Scrutinise varsities, private and public

Gadfly

The Karnataka government put a freeze on creating new private universities last week. It said it wanted to take stock of their existing conditions, like infrastructure, admissions numbers and the faculty and staff recruitment quality. From the looks of it, this is extraordinary. It’s a meaningful halt on the many forces between the public and private spheres that coalesce to bring about private higher education. It means a temporary pause on the socio-economic and socio-political forces bringing politicians and business houses together where they, through legislation, obtain lands and resources to create private institutions.

Too often, but of course with exceptions, school and private higher education institutions generate the impression that they are profit-driven corporate organisations characterised, as many are, by swanky campuses, built on capacious tracts of land far away from the city, and hefty fees. As someone who’s been part of that sphere, this writer can say with some confidence that ceasing such expansion sends a worrying signal to those aiming to enter this arena. And surely, the Karnataka education ministry’s decision speaks to the private higher education environment in many states of India. It embodies a set of perceptions and issues that apply nationwide.

Private educational institutions have existed in India for long, but certainly not in the forms that prevail today. When public institutions were dominant in the many decades after Independence, even private higher education institutions tended to imitate their norms and practices. Post-1991 liberalisation, that changed, with a steady increase in private players entering many sectors of economic and social life, including education.

The mid-2000s and later marked the mushrooming of private players in education. Corporates, business houses, trading groups, real estate barons and politicians (who are so often the former) pitched together to impart to private higher education the aura of a brand or tag.

We must not forget that around this time, in the last 20 years or so, state and central governments increased the numbers of the IITs, IIMs, National Institutes of Technology, and also started central and state universities. Yet, barring a handful, most public higher education institutions cut a poor figure. Only recently, there was some increase in hiring faculty in these universities that were pending for years. One gets to hear of these several central or state universities usually when there is some alleged malfeasance or controversy. Thus, the take-off of private higher education runs parallel with the general decline in public higher education institutions. It bears repeating that it’s one of the severest crises in India today, as private higher education is scarcely affordable for the average citizen.

While the education ministry scrutinises private educational institutions, Karnataka has many well-regarded public higher education institutions that are in need of similar quality checks and strengthening. Moreover, it’s shocking that Karnataka is yet to implement the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations that were passed in 2016, although it has periodically revised salaries of state government employees since. The Seventh Pay Commission revisions found little say in the recently elected state government’s budget. These sorts of things hit the public education teaching community sorely. It erodes their confidence and pushes them to seek out the private educational sphere for growth.

All this perforce brings us to a major realisation: Education is one of the most political matters in Indian society and politics, yet it’s rarely an electoral issue. Some day in the future, governments must be voted in or out over their report cards on education.