New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017. xxxiv, 482 pp. (Graphs, figures.) US$76.22, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-948065-4.
There has been growing interest in India’s higher education sector because of its size, continued growth, and the potential to drive and deliver India’s demographic dividend. There are several new books, though mainly edited volumes, on the subject. Among the recent additions is The Future of Indian Universities: Comparative and International Perspectives, a collection of essays based on papers presented at a conference held in 2013. Edited by C. Raj Kumar, the founding vice-chancellor of one of India’s new-era private institutions, the book has 19 chapters spread over three sections. Section 1, on “Indian universities: Imaginations, aspirations and expectations,” has six chapters; the seven chapters in section 2 on “Indian higher education in a comparative perspective: Policy, regulation and management” discuss the governance of higher education institutions; and finally, section 3 on “Pedagogy of interdisciplinarity: Law, humanities and global studies in India” includes six chapters that analyze specific disciplinary aspects of higher education within the framework of interdisciplinary pedagogy.
The book has to be read in the broader context of enduring concerns about the urgent need to “fix” India’s large, complex and “broken” higher education sector. India has 993 universities and over 50,000 colleges and other higher education institutions (HEIs), with 37.4 million students. These numbers will keep growing in the coming years because of the size of the young population (half of India’s 1.3 billion people are under 25 years of age) and the government’s efforts to push enrollment rates higher. What these numbers do not reveal is that the quality of education at most institutions is ordinary or worse. This is evident from the employability rates of college graduates, which are as low as 30 percent. The repeatedly poor performances of India’s best universities in world university rankings also does not reflect well on them. By most accounts, India’s higher education is “in a nearly terminal state” (Kanti Bajpai, 167) and in need of deep and wide-ranging reforms.
In the introduction and the first chapter, Kumar highlights some of the key issues at stake. He especially emphasizes the need for reforms in several areas and some of these merit a brief discussion. Before doing so, it is important to point out that the book’s primary focus is on how India can build world-class universities and preferably world-ranked institutions. Several chapters do take up other specific, larger, or abstract issues but those with an intimate knowledge of the actual situation on the ground will find that much of the discussion in the book is barely relevant for the large majority of India’s HEIs.
To begin with, Kumar calls for a differentiated system of recognizing universities. At present, all HEIs are tasked with carrying out both teaching and research. The cause of India’s higher education would be better served if a majority of institutions were designated as teaching-focused and only a much smaller number were required to do both teaching and research. With nearly 80 percent of students enrolled for undergraduate programs, India needs most of its faculty to be focused on teaching and not be burdened by requirements of research, especially given the inadequate research training of most teachers. Under the current system, faculty members at small, poorly funded institutions lacking in basic infrastructure, including libraries and research laboratories, are expected to produce research papers for career advancement. This has led to India’s faculty becoming world leaders in publishing in predatory journals and the government has been forced to take up the needless and onerous task of monitoring fake research on a large scale.
Second, Kumar calls for significant financial support for select elite institutions so that they are able to compete effectively on the world stage. The Indian government has since then launched the Institutions of Eminence (IoE) initiative and selected 10 public and 10 private universities as “eminent” institutions. The expectation from these institutions is that they improve their rankings over the next 10 to 20 years and eventually break into the ranks of the world’s top 100 or 200 universities. However, while eminent public institutions are eligible for additional financial support from the government, private universities are not. More importantly though, all eminent universities are freed of the government’s complex regulatory framework. This onerous framework has undoubtedly stymied the growth and development of the country’s universities. Not surprisingly, regulation is the third area for reform identified by Kumar.
The issue of autonomy is one of the most controversial aspects of India’s higher education. Over the decades, the autonomy of India’s universities has shrunk and the influence of the government has expanded. For example, top university leaders are typically selected by the government and expected to be compliant to political leaders at the expense of the interests of students, faculty, and the cause of improving the quality of education. A similar relationship exists between the promoters of most private universities, typically politicians or business people, and their handpicked university leaders. HEIs are also tied down by a complex set of regulations. Other than the few eminent institutions which are now nearly free of the government’s overreach, the rest of the HEIs continue to suffer.
From this reviewer’s perspective, of the many contributions in The Future of Indian Universities, the chapters that stand out are those that draw from the experience of Indian universities. Arguably, India’s success stories in the higher education sector—both among public institutions such as some of the older Indian Institute of Technology universities (IITs) and private institutions like the Indian School of Business (ISB) and O.P. Jindal Global University, among others—are a better guide to understanding past and current obstacles to building good universities and the challenges that lie ahead. A good example is Pramath Sinha’s chapter on his direct experience in setting up institutions such as ISB and Ashoka University, both success stories in the private sector. Similarly, Shailendra Raj Mehta’s contribution on the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad, and Y.S.R. Murthy’s chapter on Jindal Global University stand out in this regard. It would perhaps have been useful to include more chapters on India’s success stories. There are several other informative and outstanding chapters in the book, which would appeal to readers depending on their interest. Overall, The Future of Indian Universities is a timely and valuable contribution on India’s higher education sector.
Pushkar
The International Centre Goa, Goa