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The Fearless Nadia

Occasional Papers

on India-Australia

Relations

The Fearless Nadia Occasionalpapers are original essayscommissioned by the Australia IndiaInstitute focusing on various aspectsof the relationship between India andAustralia. Fearless Nadia (1908-1996) was an Australian actressborn Mary Ann Evans in Perth,Western Australia, who began her

career working in the Zarko circusand eventually became a celebratedstar of Hindi films in India. FearlessNadia brought a new joie de vivre andchutzpah into Indian cinema with herbreathtaking stunts. Her role in therenowned film Hunterwali, where she

appeared dressed in boots and wieldinga whip, became an iconic image in1930s Bombay. The OccasionalPapers series seeks to inject a similar

audacity and creative dialogue intothe relationship between India andAustralia.

ChallengesFacing IndianHigherEducation

Fazal Rizvi & Radhika Gorur

Winter 2011: Volume wo


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Te Australia India Institute was established to contributeto greater understanding, cooperation and partnershipbetween India and Australia. Te Australia India Institute

sees itsel as a bridge between nations by creating strongacademic, proessional and cultural l inks.

Editor: Genevieve Costigan

Te views expressed in this paper are those o the authorand not necessarily o the Australia India Institute.

Te Australia India Institute is unded by the AustralianGovernment Department o Education, Employment andWorkplace Relations.

www.aii.unimelb.edu.au

Permission to use the name and image o Fearless Nadia is acourtesy extended by Wadia Movietone to the Australia IndiaInstitute or use only as the title o its Occasional AcademicPapers. Tis is on the clear understanding that the name andimage will be used only or the Occasional Academic Papersunder this umbrella, and not or any commercial use. Wadia

Movietone retains sole global copyright and ownership underintellectual property and copyright law o the Fearless Nadiaand Hunterwali characters and personas, and any depictionand usage o the same.

Te Australia India Institute expresses its deep gratitudeto Wadia Movietone or this gesture and wishes to recordthe contribution o JBH Wadia who thought up theHunterwali character, gave Mary Evans her screen name, and

popularized the Fearless Nadia persona through his flms.


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Challenges

Facing Indian Higher

EducationFazal Rizvi & Radhika Gorur

Google India growth and you get some 269 million wide-ranging entries, most o them celebratoryin their tone regarding Indias economic success. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji asserts, orexample, in an interview in Washington DC, that despite monetary tightening, he sees no reasonto revise the projected growth gure o 8.5 per cent in the current year. 1 As a market, the size and

spending power o Indias middle classes makes the worlds mouth water the McKinsey Quarterlyexpects Indias middle class to expand rom 5 per cent to 40 percent over the next couple o decades,to create the worlds h-largest consumer market2. Although some contest these predictions3,the triumphalism expressed in a recent India Shining campaign appears persistent. As a politicalslogan, India Shining reers to the overall eeling o economic optimism, in light, in particular,o the Indian I boom. Developed initially as part o an Indian government campaign intended topromote India internationally, the slogan served to highlight the potential India had to become amajor economic power.

Not everyone has bought into this hype, o course. Studies at Harvard and the University oMichigan, reported in the New York imes, suggest that India is shining or a much smaller groupthat was oen assumed. Its prosperity has not lessened malnutrition among children, and itsauence may have only beneted the privileged in society4. In a Business Week Roundtable thatasked Will India ever grow as ast as China? Subroto Bagchi suggests that growth at Chinas pace

may threaten democracy5. Te Australian reports that despite an astonishing rate o growth, themood among many in India is gloomy. Even beneciaries o Indias boom, like Wipro ChairpersonAzim Premji, together with other business leaders, retired Supreme Court justices and ormergovernors o Indias central bank, have issued an open letter to the government saying things areseriously amiss and that the benets o Indias huge growth have not reached the poorer sections oIndias population6. Elsewhere, discussion is around Indias importance as a stabilizing inuencein a dangerously volatile region. A story in the Daily elegraph 7 titled Te smelly truth o Indiasincredible growth rueully suggests that Indias great strength and power is that the world wants tobelieve its incredible growth story (IGS) and that the great tortoises o the developed world are sodesperate to believe India can drive new growth that they cannot smell the truth: India talks a goodgame, tells a cracking yarn, but cannot nish what it starts.

