For those who believe in quality, it is an inherent and integral aspect of their functioning, no matter what they are engaged with. In other words, quality induced by external forces may be a transient feature and may not sustain for long.

Deeply touched by the magnitude of illiteracy and drop out among school children in our country, Professor Amarthya Sen, the Indian-born Nobel Laureate recently opined that for basic education in India, he would compromise on quality in favour of quantity. Here perhaps he means extension of literacy in States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Notwithstanding what was said of primary education, in the area of higher education including professional education, and against the backdrop of global participation in this activity, field sustenance of quality is of paramount importance. In terms of human resource development that can be evaluated through knowledge, skill, competence, confidence and performance, quality by far is the major objective of higher education.

The road map for quality has to be drawn internally by an institution that is committed for progressive growth coupled with quality and excellence.  It is difficult to impose or enforce quality externally.  Periodic self assessment and academic audit by peers must be considered as important as teaching, training and examination activities. To introspect its status and to let all the stakeholders know of it, an institution of higher learning should also be subjected to multiple accreditation. How to target quality is an important question often found difficult to answer.

The pathway to quality

Acquisition of quality and public recognition is a challenging and arduous task that entails a multi-pronged action.

Autonomy, mobilising adequate resources, providing state-of the-art infrastructure, excellent team work of competent faculty, meticulous planning and evaluation, alumni support and above all a firm commitment to excel are some of the vital keys. Creating and sustaining an academic ambience that recognises, encourages and nurtures merit, scholarship and intellectual capital is one of the crucial components of promoting quality.

In the ultimate analysis, one must realise that performance of graduates and postgraduates in diverse activities of society will amply reflect the quality of teaching and training they have had from a university or a college.

If universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Princeton in the US and Oxford and Cambridge in the UK are known the worldover, it is mainly because of high standards of teaching-learning-training paradigm evolved over centuries and remodelled continually with relevant inputs to suit the requirements of an emerging but demanding society. 

The intellectual prowess of the faculty, tradition of upholding excellence in academic pursuits together with the edifice of top class infrastructure which manifest in these institutions are the contributing factors to quality. 

Quality is carefully built but seldom bought.

Franklin D Roosevelt, a of President of USA once said "we cannot fully build the future for our youth but we can certainly build our youth for the future". Why is quality so important in higher education?

In the prevailing circumstances, successful are those who are competent to face the intense competition for entry into various private and public corporates and centres of excellence in research and development.

We have a large system of higher education comprising about 18,000 colleges and nearly 380 universities.

Approximately, there are about 11 million students in our higher education stream with annual fresh admissions close to three million.

It was reported that every year in our country thousands of engineering graduates come out of hundreds of technical schools. Unfortunately not more than 25% of these freshers (barring IIT products) were found employable by the large industries and multinational companies. The reason is that a good number of these colleges lack basic infrastructure to impart a minimum set of relevant skills and knowledge.

They seem to have no focus on any discipline nor do they bother about accreditation and recognition, even after several years of functioning. It appears that there exists about 1,700 business schools in our country sending out about 100,000 degree diploma holders of management. But their quality in general (with of course, a few good exceptions), judged through accreditation, recognition and performance of candidates is reckoned quite unsatisfactory. The poor quality cited in respect of engineering and management education, could also be extended to other fields such as medicine, science, arts and humanities. Dilution of standards has not only affected graduate studies, but also rendered postgraduate and Ph.D. programmes weak and irrelevant.

In the post-independence period, we have witnessed a mismatch between quantity and quality of higher education. Recently the central government has significantly increased the budget allocation (during the XI plan) with a thrust on secondary and higher education. The authorities in Delhi are fully convinced, as did others elsewhere, that in today's highly globalised environment, our students are subjected to acid tests of quality before being absorbed by any reputed organisation. Therefore, we cannot but provide world class education to our aspiring and ambitious youth (it is relevant to mention here that more than 50% of our population is in the 18-35 year range) who are expected to be the driving force of our booming economy.

The National Knowledge Commission, while emphasising expansion of accessibility, equality and relevance of curricula, has also underlined the significance of good infrastructure for maintaining quality of higher education.

We have been experiencing poverty of all kinds. For instance, our per capita income, healthcare system, drinking water supply, public distribution, rural development schemes, transport, governance etc. have been awfully poor.
However poverty should not plague our education system. Poor education to poor people in a poor set up may give rise to a cascade of catastrophic effects culminating in intellectual bankruptcy of the less privileged.  On the contrary, to mitigate the living standards of poor people and to elevate them from the shackles of poverty, quality education is the best weapon. In future, quality issues are likely to be the major concerns of our higher education system. The writing on the wall is clear, i.e. "either flourish with quality or perish with mediocrity".

Measures to maintain quality

Resource crunch has been the major deterrent in both expansion and maintenance of quality in higher education.

Public-private participation is the need of the hour. The archaic system of affiliation should be immediately abolished in favour of autonomy. Government agencies should assume the new role of facilitators of partnerships in quality education rather than that of controllers.

There is an euphoria that increased accessibility to higher education will give rise to enhanced empowerment of our youth. But the stark reality is that degrees devoid of both skills and knowledge are totally redundant in today's globalised scenario. Therefore, private initiatives including those from venture capitalists, NRIs and rich alumni must be encouraged on the principle of "build, operate and own". Of course, adequate provisions must be put in place to take care of the talented but economically poor students.

Prospective beneficiaries of higher education should note that in future the latter is going to be quite expensive and that any expenditure on quality higher education should be treated as good investment to reap rich dividends. The recent fee hike in IITs and IIMs seem justified on the basis of cost effectiveness as well as highly rewarding career prospects of the taught. Like life, quality begets quality, and financial strength and health is the promoter of this virtuous cycle. Sustenance of quality demands perennial source of revenues for, quality is not a spoken jargon but the result of concerted action to exemplify in a given endeavour.