Why do so many of our policies suffer from imbalances? Why are our plans, whether of education or poverty, removed from reality? Is it because our bureaucrats are not in touch with the ground reality? Or is it because they see no reason to consult with those in the field before they finalise plans for the future? How else can we explain the much tom-tommed 11th Five Year Plan’s ambitions for higher education?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced with great élan that the 11th Five Year Plan envisages a 10-fold increase in outlay for higher and technical education. This was a good news indeed because India lags far behind other developing countries in terms of providing access students to higher education. While India has a poor enrolment of 7 per cent students in higher education, it is an average of 25 per cent in developing countries. In developed countries, it is 50 per cent average with Canada reporting 100 per cent, US 60 per cent and UK 55 per cent.

India plans to increase enrolment to 15 per cent by 2012 and to 22 per cent by 2017. Considering the distance we need to cover to be on par with the developing countries enrolment rate, the 10-fold increase in plan outlay is appropriate. But how is the huge amount of Rs 84,743 crore proposed to be spent during the 11th Plan period?
By setting up 30 new central universities, seven IITs and IIMs, 10 National Institutes of Technology, five research institutes to be called Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research, 20 IIITs, two schools of architecture and 330 colleges in educationally backward districts. A substantial portion outlay will be set aside to upgrade infrastructure in existing Central universities and institutions of excellence. About Rs 13,000 crore are to be spent on 79 institutions including central universities, engineering, medical and management institutes for infrastructure development.

In other words, the existing 21 central universities and 50-odd other centres of excellence will be further benefited and their scope and areas of excellence further expanded. Left high and dry are the 400-odd state universities and 20,000 colleges across the country. All along they have got mere 10 per cent of the funds from the centre. This will continue in the 11th Plan also.

Why have these universities and colleges been left out of the loop? What will be their fate with crumbs thrown at them? Will their growth not be affected even as the favoured ones grow in leaps and bounds? What is the logic for this lopsided investment in higher education?

Why are the funds not spread uniformly to ensure uniform quality improvement? A crucial factor to be considered is that the state universities and 20,000 colleges offer graduate courses and feed the central universities that offer post-graduate courses. Logically, “feeder” colleges should be strengthened, their infrastructure upgraded and quality of teaching improved. Only then the superior facilities of central universities will bring out the best from better equipped graduates.

Today the 400-odd state and 20,000-odd colleges are starved of funds; they have poor infrastructure, their quality of teaching is mediocre and that of research, poor.

The main reason for this sorry state of affairs is that for the last two decades, the facilities have neither been modernised, there is no computerisation worth the name, recruitment of teachers has been standstill, labs have not been upgraded, nor new disciplines that have demand in the market, have not been introduced. The result is very obvious and tragic: these universities turn out, year after year, unemployable graduates having no knowledge or proficiency in subjects of their specialisation.

Yet another anomaly is in the area of scholarships. On an average, a student in a state university gets Rs 500 as scholarship. This is restricted to SC, ST and economically backward students among the Backward Classes. In a Central university, however, every student, irrespective of economic criterion gets a scholarship. A PG student gets Rs 1000 per month, an M Phil scholar Rs 2500 and a doctoral scholar Rs 5000. Inequity is thus embedded in our higher education system, creating hierarchies and perpetuating them.

The 11th Plan proposals should end such highly discriminatory practices and ensure that scholarships and fellowships are available in the state universities too. Central universities have been the favoured ones for long. As it is they take away 90 per cent of higher education outlay. In the 11th Plan, this favoured status will be continued.

Extending higher education to a larger number of students and a significant improvement in quality will come about only if a substantial proportion of the Rs 84,740 crores of the proposed outlay of higher education is spent on strengthening, upgrading and improving infrastructure, teaching and research in the 400 state universities and the 20,000 colleges. This should be the first among the priorities that the 11th Plan has proposed for giving a jumpstart to higher education. Not only will the base be strengthened to carry the load of super-structure but inequity too will be phased out, ending a rather dubious chapter in higher education.

(The writer is Principal, Osmania University College of Arts and Social Sciences, Hyderabad.)