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It is easy to see that the whole world is talking about India, and recognizes its importance to globaleconomic and political stability. Most commentators around the world attribute such success asIndia has achieved to the Governments decision in the early 1990s to open up its economy, and

to deregulate and privatize its key institutions. It is suggested, by Bhagwati (2005) or example,that Indias economic success is, to a large extent, due to its strategic engagement with the globaleconomy, which has led many Indian companies to establish Indian robust links with transnationalcorporations. Tese links have enabled India to utilise its enormous pool o knowledge workers,particularly in the rapidly growing globally-networked inormation industries, providingcompetitively priced labour to corporations hungry or technology skills and business processengineering.

At the same time, however, there is a deep level o nervousness, particularly within India, aboutits capacity to sustain growth, and indeed about the distribution o the benets o growth. Majorconcerns surround the countrys poor inrastructure. With years o neglect and under-investment,it is argued, the Indian Government has been too slow to pursue a vigorous program o reorm.Tis is said, in particular, o Indian higher education, which, as a system, remains in a poor shape,characterized by inadequate inrastructure, poor operating conditions and ineective teaching

and learning programs, producing large cohorts o graduates who are barely employable in theproessions or which they have ostensibly been trained (Reddy & Andrade 2010). In 2007, no less anauthority than the then Indian Minister o Human Resource Development, Arjun Singh, reerred, asreported in Te imes o India (September 18, 2007) to Indian higher education as a sick child. It isclear that the Indian system o higher education aces enormous challenges.

Since 2007 however, the Indian government has taken a number o major steps to institute reorms,greatly increasingly investment in higher education around new policy understandings o whatneeds to be done to tackle long-standing problems. In this paper, we want to discuss and critiquesome o these initiatives, and argue that while higher levels o public investment are clearlynecessary to meet the challenges acing Indian higher education, these are not enough. Tis isso because India conronts a range o complex dilemmas with respect to the purposes o highereducation, the competing social and economic priorities that it must somehow reconcile, as wellas its strategies or reorm within the context o Indias complex state apparatus. Te key issues

o reorm or what and how lie at the heart o these dilemmas, and the ailure to recognize andconront them will lead inevitably to changes that are ar too piecemeal and uneven, and perhapseven incompatible.

Indian Higher Education: An OverviewTe Indian system o higher education is both enormous and complex. Established in the imageo British universities in the mid nineteenth century, it has now acquired a more hybrid orm,inuenced aer independence by both the Soviet and American traditions. India now boasts over375 public and 40 private universities, with almost 20,000 afliated colleges that teach programsdeveloped and examined by key state universities (Agarwal 2009). India also has around 250specialist teaching and research institutions, established to provide training in such areas asmedicine, engineering, agriculture, and computer science, and to conduct high-level research(Jayaram 2004: 91). Te system as a whole employs more than 400,000 teachers and caters or almost

10 million students. Increase in demand or higher education in India has averaged more than 4per cent over the past our decades, and shows no sign o decline. Te growth o the nanciallyindependent, or-prot sector in higher education has perhaps been one o the most noteworthyrecent developments in India. Also signicant has been the increase in open and distanceinstitutions, which now enroll over two million students. Indian higher education has evolved indistinct and divergent streams, all monitored by an apex body, the Ministry o Human ResourceDevelopment (MHRD). Te Planning Commission o India sets the broad parameters or theunding o Indian higher education, while the University Grants Commission (UGC) is responsibleor distributing resources and promoting reorms. Te UGC also has a role in the processes ocoordination, accreditation and quality control. However, within the ramework o a complex

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ederalism (Pinto 1984), legislatively, it is the state governments that establish and oversee the worko most universities. Within a system that is intrinsically political, the attempts by the nationalgovernment to assume greater control have been resisted by the states, despite the existence o

twenty so-called central universities, with many more planned (Ambani & Birla 2000). As Jayaram(2004: 90) points out, in the context o India, the term higher education suggests a homogeneity,which glosses over the enormous structural and unctional diversity within the system. Institutions

vary in their objectives and unding sources, and in aculty and student commitment, and zealouslyattempt to guard some level o autonomy.

