Sunil Sethi: The risky business of higher education

AL FRESCO

A government functionary connected with higher education in the country told me the following story recently: on a tour of duty to the Andaman & Nicobar islands just before tsunami he found a series of frantic requests from a Port Blair family seeking an appointment with him at his guest house.

When he managed to meet the family""a lower middle class couple of modest means and an ageing grandmother who had never seen the inside of a school""he was not altogether surprised by their tale of woe.

The couple had two daughters of college-going age for whom they were unable to secure admission in the local colleges.

Like other families in Port Blair, they were taken in by advertisements by a private university in distant Chhattisgarh that offered easy admission, hostel accommodation and promises of an excellent education.

The family cobbled together its savings, including what money the old grandmother had, and sent off Rs 20,000 to the college. That was the last they heard of the private university.

All subsequent efforts to contact the temple of higher learning failed. Several families in Port Blair, said the official, were in distress and many had lost their lives' earnings.

Hundreds of similar complaints from all over the country had piled up in New Delhi as a result of the Chhattisgarh Private Universities Act, pushed through by the Ajit Jogi regime, to "encourage private investment in higher education".

As a result, 97 new universities were registered in the state within a couple of years, most of them fly-by-night operations. Following a Supreme Court judgement on a petition filed by former UGC Chairman Prof.

Yash Pal, the state government was forced to retract""60 of the 97 universities were suddenly denotified for their failure to fulfil the University Grants Commission's norms.

And what was to be the fate of the 1,094 students in the 60 universities (lured from remote outposts as Port Blair) that were shut down? It was not clear, though the state government promised they would be accommodated in bona fide institutions elsewhere in Chhattisgarh.

One has only to move beyond established universities and specialised campuses, or log on to websites relating to higher education in India, to realise the grim state of affairs.

Hundreds of worried, often beseeching, exchanges among would-be students that either retail bitter personal experiences or seek to check out the credentials of universities no one has seemingly heard of.

Matters have come to such a sorry pass in the realm of private education that the UGC website now actually features a list under the heading "Fake Universities".

The other side of the debate in encouraging private investment in higher education is that while most state governments haven't the funds, the established universities have failed to change with the times.

Kerala may be a model of high literacy and universal school education but it has no great university to speak of; Malayalis generally go to colleges outside Kerala.

And the trouble with reputed universities is that they have failed to expand, modernise, introduce new courses, or become profitable. Despite the demand for quality education far exceeding supply, many colleges continue to offer the same courses that they did 50 years ago.

They also charge a pittance compared to what a college degree actually costs.

Although the need for a regulatory body like the UGC is imperative, it too, has failed to modernise.

Education being a state subject, the UGC's powers are limited (witness the disastrous Chhattisgarh episode) and its ambit too wide.

Private colleges of variable standards have got away by either affliating themselves to obscure UGC-approved universities (Meerut University is one example) or by claiming "minority" status.

Government subsidies remain a potential source of trouble. He who pays the piper should call the tune, argued Murli Manohar Joshi in the ugly row that erupted between the IIMs and the education ministry last year.

Meanwhile, the chief beneficiaries of mopping up the demand for higher education are foreign universities, ever more aggressive in their campaign to recruit full-paying Indians.

David Puttnam, producer of blockbusters such as Chariots of Fire, was in India this week opening an office on behalf of a new British university.

Why have Indian universities failed in attracting full-paying foreign students, many of them as desperate for an Indian education? That might be one way of opening up the field and footing the bill for a fraction of the under-25s, who now make up 50 per cent of the country's population.