The Multiple Crises in Indian Universities

The Multiple Crises in Indian Universities

Education has long been touted to play a key role in reducing socio-economic inequalities. Multiple studies, both in India and abroad, have reaffirmed the belief that higher education leads to better financial outcomes. Keeping this in mind, the Government of India launched several initiatives for the upliftment of Indian universities, such as the Institutes of Eminence scheme, IMPRINT initiative and the NEP 2020.

In spite of recent initiatives, the institutions in India face many crises – a financial crunch at the University level, a deficit in research opportunities for faculty, poor infrastructure and learning outcomes for students.

Why Indian Universities fail to deliver?
• Teaching Capacity - The QS World University Rankings 2022 revealed that although Indian universities have improved their performance on academic reputation metric and research impact, they continue to struggle on the teaching capacity metric. No Indian university ranks among the top 250 for faculty-student ratio.
• The management of Indian education faces challenges of over-centralization, bureaucratic structures and lack of accountability, transparency.
• The spending on higher education, as a percentage of government expenditure, has stagnated at 1.3-1.5% since 2012.
• Insufficient Research Grants – Lack of resources and facilities as well as limited number of quality faculty to advise students. Most of the research scholars are without fellowships or not getting their fellowships on time which directly or indirectly affects their research.

Financing constraints faced by Indian Universities:
• Most universities are running on a deficit – Madras university saw an accumulated deficit of over Rs.100 crore, forcing it to seek a Rs.88 crore grant from the State government.
• Investments in university infrastructure have shrunk. At the central level, student financial aid was cut to ₹2,078 crore in FY 2022-23 from ₹2,482 crore in FY 2021-22; allocations for research and innovation were down by 8%, reaching ₹218 crore.
• The Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), which provides funding for all infrastructure loans to institutions, saw its budget reduced from ₹2,000 crore in FY 20-21 to ₹1 crore in FY 21-22. Instead, universities have been forced to take loans, but have few avenues to tap into.

What steps can be taken?
• There is an urgent need to increase funding, along with established dedicated funding streams for infrastructure grants/loans and financial aid.
• The establishment of the NRF is expected to connect the academia with ministries and industries and fund research that is relevant to local needs. Funding for research needs to rise significantly, with institutions like the NRF supplementing (and not replacing) existing schemes (including those from the Ministry of Science). Funding should also be allocated to enable course-based research experiences for undergraduates. Moreover, NRF shall pose well-defined problems to the researchers, so that they can find solutions in a goal-oriented and time bound manner.
• It is disheartening to find that higher education institutions have failed to protect the sanctity of their examinations. Improving this will require a decentralised approach, with universities allowed to take decisions on academic programmes, promotions, cohort size, etc.
• With the goal of increasing the Gross enrollment ratio (GER) from the current 27% to 50% by 2035, India needs to not only open new Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) and universities but also scale up the existing ones.
• The institutes need to become multi-disciplinary in their scope and offerings and collaborate among themselves.
• Assessing the quality of education through an employability lens will ensure that we are addressing the ‘unemployable graduates’ problem. Students prioritise employability when selecting universities; with the rapid changes in technology, future jobs are not yet defined. Therefore, programmes need to be designed with continuous feedback from the industry.

The NEP 2020 has sought to foster critical thinking and problem solving, along with social, ethical and emotional capacities and dispositions. Enabling this will require an encouraging ecosystem, with greater funding, autonomy and tolerance of universities. Without this, talented Indian citizens will continue to escape abroad, while policymakers lament India’s brain drain.