The main objective of the Cockroach Janta Party agitation was to secure safeguards against the problems arising from the centralised admission system administered by the National Testing Agency. Students have suffered terrible anguish from the frequent leakage of exam papers. Besides the safeguards to stop leaks, the agitators also demanded State assistance and loan waivers for families that had gone into debt to pay for private coaching and exam fees for the national tests.
Obviously, these demands for administrative safeguards and support are relevant. However, the solution to these problems is not as simple as they seem to be. They are, in fact, the outcome of the basic maladies of the Indian higher education system. Addressing them would require a fundamental reform of the nation’s higher education system, which suffers from the twin challenges of a massive inequality in attainments along class, caste, gender and religious groups, and a relatively low quality across them.
Numbers old and new give us an idea about the continuing inequality in educational attainment despite overall gains. National Sample Survey reports for 2000 revealed that the gross enrolment ratio (GER)—the share of population in higher education institutions—of low-income groups varied in the 13-19 percent range, compared 35-53 percent for high-income groups—a difference of almost three times. The GERs of Scheduled Castes (21.2 percent) and Scheduled Tribes (15.8 percent) were far lower than that of high castes (41 percent). The latest All India Survey on Higher Education, for 2023-34, shows that the GERs of SCs and STs were at 27.8 percent and 22.8 percent; that for Muslims in 2020-21 was 26.7 percent, up from 16 percent in 2000.
The main reason for lower GERs among the economically weaker SC, ST and Muslim communities is their inability to pay for costly higher education and the lack of adequate government support. The increasing privatisation of higher education has made matters worse.
In 2020, of the total universities, colleges and self-financing institutions, about 41 percent, 64 percent and 66 percent, respectively, were in the private sector, which housed about 30 percent of all students. This share would go up if we include the self-financing courses in public institutions. In Karnataka in 2024, this combined share went up to a massive 72 percent.
The private sector, with its high costs, restricts access to economically weaker students. In 2000, of the total students in private institutions, low-income groups constituted only 13.5 percent, as against 50 percent from the top income group. Further, since the quality of skill-oriented and professional education is, on average, better at private institutions, the low participation of low-income groups in such institutions results in their inferior access to such education.
That’s why the disadvantages faced by low-income groups in today’s centralised admission systems need urgent attention though policy changes. Centralised admissions have been used in selected programmes for quite some time. However, their scope widened after the NTA’s establishment in 2017, and further with the launch of the National Education Policy 2020. The NTA brought admissions for a wide range of undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees under its ambit for public and private institutions. The way NEP 2020 was framed, some educationists feared that its in-built biases would lead to a reduction in undergraduate enrolment. Indeed, all-India enrolments for undergraduate courses edged down from 3.47 crore in 2022-23 to 3.46 crore in 2023-24—about 93,000 students fewer. Maharashtra and Delhi experienced sharp declines of about 6 percent.
At the institutional level, the decline was felt in prominent central universities after the NTA introduced the Common University Entrance Test or CUET in 2022. SC and ST students suffered the most from the common test. In JNU, their enrolments dropped by roughly 25 percent over a three-year period. It also eroded the quality of admitted students, compared to earlier cohorts admitted through university-level tests.
Centralised tests for UG admissions are restrictive and less suitable especially because the overall GER is India is less than a third of the eligible population. In a country where inequality associated with class, caste, religion and ethnicity is massive, placing direct or indirect restrictions through centralised tests are counter-productive to the goal of inclusive expansion of higher education. An alternative is to shift to 12th standard exam marks with some standardising. Lessons from countries such as South Africa and Malaysia indicate that such an admission method is better for inclusion.
The second problem is of inequality in education attainment across groups. This is mainly because of the high cost of higher education, coupled with the lack of or inadequate government support. Governments often help with the tuition fees; but beyond it, expenses like accommodation, transport, coaching for competitive exams, study materials and living costs act as huge financial barriers, particularly for rural and urban-poor students. Privatisation and commercialisation of higher education have made the cost structures prohibitive.
An ideal solution would be to bring the private sector under governments and/or a private-aided philanthropic sector. However, the political constraints to reversing the present policy of privatisation are too strong. So a viable strategy that the CJP needs to push hard for is to make higher education—both public and private—affordable to all low-income students through adequate financial support in the form of scholarships, easy loans, subsidised hostels and other pro-poor measures.
Equally serious is the problem of quality. Among other factors, the quality of teaching and research at state universities is substantially affected by an acute shortage of faculty. The vacancy rate varies in the 50-62 percent range. This massive gap is mainly due to recruitment bans or caps, which in turn is due to inadequate financial allocation to higher education—at less than 0.5 percent, as against the recommended level of 2 percent of the gross domestic product.
So the roots of Indian higher education’s problems can be traced to the crises of massive inequalities in enrolment and quality. If the CJP desires to rebuild the system, it has to deal with these issues with tenacity and persuasion.
Sukhadeo Thorat | Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University and former Chairman, University Grants Commission
(Views are personal)
