An academic’s ‘MAGA’ different from Trump’s
Trump’s presidency 2.0 is ready to be swept by the first MAGA wave of the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump’s inaugural speech was laced with the spirit of America for Americans to Make America Great Again (MAGA). The rallying cry for MAGA is an attempt to regain America’s supremacy in the geopolitical architecture. Another parallel trans-Pacific or Atlantic phenomenon is an academic policy canvas in India that is also striving to see the second coming of its first leadership position in university education with an aim to be a ‘vishwa guru’. One of the fundamental tenets of a Guru is to be a student to absorb global best practices and ensure its full operationalisation with the revered Indian touch.
In economics, Gini coefficient measures the disparity in wealth distribution within a country’s socio-economic landscape. The value ranges from zero to one, with zero reflecting perfect equality and one vice-versa. The endeavour of every nation is to ensure balanced growth and register acceptable Gini coefficient. Likewise, there is a perceptible academic Gini that prevails across all nations which is determined by the extent to which authorities control higher education resulting in autonomy disparity between different higher education institutions. An academic Gini of one is perfect autonomy, and zero means no autonomy, hence higher education governance models need to achieve balanced academic Gini scores.
The role of state, academia and market in the organisational analysis of higher education was best illustrated by the question of authority in Burton Clark’s (1983) triangle of coordination. The triangle of coordination finds relevance in various national higher education systems that have influenced major countries like the US, UK, USSR, Italy, Germany and Japan. While some systems exhibit polarised authorities (USSR, US) some countries had a mixed formula (Germany, Japan).
Researchers moved ahead improving Clark’s typology to formulate their own systems. The ‘cube model’ of Braun (1997), ‘academic equaliser model’ designed by Boer, Enders and Schimanck (2008), governance and government model of Capano (2011) and Dobbins and Knill’s (2014) comparative model studied higher education governance in depth. 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.
It 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. 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. In the book International Trends in University Governance: Autonomy, Self-government and the Distribution of Authority edited by Michael Shattock (2014), renowned scholar and project leader for university governance research in the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education at the 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.
William Kirby’s Empires of Ideas (2022) is an excellent Harvard University publication that reflects on how three powerful nations built modern universities. Usually, universities use case studies as an important teaching instrument. Kirby flips the model in his book using eight universities as case studies as he traces their evolution. The case compilation of eight universities—Humboldt (Berlin) and Free Universities (Germany), Harvard, Duke and the University of California, Berkeley (US), Tsinghua and Nanjing Universities (China), and the surprising eighth being the University of Hong Kong is a treat to understand higher education transformation in Germany, US and China.
Conspicuously absent in both these landmark studies were Indian models or institutions despite their rising global prowess and legacy leadership position. It is under these circumstances we need to look at the current series of regulations, guidelines, etc. from different statutory bodies governing Indian higher education. The aggregate effect of such regulations follows the law of marginal diminishing utility—the more and more regulations/guidelines are formulated, the less and less is their utility value. All of them tell what universities and higher educations need to do?
On the other hand, NEP 2020 tells what it wants from universities and HEIs? There should be less governance for more deserving institutions who know what to do and more governance for less deserving institutions who need the ‘how to’ know-how. The need to provide complete autonomy to deserving HEIs cannot come at a time more appropriate than now as it is only now, we can make My Academia Great Again (MAGA)! Is anybody listening, please?
S Vaidhyasubramaniam
Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University
vaidhya@sastra.edu