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 Indian higher education under globalization

Rajesh Kochhar

Former Director, National Inst of Sci, Tech & Development Studies ( Govt of India) New Delhi

Panjab University, Chandigarh, Indiarkochhar2000@gmail.com

Trinity College Dublin 28-June-2016

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• Higher education is now classified as an internationally tradable service. However for historical, cultural and ideological reasons it is quite unlike others. Permitting foreign education providers to operate in India is not like permitting an insurance company or a department store. Similarly collaboration in education is not as simple as in telecom.

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• In India, all the social divides, disconnects, tensions and feelings of discomfort and mistrust that globalization has created or accentuated have become visible factors in discussions, debates, executive decisions as well as attempted or aborted legislative initiatives on education.

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• India has not been able to build an across-the-board consensus on globalization-era higher education policy.

• At any given time there are a number of contrary pulls at work so that it is not possible to predict the outcome. A 2010 article in the American Time magazine refers to ‘exasperating mix of politics and regulations’.

• The exasperation partly arises from inadequate comprehension of the inherent contradictions.

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• Ever since it began liberalizing its economy in the early 1990s, India has been able to maintain a high growth rate which has been driven by service sector rather than agriculture or manufacture.

• There now exists in India an affluent middle class which though small as a fraction of the whole population is large in absolute numbers.

• Much to the excitement of Western manufacture, India is now a market for a vast variety of goods ranging from Mercedes and BMW down to Hollywood movies and serials, branded apparel and cosmetics.

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• Not content with access to foreign goods, a section of Indians now wants access to Western quality education also. Many students believe that a foreign degree would help them find employment abroad.

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• To sum up in advance, India’s own education is largely decoupled from quality and employability.

• Government has abdicated its responsibility while privatization has brought about crass commercialization. Clamour for education from foreign providers has grown, but since this will help only a tiny fraction of population, the requisite political support is not forthcoming.

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• Up to a couple of decades after Independence (1947), Indian education was very good value for money. With rare exceptions, education was entirely in the hands of the government, fees were very low and quality was high.

Its two limitations should however be noted. The actual numbers were small, and both the students and faculty were mostly drawn from among the Upper Castes.

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Privatization

• As demand for education arose, India was unable to maintain standards or pump in the requisite funds.

• The government expenditure on higher education stands at a paltry 0.5% of GDP.

• Government salaries are fairly high so that the actual amount spent on education itself would be abysmally low.

• Taking an easy way out, and as part of globalized economy, the government permitted privatization.

• However, very few of the new initiatives have come from philanthropists.

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• The new players which include politicians and ex-politicians are driven by lure of easy money.

• As a result, a powerful education mafia has arisen. This mafia is routinely able to influence legislative and executive decisions and at times even judicial pronouncements.

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• In India education is on the concurrent list meaning that both the Central government and individual State governments can set up universities. The later have often misused the provision.

• Thus, in 2005, the Supreme Court, acting on a public interest litigation by an eminent educationist, annulled the establishment of as many as 116 universities which the newly formed State of Chhatisgarh had permitted, obviously on extraneous considerations.

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• The rot privatization has brought to professional education can further be seen from the fact that in 2010 the president of the Medical Council of India, entrusted with the task of regulating medical education, was arrested for taking a huge bribe from a private medical college.

• Government agencies having failed to discipline private professional colleges, the responsibility has fallen on the Supreme Court which can err but at least has the courage and mechanism for self-correction

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Medical education• India today has more than 400 medical colleges

more than half of which are privately owned. Left to themselves, they would admit students purely on the basis of the hefty illegal capitation fee. State-level government colleges on their part would rather prepare a local merit list rather than abide by a national one.

• In 2010, a two-judge Supreme Court Bench ordered conducting a single National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to all medical colleges.

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• In 2013, in a retrograde decision, the Supreme Court struck down NEET thus handing a bonanza to private colleges.

• It is noteworthy that this was the last legal pronouncement by the Chief Justice because he retired from service the next day on completing his term.

• It has been widely believed that the judgment was based on extraneous considerations.

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• Three years later, in April 2016, the Supreme Court recalled the infamous 2013 judgment, thus restoring the common test. The judgment summarily asked that NEET be implemented this year itself for all medical colleges be they

States or private institutions including deemed universities or minority institutions.

