Higher education’s first five for first hundred days
Prime Minister Modi has tasked key stakeholders for Modi 3.0 action plan aligned with Viksit Bharat@2047. Resting on its four pillars—Poor, Farmers, Women and Youth—Viksit Bharat’s recipe shall undoubtedly dominate the first 100-day plan document. Common denominators that link these four pillars are key socio-economic capital assets like education, healthcare, employment, sanitation, etc. Tracking and commenting on education policies for over 15 years, my heart beats faster for the first five higher education reforms in the first 100 days.
Chronicling the global university evolution in the last 200 years, I find flexible and effective governance models to be a catalyst and a distinguishable trait for progress. Jamil Salmi, a renowned scholar on international higher education, in his Challenges for Establishing World Class Universities calls for a favourable policy environment to build “world class”. Not only is political policy outside universities important but also is the need for effective systems of governance within the university walls. The administrative, academic and financial autonomy of universities need a spirited actionable agenda to empower universities with responsible leadership and governance.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2023 report is a sweeping analysis of various forces shaping the future of workplace. Technological transformation and the need to reskill and upskill necessitate huge capacity building among faculty and graduating students. Current practices like Professor of Practice, massive faculty development programmes through external experts, etc. is one part of the solution that resides on campus. Excessive reliance on online education through EdTech and SWAYAM as an off-campus option creates an irreversible value-loss in the critical educational value chain link—Faculty.
The periodics and reciprocal flow of faculty to industry through sabbaticals, continuing education programmes, experiential visits and training, faculty mentoring, etc. is a win-win for industry and faculty. On the student side, existing reforms like National Credit Framework (NCrF), Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), Multiple Entry Multiple Exit (MEME), etc, though aligned with NEP 2020, needs a pragmatic and prescriptive gap-filler to accelerate the implementation process. The changing work place requirements dynamically trigger a pro-active academic restructuring to prepare first-class graduates for the first job. This ‘two sides of the coin’ reform-enabled faculty and employable graduates is always a winning toss, whichever side the coin falls first.
One of the critical resources for university growth, public or private, is finance to enhance capacity. Public universities, especially the IITs, IIMs, Central Universities and CFTIs, seem to have an understandable policy edge in financing while state universities struggle to find their own ways to meet their financial resources. Private universities and higher education institutions (HEIs) rely on banked financing, philanthropic grants and tuition fee. While tuition fee should be the least of the financial resources (contrary to majority status quo), current financing model requires fresh thoughts. It requires an out-of-the-box solution through tax reforms concerning public charitable trusts and organisations running educational institutions and also a consortia-based approach to access debt and bond funds in Indian and foreign debt markets.
“The worst case scenario for a failed entrepreneur is an assured job” is unicorn Freshworks’ Founder-CEO Girish Mathrubootham’s profound statement, with which I fully agree. Current schemes like Atal Innovation Mission, Technology Business Incubators, Startup India Seed fund, etc. are necessary but not sufficient to breed entrepreneurs in college campuses. Industry has to be an active partner and has to travel beyond the IIT pathway with majority of innovation happening outside the IIT-orbit as our society is an open-air university impregnated with innovations. Such isolated ideas need an industry partner for go-to-market and scaling support and such industry-partnered entrepreneurial education creates job providers in the best and job seekers in the worst case scenarios.
The 2019 admissions scam in leading North American universities like Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, etc. exposed both the backdoor and side-door mechanisms of an unethical admission contagion. Similar models exist in Indian professional college admissions that is running amuck with ‘capitation fee’, dynamic fee-based seat allotment, fancy merit lists, revenue-spinning entrance exams, humanoid-manufacturing coaching classes, etc. Michael Sandel in his The Tyranny of Merit advocates to seek a common good that goes beyond fractious politics. The common good lies in creating equitable access through a graded and calibrated high school-cum-entrance exam score mix to be independently decided by central, state and private HEIs.
The first 100 day reforms is critical for all sectors including higher education which requires empowered universities, enabled faculty, employable graduates, enhanced capacity, entrepreneurial prowess and equitable access. These are my first five Es for the first 100 days.
S Vaidhyasubramaniam
Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University
vaidhya@sastra.edu