Policy AnxietiesTe complexity o Indian higher education has made it difcult or both central and stategovernments to implement programs o reorm in any systematic and coordinated manner.In 1985, or example, the Indian Ministry o Education proposed an extensive reorm packagethat included such measures as a moratorium on the expansion o conventional colleges anduniversities; a air and robust admissions regime based on scholarly merit; a new accreditation

and accountability scheme; decentralization o educational planning; and a campaign to ensureacademic de-politicization. As sensible as these reorms were, they were widely resisted bymost state bureaucracies and universities, and produced little improvement, leading one writerto conclude that higher education in India stands as an immobile colossus insensitive to thechanging contexts o contemporary lie, unresponsive to the challenges o today and tomorrow,and absorbed so completely in trying to preserve its structural orm that it does not have the timeto consider its own larger purpose (Dube 1988: 46). Subsequent reorm attempts have met a similarate, while the system has become ever more complex and unwieldy, and the challenges ever moreurgent (Neelakantan 2009).

Most commentators, both within India and abroad, now realize that, apart rom a very smallgroup o elite public sector institutions and a ew emerging, privately-unded ones, Indian highereducation is in deep trouble. Despite its many distinct advantages, such as having the thirdlargest student numbers in the world (aer China and the United States), the use o English as a

primary language o higher education and research, a long tradition o academic reedom and ahighly talented pool o students, India is burdened by a system o mass higher education that isbureaucratically inexible, hampered by poor governance structures and characterised by unevenand modest quality at best (Venkatesh & Dutta 2007). Lack o resources has clearly been a majorissue. Despite the Kothari Commissions target o 1.5 percent o the GDP in 1966, governmentsupport or higher education remained until recently at less than 0.8 percent (ilak 2004). Indianuniversities ace a number o other difcult issues as well. While many more Indian students nowhave access to higher education, the system as a whole is characterized by gross inequalities (Desai& Kulkarni 2008). What is even more alarming is that afrmative action initiatives have themselvesbecome a major source o debilitating identity politics that inhibits systemic organizational reorm.

Within a system that is overloaded, the growth o private higher education in India has been rapid,but is taking place in a policy vacuum, as a major private education bill has languished in theIndian parliament or over two decades (Johnson & Bowles 2010). Te quality o education at these

private colleges varies widely, with corrupt practices in sta appointment and student enrolmentrie at many institutions (Altbach 2005). Te demand or higher education is so great that manycolleges are able to remain in business despite a poor reputation. At the same time, the regulatoryramework, accreditation mechanisms and the processes o quality assurance remain conused(Vantesh & Dutta 2007). Although individual researchers and some institutions perorm creditably,serious problems aict research perormance in India. In various global ranking systems, suchas Shanghais Jia ong, Indian universities perorm poorly, with only the Indian Institutes oechnology and Management ranked in the top three hundred (Agarwal 2009).

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Tese concerns are now widely acknowledged throughout Indias policy community, especiallygiven the backdrop o Indias growing participation in the global knowledge economy (NationalKnowledge Commission 2006). It is generally believed that India cannot sustain high rates o

growth without major reorms to its system o higher education (Agarwal 2006). Deep anxietiesexist about inadequate conditions and ineective teaching and learning programs, producinggraduates with outmoded set o skills. Yet, as Sanat (2006) points out, in order to ensure thatIndia does not throw away its advantage in BPO/KPO [Business Process Outsourcing/KnowledgeProcess Outsourcing], it is imperative that it continues to produce a critical mass o highly skilledmanpower at an accelerated pace.