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• To help the State colleges but not the others, the Government issued a Presidential Ordinance in May 2016 permitting only the State colleges to make their own admissions for this year. The Court has refused to stay the Ordinance but reserved the right to examine its validity.

• It is now certain that from next year all medical admissions will be done on the basis of the result of a nationally conducted test, thanks to the firmness shown by the Supreme Court.

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• I have already referred to the arrest of the chairman of the Medical Council of India on corruption charges.

• Early May 2016, using the extraordinary power given to it by the Constitution, the Supreme Court appointed a three-member committee headed by a former chief justice to oversee the statutory working of the Medical Council.

• The Court initiative is meant to force the government’s hand because ‘The Committee will function till the Central Government puts in place any other appropriate mechanism.’

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• While one feels happy with the pro-active stance of the Supreme Court, the discomforting thought persists that left to themselves the government and its regulatory bodies will let the things slide down further.

• At present there are no foreign players in Indian medical education.

• My aim has been to emphasize that higher education in India has come to be dominated by unscrupulous and greedy elements and state institutions are fighting rearguard action to contain them.

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Compulsions of social justice

• Anybody interested in a rewarding, enduring and profitable engagement with India would find it useful to obtain some acquaintance with India’s notoriously complex social anthropology.

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Table. Break-up of education-related Indian population groups

No Group Current share inpopulation

1 Upper Castes 25-35%

2 Other Backward Classes 40-50%

3 Scheduled Castes 16.6% (exact)

4 Scheduled Tribes 08.6% (exact)

Note that the government releases exact data in case of (3) and (4) but not for (1) and (2)

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• For reasons of social justice, which the Upper Castes resent, half the seats in government academic institutions fall in the Reserved Category. More specifically, 15 % of the seats in government academic institutions are reserved for the Scheduled Castes (the erstwhile untouchables); 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes (the indigenous people) and 27% for the middling castes, known as Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

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• In other words, only 50.5% of educational seats are in the General Unreserved category for which the Upper Castes must compete.

• It is noteworthy that the term affirmative action which has positive connotation the world over is not used in any Indian discourse.

• Rather, the two terms in use are Reservation and Quota, both with an element of derision in them.

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• Right from the beginning of English education 200 years ago, till recently, the education scene was dominated by the Upper Castes.

• If globalization had not taken place, the Upper Castes would have willy nilly adjusted to the new realities and accepted a diminished role consistent with their actual numbers. Globalization has provided them with an escape route.

• The Upper Castes have ‘denationalized’ themselves and turned towards the West.

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• Neither the entrants into education field nor government regulators have shown any concern about quality.

• There are about 3500 engineering colleges with as many as 1.7 million seats.

• In most cases, education is waste of money and youth.

• Only about 18% are employable in IT sector; and 7.5% in mechanical, electronics/electrical and civil branches. Placement figures can be misleading also.

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• In many cases, the graduate engineer is offered trivial work and low salary.

• The government regulators are now seriously considering reducing the number of undergraduate seats by as much as 40% over the next few years.

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Going abroad

• Profile of Indian students going abroad has changed over years.

• Earlier students completed their university education in India, earned good grades and obtained scholarships to be able to study in a foreign university.

• Some 12 years ago Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University, during his visit to New Delhi, lamented that the quality of Indian students coming to UK had fallen.

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• A substantial number of merited Indian students used to come to England on scholarship.

• However once UK discontinued giving scholarship, bright students headed for USA.

• The average age of outgoing Indian students has come down.

• More and more young men and women are now going out even for undergraduate studies by obtaining foreign exchange through Reserve Bank of India.

• How many Indian students are out of the country for higher education, and what is the foreign exchange outgo on this count?

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• It is a characteristic of the Indian situation that reliable data is not available and figures are being created by interested parties to serve their partisan ends.

• I am inclined to place reliance on figures provided by Unesco Institute of Statistics according to which there were as many as 180000 students studying abroad in 2012. Out of these 50% were based in USA.

• UK came next with 13%. (Ireland accounted for 536 Indian students.)

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• A realistic figure on the attendant foreign exchange outgo would probably be $4 bn.

• In contrast, figures provided by ASSOCHAM, an organization representing and promoting the interests of trade and commerce in India, are very high.

