Affiliation system must be abolished

There is a need to promote technology-enabled learning to achieve goal of 30% gross enrolment ratio

With around 800 universities and over 40,000 colleges, India tops the world in terms of the number of higher education institutions but the overall quality remains poor.

The basic problem with the higher education in the country is that there is more stress on compliance rather than on innovation. There is an urgent need to promote technology- enabled learning in a big way to achieve the goal of 30% gross enrolment ratio by 2020.

Open distance learning may play a crucial role in achieving the target but quality concerns must be addressed before giving it a push. The deficiencies in the distance learning programmes must be removed in order to make it competitive and attract students. We need to use our strengths in a more judicious manner. The country provides tertiary education to around 2.6 crore students. The figure is only lesser than China and the USA. Incidentally, India will have the highest number of English knowing people in the next 10 years. We need to use it to enhance the quality of higher education in the country.

One of the biggest problems in the field of higher education is our failure to monitor quality. Poor monitoring resulted in failure to skill the young students in accordance with the current needs.

Another problem is the prevalence of the affiliation system. In other advanced nations, higher education institutions enjoy almost complete autonomy. The affiliation system may have helped in keeping higher education affordable for the teeming millions but it has come at the cost of creative ideas and innovations. There should be maximum autonomy though with accountability. There is, however, tremendous opportunity in this field.

The country is on its way to emerge as a strong economic power with prediction of the fastest GDP growth. It also means that there is a need to increase spending on higher education substantially so that we have the required manpower necessary to sustain the growth. The country is currently busy in formulating a document on a New Education Policy (NEP). I feel that the key to the success lies in innovation.

The sorry state of affairs in the higher education field is reflected from the fact that hundreds of PhD holders and qualified professionals vie with barely educated people to get class four jobs in government. A recent report of the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Assocham ) has also pointed out that barring a handful of top business schools like the IIMs and few others, most of the 5,500 B-schools in the country are producing sub-par graduates, who are largely un-employable. The Assocham attributed the phenomenon to low education quality, lack of infrastructure and qualified faculty at these schools. Ironically, there also is an acute shortage of skilled manpower in the country.

The recent ambitious programmes like Digital India and Make In India need skilled manpower for their success. Smart Cities would also require the same. The vital question here is whether the present higher education system can offer any guarantee that the required skilled manpower could be made available.
Unfortunately, the answer is, no. I have a few suggestions in this respect.

Assessment system
Firstly, the affiliation system must be done away with in a phased manner gradually and the universities must be made completely autonomous so that they can design their own academic programmes and also implement them. The appointment of vice-chancellors should also be made through a proper procedure. Secondly, there is a need to make proper assessment of the performance of the teachers at aided institutions.

Performance assessment systems need to be introduced and promotion should be given on the basis of performance. Thirdly, there is also an urgent need to ‘move from regulation to governance’. The binding regulations should also be scrutinised from time to time to ascertain if they are making positive impact. Fourthly, the central institutions should be developed as centres for expertise in at least some domain areas. Research on contemporary issues concerning economy and society should be encouraged at these institutions. Fifthly, efforts should be made to improve the education quality at state universities as around 85% students in tertiary education are enrolled there.

There is also a need to recast the State University Acts and they should be encouraged to make use of the Information Communication Technologies. Sixthly, the finance crunch at the state universities should also be taken care of. It is essential to de-politicise the state universities and provide them necessary financial assistance to recruit adequate and qualified manpower. The NEP, which is under formulation, could consider the suggestions made above.

The NEP can shall ensure that the highly skilled ample manpower be trained by the higher educational institutes to meet the national needs. The overall standards in higher education shall be comparable to international standards. This will help our youngsters compete with the best and find jobs in any part of the world.

(The writer is Vice-Chancellor, University of Lucknow)