutional development. Transparency of institutional information and activities are one of the major challenges in today's higher education system. The proposed autonomy comes with the responsibility of public self-disclosure of all finances, audits, procedures, infrastructure, faculty, courses and educational outcomes. Online portals enable transparency to all stakeholders.
The federated structure of the commission and the council with members from diverse backgrounds is the uniqueness of the Bill. The new commission and the verticals require representation from the states through memberships. In addition, there are representatives from state universities. There are no such inclusive arrangements in the existing regulating bodies. Once it becomes law, the commission and the councils will act through consultative processes to make the transition to a new model of cooperative governance.
The new accreditation system revolves around granting autonomy to the institutions. It requires that all higher educational institutions attain full accreditation and autonomy in a graded manner. Such graded autonomy will further empower the higher education sector. The outcomes created for the students, industry and community by these autonomous institutions will be a cornerstone of the transformation.
The Accreditation Council will develop an outcome- and impact-based institutional framework in consultation with stakeholders to assess institutions. Thus, quality assurance to stakeholders through accreditation outcomes will be made compulsory, which presently a large number of institutions have ignored.
As envisaged in NEP 2020, a robust ecosystem for research is perhaps more important than ever due to advances in technologies. Under the VBSA Bill, institutions are expected to focus on research and innovation by setting up centres for startup incubation and technology transfer in frontier areas through industry-academic linkages. Also, participation in community service programmes will be considered an integral part of holistic education.
In sum, the VSBA Bill as the lifeline of NEP 2020 is set to transform Indian higher education with public-spirited autonomous institutions.
Ganesan Kannabiran | Director, National Assessment and Accreditation Council
(Views are personal)