• It said in 2008 that there were 450000 students abroad costing India $13 bn.

• Its corresponding figures for 2013 are 650000 students and $ 18 bn.

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• In the absence of any data released by Reserve Bank of India, it is not clear how ASSOCHAM arrived at its numbers.

• I suspect ASSOCHAM is exaggerating the figures. As an enthusiastic advocate of total de-regulation of education, it probably believes that higher forex outgo figures would strengthen the case for permitting foreign universities to operate from India.

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• Irrespective of the exact numbers, two features of the phenomenon need to be noticed.

• (i)Not all Indian students who go abroad are interested in studies. Many are below-average or semi-literates who are interested merely in obtaining a student visa as a first step towards being eventually absorbed in a Western country.

• Mushrooming of bogus institutions in various countries including Ireland to cater to students from South Asia and the attendant visa rackets are well known phenomena.

• This class of students would neither be eligible for nor interested in seeking admission into an Indian branch campus of a foreign university.

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• (ii) Outgoing students officially raise money in India to meet admission and visa requirements and for sustenance on arrival.

• They would try to work while students, send money home to lessen the loan burden on their families make their foreign stay self-supporting as soon as possible.

• In other words, the net foreign exchange outgo for higher studies would be smaller than any quoted figure.

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• It has been estimated that more than 60% of the (big) loans are taken by offering family home as a collateral. Surely the foreign-going student would like to recover the family property as soon as possible.

• (Note that most bad loans are of amounts smaller than Rs 400000 for which no collateral is demanded.) During the last five years bad loans have increased 120%.

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• In any case financial aspects have not been a factor in Indian discourse on off-shore campuses.

• While the governments almost invariably tend to be favourably disposed towards businesses, industries and interests of beneficiaries of globalization, they must reckon with the Parliament.

• Thanks to the dynamics of numbers inherent in a democracy Indian Parliament is dominated by representatives of rural economy, weaker sections and under- privileged groups.

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• In other words, the Indian Parliament does not have much sympathy for votaries and beneficiaries of globalization.

• In the view of most parliamentarians foreign university campuses would add to the privileges of the already privileged class and undermine the social justice of state-run education.

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Branch campuses

• A bill was sought to be introduced in the Parliament by the then government in 2010 but it lapsed five years later owing to strong across-the board objections.

• The bill included a clause saying that profits made from the campus would not be permitted to be expatriated. This obviously does not suit the foreign education providers who are not driven by altruism but by considerations of dollars and cents.

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• To accommodate them, a modified bill is now being prepared for placing before the Parliament.

• It differs from the old one in an important aspect; it would permit the foreign branch campuses to expatriate profits.

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• An on-line article warns that ‘ Foreign universities will be taking a risk if they enter India’, arguing that ‘Assuming that foreign universities are eventually permitted to set up campuses on terms that are favourable to them – especially with respect to autonomy – they will still have to consider the possibility that regular and persistent attempts will be made by the government to reinterpret and redefine the meaning and scope of that autonomy’.

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• Some commentators have hoped that the Parliament would pass the foreign university bill.

• I personally think this to be unlikely. • It would be difficult for Indian Parliament to

permit two distinct sets of regulations, one for Indian universities and the other for foreign ones.

• It is not clear whether the bill when introduced can find the requisite support in the two Houses of the Parliament.

• In any case branch campuses are not going to crop up in the near future.

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• If foreign universities cannot come to India, can their faculty come and teach?

• This model was briefly tried. • A 2004 agreement between US-based Virginia

Tech and Bombay-based well-regarded SP Jain Institute of Management and Research permitted Bombay students to obtain US degree without leaving the country.

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• The curriculum came from Virginia Tech whose professors in collaboration with Bombay faculty as co-instructor offered long-distance audio/slide courses.

• Once a semester, US faculty spent a week in Bombay for personal teaching and interaction.

• The program was declared to be a success by both sides, by Virginia Tech because of the revenue it generated and by the SP Jain because of the benefit it brought to the students.

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• The program however had to be abandoned after the 2007-8 academic year because the government regulators objected to the repatriation of profits.

• To sum up so far, we notice that when it comes to privatized education entirely in Indian hands, the administration displays utter lack of will to protect the interests of students and of education; the task is left to higher judiciary.

