Higher education is a country’s repository and defender of culture, an agent of change in civilisation, an engine for national economic growth and an instrument for the realisation of collective aspirations of people.
Internationally, the current reform agenda in the sector revolves around (a) expansion and diversification of enrolment and number/types of institutions (b) fiscal pressure as measured in low and declining per-student expenditure due to overcrowding, low-paid faculty, lack of academic equipment/libraries and dilapidated physical infrastructure (c) ascendance of market orientation of higher education programmes and their employment solutions (d) the demand for greater accountability from stakeholders and (e) the demand for greater quality and efficiency of higher education as a whole, in the background of world ranking of universities and mandatory accreditations. India cannot be alien to these reform agenda.
The XIth Plan represented the move towards a quantum leap in expansion of higher education system achieving the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 14.34 through 33,637 institutions and enrolment of 1.8 crore students during 2011-12. Since merely increasing the GER is not adequate, the XIIth Plan has evolved far-reaching reform agenda like increasing expansion, improving inclusiveness and promoting equity in all disciplines in all regions; attracting quality faculty, promoting faculty mobility and participatory teaching-learning development; improving open and distance learning systems; and enhancing quality through credit/choice-based semester system and examination reforms.
The Plan also stresses on structural and systemic reforms for good governance; equitable financing models for higher education through norm-based funding; institutional collaborations, newer models of private sector participation; innovative research; and impetus to vocational education.
Presently, developing management skills and knowledge is not the norm in universities. Although data are collected for directing institutions, they are not collatable since they are neither collected systematically before making decisions nor they are systematically analysed.
Recommendations of higher education expert committees during implementation are either shelved, delayed or distorted due to politics or for financial reasons. The university administration is being run with 19th century tools and personnel without the knowledge and training in modern management techniques and pro-active administrative acumen. Unfortunately, the sector has highest level of resistance to adapt IT and implement e-governance as an end-to-end solution for higher education management.
Amid an exponential growth in number of colleges, there is a steep decline in academic standards, profiteering by college managements, poor quality of teaching, vulnerable examination systems, etc. Nationally, it is felt that the affiliating system stifles academic freedom and innovations.
With India’s higher education system sandwiched between global-level aspirations of policy-planners and ground-level reality of talent-cum-system defects in implementation, we have to adopt practices of international universities to bring about “effectiveness” and “excellence”.
The ideal TQM principles could be linking the vision to institutional goals with accountability; training institutional leaders to create quality culture before assuming charge; choosing appropriate leadership tiers trained for supporting quality culture; deploying e-governance systems to promote transparency; systemic and experiential development of university staff and students through continuous capacity building; introducing structural changes in statutes of universities; making decision based on facts and delegating decision making powers; team building; and preparing and creating a culture of receptivity for change.
Only when we achieve these in a comprehensive manner through multimodal strategies, the historic achievement of international laurels and global ranking of Indian universities within the top 50 can become a reality before 2020.
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Thyagarajan is former vice-chancellor, University of Madras