The Hindu : Higher education: perilous prospects

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Monday, Nov 17, 2003

Opinion

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Higher education: perilous prospects

By K.N. Panikkar

What is undesirable is the concept of self-financing as practised today, as it represents a clear shift towards commercialisation.

IN RECENT times, Indian society has witnessed the emergence of an anti-liberal and authoritarian ethos in almost all social, cultural and political practices. It is well pronounced in the field of education, both in content and organisation.

The changes in the education system mainly target two areas. First, the content of the curriculum in order to redefine the character of the nation in religious terms. Privileging the indigenous system and knowledge are its defining characteristics. It appears to be a part of a revivalist agenda, which essentially seeks to indigenise the system by foregrounding the knowledge linked with Hindu religious tradition, which though historically important may not have much relevance in contemporary times. The indigenisation, however, is not the same as incorporation of indigenous knowledge, which is necessary and desirable.

The second feature of the changes is enclavisation, which is an inevitable legacy of colonialism. However, even after 55 years of Independence the access to higher education remains very limited. According to the UNESCO World Education Report for 2000, only 6.9 per cent of the youth in the age group of 17 to 23 are enrolled for higher education in India. In the U.S. the figure is 80.9 per cent, in the United Kingdom 52.3 per cent, Australia 79.8 per cent and New Zealand 62.6 per cent. Obviously higher education in India is extremely elitist in character. The implication of this is that there is an overwhelming section of the population that is deprived of higher education for social and economic reasons. In a country like India only the state can provide them the opportunity. But then the state has been steadily renouncing its welfare role since the early 1990s following the prescriptions of the World Bank.

The implementation of the reforms suggested by the World Bank had a disastrous impact on higher education, which even the World Bank is forced to acknowledge now. Most Indian universities have become stagnant pools, starved of funds and facilities and are unable to keep abreast with the explosion in knowledge taking place in almost all fields. As a result, most institutions have `developed' as academic slums. The way out of this impasse, which the educational bureaucracy has conjured up, is the establishment of the centres of excellence, which only leads to further enclavisation and elitism. Faced with this rather dismal situation, the Indian middle class has been yearning for a solution, short of sending its children abroad. A new educational infrastructure has therefore emerged, with emphasis on professional training and the promise of a brand name of excellence. The self-financing and cross-border institutions now mushrooming all over the country are part of an alternative system that would relieve the elite from the disadvantages of the poor and inefficient public education. The recommendations of Ambani and Birla in the report on education submitted to the Prime Minister's Office clearly envisage two streams, which, shorn of all rhetoric about information society, puts public education at a disadvantage.

The decline in standards of public higher education has opened the space for self-financing and cross-border institutions. The self-financing institutions do not represent the mobilisation of private resources for providing quality education, but the use of education as an area of profitable investment. Therefore, the percentage battle — whether the reserved seats should be 50 or 80 percent — is nothing but shadow boxing. What is undesirable is the concept of self-financing as practised today, as it represents a clear shift towards commercialisation.

The quest for profit is also the key to cross-border education. Almost every institution looking for outlets in developing countries is doing so not for philanthropic reasons, but to use education as a source for quick returns for the capital it invests. The University of Phoenix, which is aggressively expanding abroad, is a profit corporation listed in the New York Stock Exchange. Another giant in the field, the Global Alliance for Trans National Education (GATE), is a profit-making corporation mainly owned by one person. That the cross-border flow of education is from the industrialised North to the developing countries is not accidental, it is an expression of the interests of predatory capital. Given the poor quality of higher education in India, it is an alluring field for capital to seek profit. Many institutions franchised by foreign universities are already functioning in India and their number is steadily on the increase. This development is likely to be welcomed by the Indian middle class in the name of desirable internationalisation and the opportunity it affords for sharing knowledge generated globally. But internally it would lead to further marginalisation of the socially and economically deprived. At the same time, it might also result in intellectual enslavement of the elite. The casualty would be the intellectual independence and self-confidence Indians have achieved after 1947. A possible outcome of it is an obscurantist backlash, as already manifest in the indigenisation of education. The evolving educational scenario is therefore likely to help the further growth of communalism.

The World Bank prescription of higher education as a non-merit good was responsible for a sharp decline in the quality of instruction. Interestingly, after 10 years of experiment which has led to irreparable damage to education in developing countries, the Word Bank has recognised the peril it had engendered. From the 1994 position the World Bank has effected a complete volte face and has unambiguously acknowledged the merit of higher education for national development.

Has it anything to do with the changing nature of the demands of transnational capital? The underdeveloped countries are no more the mere playing fields of predatory capital; they are increasingly developing as service providers. The advances in information technology have made such a transition possible, the success of which would depend upon the availability of technically competent but cheap manpower that the undeveloped countries could provide.

An enclavised, commercialised and communalised system of education, rapidly gaining currency, can be countered only by strengthening the public system, the revitalisation of which depends upon a variety of issues, more important among them being quality assurance, democratisation and autonomy. None of them is on the agenda of the state, even if they form the themes of officially sponsored seminars. The ground reality obtaining in most institutions, however, is totally inadequate to ensure even minimum quality. How could quality be assured when a fairly large number of teachers work on daily wages, when most pressing academic appointments depend upon bureaucratic mercy, when people with no academic sensitivity or knowledge hold crucial positions in decision making bodies and when libraries and laboratories happen to be the last priority? In short in the absence of an academic culture.

In the making of an academic culture democratisation and autonomy are crucial factors. The democratisation so far achieved as a result of the struggles of the teachers and students movements are mainly limited to representation in decision making bodies. It has not percolated to academic matters in which the actual teacher is still outside the process of decision-making. As a result he or she has turned either indifferent or cynical. In strengthening the public education system, the teacher is the most crucial component and he or she can be enthused only if academic democratisation is a reality.

A major casualty of the present university system as developed during the last 50 years is institutional autonomy. The autonomy is generally counterposed to accountability and an impression has gained ground that autonomy is practised at the expense of accountability. As a result, there has been considerable intrusion into the institutional autonomy of the universities. This is not manifested in the increasing control of the Government directly over the administration and indirectly over the academic affairs alone. That indeed is unfortunate enough, but a social and intellectual reluctance to respect the role of the universities to contribute to the creation and furtherance of the public sphere and to strengthen civil society is more damaging.

The apoliticisation of the campuses suggested by the Ambani-Birla report and advocated by the judiciary for maintaining peace on the campuses is injurious to the fundamental role of the universities in society. The autonomy is a necessary pre-requisite if an academic culture which is fast disappearing from the campuses is to be retrieved and preserved.

To say that higher education is in crisis or at a crossroads is an understatement. It is in fact facing perilous prospects. The World Bank has subtitled its report on higher education in developing countries as Peril and Promise. Unfortunately there is more peril than promise.

(Extracted from the writer's inaugural speech to the annual convention of All India Federation of University and College Teachers Organisation in Mumbai.)

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