• However when it comes to the involvement of foreign providers, there is an all round sense of unease at bureaucratic and political levels.

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Franchise degree

• Currently there are two programs involving foreign universities: franchise and twinning.

• A number of recently established technical education providers, which ‘have the look and feel of a corporate house and not necessarily an academic institution’, have entered into collaborative arrangement with many British (and other) universities whereby Indian students carry out all their studies in India but receive foreign degrees.

• The arrangement is not as attractive as it seems.

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• Most of the British collaborating institutions are the so-called new universities which were polytechnics till recently.

• Their standing in their home country is not very high.

• I wonder how many of you know about the likes of De Montfort, Edinburgh Napier, Liverpool John Moores, Queen Margaret universities.

• Such providers are keen to gain entry into India because of the useful inflow of cash.

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• In many cases, their income from foreign students is much more than generated from UK/EU students.

• In 2008, as many as 358 Indian students registered with the Oxford Brookes program. With each paying a fee of £500, the University earned the substantial amount of £179000. University of Wales makes less than half a million pounds in UK/EU fees but earns seven million in validation fees.

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• Most of the programs are in IT, business management, hospitality and tourism etc which are inexpensive to set up and operate.

• Oxford Brookes franchises a program but does not permit Indian students access to its own ‘learning resources’.

• The curriculum offered in these franchise arrangements is not identical, the faculty is local and delivery method not the same as in UK classroom with the result that the students do not get ‘feel and experience’ of a UK college.

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• Franchise degrees are not recognized in India.• Thus a student who obtains BBA ( Bachelor in

Business Administration) cannot do MBA from an Indian institution nor apply for job in public sector.

• How the qualification is viewed by private employers and in foreign countries is a separate matter.

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• In 2011 the Glasgow-based University of Strathclyde Business School (SBS) set up a joint School in collaboration with SKIL Infrastructure, at Noida near Delhi.

• The well-known Indian newsmagazine India Today gushingly sought to convince its readers why ‘Strathclyde will soon be a coveted name in India’.

• This has not happened; the venture was declared a failure and closed down. Reason was that the students considered it a bad investment.

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• Strathclyde degree cost twice the amount a local MBA would, but the placement salaries in both cases were the same.

• In 2011 itself, Middlesex University was forced to abandon its foray into India because the Indian partner decided to pull out from the envisaged joint program.

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• Ironically while established foreign brands (like Adidas or Apple) go to considerable effort and expense to curb fake products, these foreign education providers willingly join hands with their Indian counterparts in clear violation of the extant regulations.

• All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has laid down that Indian technical education providers should be recognized by it and they in turn obtain approval for the courses they are offering.

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• Furthermore, ‘Foreign University/Institution seeking to operate in India either directly or through collaborative arrangement with an India University/Institution’ must obtain prior approval by submitting details of facilities, staffing, fees, courses, curricula and funding arrangements for a period of three years, to be verified by a site visit.

• In most cases, all three conditions are being violated.

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• Indian partner of Edinburgh Napier University has ingenuously quoted its own lawyer (and not the rule or a court judgment) to ‘confirm’ that their ‘partnership does not require a separate approval from AICTE’ (It does!).

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• Lancaster University is running a successful and profitable, albeit unapproved, program with an ‘unrecognized’ GD Goenka World Institute. Lancaster would like Goenka to be recognized as a university so that the partnership is ‘in full compliance of all local regulations’.

• It is however unlikely that Lancaster would cancel its arrangement with Goenka till regulations are complied with.

• It not clear how long the uncertainty would last or how it would affect the health of the franchise program.

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• Recently, the Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan cautioned the students that they should not fall prey to 'unscrupulous schools' which leave them with high debt and ‘useless degrees’.

• This would apply to useless degrees earned in India or abroad.

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Twinning/ Credit-transfer

• At present, the safest bets are those where both the partners are recognized universities.

• Globalization-era Indian higher education places too much emphasis on business management. Many twinning arrangements are in fields such as hospitality industry and event management, which need not concern us here.

• There are some notable exceptions in that the degree is in engineering.

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• A student completes the first half of their studies in India. If they obtain good grades and visa, they can study in a foreign university and obtain the latter’s degree.

• Credit share is a good option, because the degree is foreign but the cost is much less than would be for a full-degree abroad.

• Studying abroad is good education for young Indians, apart from the degree. Lessons in dignity of labour and social equality that a foreign sojourn offers would not be easily available back home.

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• Indian student are generally speaking well-mannered, hard-working and obedient. Indian social system however does not much encourage boldness of thought and action.

• Severe shortcomings of Indian pre-professional education system should be noted.

• Indian examination system has been warped by the process of admission to a professional college.

• (i)Linguistic skills of Indian students tend to be low.

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• Indian society values obedience very highly and prefers politeness to truthfulness. The boldness of thought and action that is expected from the youth later is not encouraged in their formative years.

• Indian education system has been twisted out of shape by the entrance test syndrome. Conceptual clarity and practical training have disappeared from the scene.

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• Students are forced to master the technique of multiple-choice entrance tests so that they can get a good rank which would get them admission into a higher-ranking college.

• Because of the excessive emphasis placed on science and mathematics in school education, linguistic skills of Indian students generally tend to be low.

• Parent University could offer an additional, bridge, course, to twinning students to prepare them for the later studies in a foreign university.

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To sum up

• Of all the foreign-related educational options in India, twinning/credit share remains the best bet.

• The students who graduate from this program would expect to get well-paid jobs in Western countries.

• To what extent their expectations are met by the market would determine the success or otherwise of the program.

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• (i) In India, matters rarely if ever get resolved. An opening which appears to appear may soon disappear. Conversely, issues presumed dead and buried can rise again.

• Therefore, Indian scene should be monitored closely and continually. More specifically, official notifications and legal pronouncements need to be carefully studied so that there are neither missed opportunities nor unpleasant surprises.

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• (ii) Rules say that if for some reason a student admitted to a twinning course cannot go abroad, they should be able to get the degree from the parent college.

• There are a large number of private colleges in India which admit students of low merit. While expanding its engagement in India, a foreign university should choose its Indian partners carefully, making sure that the credentials of the transfer students are not substantially lower than those of the home students.

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(iii)When a student takes admission in a foreign university for a full course, they have ample time for adjustments of various types. This will not be the case when foreign students land in the class room half way through the course.

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A culturally and ethnically diverse class room may be a novelty for many students, faculty and administrators. They should all be consciously prepared for the new experience so that wrong signals are not given out and given-out signals are not misread.//

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Thank you Please feel free to contact

me for any additional information or clarification

Rajesh Kochharrkochhar2000@gmail.com

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Notes and References

• For a competent general review, see Agarwal, Pawan (2006) Higher

education in India: The need for change (New Delhi: Indian Council for

Research on International Economic Relations, Working Paper 180):

Bhushan ,S (2006) 'Foreign Education Providers in India: Mapping the

Extent and Regulation'(The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education,

Report March 2006);

• Hannon, Elliot (2010) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2026887,00.html

• Mahapatra, Dhananjay (2013)http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/CJI-Altamas-Kabirs-final-judgment-comes-as-boon-for-private-medical-colleges/articleshow/21153402.cms

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• R. Kochhar (2004) Denationalised middle class: Global escape from Mandal. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No.1 (3 Jan.), p. 20; R. Kochhar (2009) Globalization, Mandalization and the Indian middle class, In: Culture, Society and Development in India (eds: Manoj Kumar Sanyal and Arunabha Ghosh) (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan), pp. 23-32.

• http://www.livemint.com/Politics/BphkOxYuir6OaYcTrBtldJ/AICTE-to-cut-number-of-

engineering-college-seats-by-600000.html

• http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/student-loans-dry-up-as-bad-debts-climb-at-banks/article7913751.ece

• http://thewire.in/2015/09/24/foreign-universities-will-be-taking-a-risk-if-they-enter-india-11541

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• Wildavsky, Ben (2010)The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World (Princeton University Press), p. 63.

• http://www.university.careers360.com/news/4679-UK-Degrees-Validity-British-Accreditation-Council

• http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_news&template=rr_2col&view=article&articleId=1096520

• Sugden, Joanna (2012) https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/its-a-jungle-out-there/421557.article

• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Dont-fall-in-trap-of-schools-giving-useless-degrees-Raghuram-Rajan/articleshow/52162715.cms