I the criticisms o the state o higher education within the national policy community are extensivethen the external sources o criticism are even more severe. A strident critic, Altbach (2005), hasrepeatedly argued that or India to continue to succeed in the knowledge-based global economy,its system o higher education needs (1) sustained nancial support, with an appropriate mixo accountability and autonomy; (2) development o a clearly dierentiated academic systemspeciying distinct missions, resources, and purposes or each component; (3) managerial reormsand eective administration; and (4) truly meritocratic hiring and promotion policies or academics,

and similarly rigorous and honest student recruitment, selection, and instruction. ransnationalcorporations investing in India have similarly suggested that India cannot continue to achieveeconomic success with cheap labour, call centres and low-tech manuacturing alone, but needs amore dierentiated academic system that osters excellence by preparing students to work within aglobal context characterized by a networked logic and higher levels o mobility. Similar argumentsare made by the Indian academic diaspora (Ahmed & Varshney 2008).

Reforms UnleashedAgainst these criticisms, internal policy dynamics in India appear to be shiing at last. India hasbegun to interpret its higher education system as inextricably located within a global ramework,contributing to universities around the world and also beneting rom their intellectual input. It hasrecognized the need to respond to the complex requirements o the globalizing context and to theopportunities created by the increasing levels o global interconnectedness. It is attempting to align

this logic o globalization with responses to local pressures: growth in demand and greater access tohigher education; diversication and privatization o institutions; and the need to reorm not onlyinstitutional governance but also curriculum and pedagogy. A new policy discourse is emerging,more open to external input, which seeks to reconcile exogenous pressures o globalization and theknowledge economy with Indias distinctive endogenous policy traditions.

Te Indian government now reely acknowledges that it risks losing its advantage in the ercelycompetitive global knowledge economy unless its universities are re-engineered (Singh 2004). It hasbegun to draw on overseas expertise in higher education policy, both rom its academic diasporaand rom international organizations such as UNESCO. Over the past decade, the UGC has, orexample, established a number o task orces, many o which draw upon these overseas resourcesin establishing new policy processes designed to accommodate both external and domestic policyinputs. It appears then that the Indian government has at last recognized the need to utilize globalpolicy resources with which to develop new strategies or institutional re-positioning, new processes

and structures or governance, and new imaginings o desirable utures (Vincent-Lancrin 2007).

In response, the Indian system o higher education has unleashed a major program o reorms.Many o these reorms can be traced back to a policy template provided by the National KnowledgeCommission (NKC) set up by the Prime Minister in 2005, and chaired by a diasporic Indianentrepreneur, Sam Pitroda. Te Commissions template or reorm has been highly inuential,responding, as it did, to the set o policy anxieties discussed above. Based on what the NKC saw asglobal imperatives, many o its orty recommendations or reorm in higher education drew heavilyon neo-liberal policy ideas circulating around the world (Srivanstva 2007; Rizvi & Lingard 2010). Itmaintained, or example, that, to respond to the global challenges more strongly than ever beore,India today needs a knowledge-oriented paradigm o development to give the country a competitiveadvantage in all elds o knowledge (NKC 2006: 11).

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NKCs recommendations or reorm are structured around ve key dimensions o knowledge:Access to Knowledge; Knowledge Concepts; Creation o Knowledge; Knowledge Applications; andDelivery o Services. More specically, the Commission has recommended a rapid expansion o

the system creating many more universities (1500, up rom the existing 400, to attain the grossenrolment ratio o 15 percent by 2015); changes to the system o regulation o higher education byestablishing the Independent Regulatory Authority or Higher Education (IRAHE); an increase inpublic spending and diversication in sources o nance or higher education; and the establishmento y new national universities. NKC has also sought reorm o existing universities; and therestructuring o undergraduate colleges, placing a greater emphasis on measures to enhance quality.And nally, it has sought greater inclusion o disadvantaged groups in Indian higher education,ensuring access or all deserving students, through more targeted and efcient programs oafrmative action.

When these highly ambitious recommendations or reorm were rst presented by NKC in 2006,it would be true to say that they were met with considerable cynicism. But, to its credit, the Indiangovernment has taken up many o the Commissions proposals. So, or example, Indias EleventhFive-Year Plan (2007-2012) or higher education has been craed within the ramework o NKCs

policy recommendations. It is perhaps the nations most ambitious Five-Year Plan ever, signicantlyincreasing levels o public unding or higher education. Te Plan has also begun to loosen some othe bureaucratic rigidities in the system, giving universities greater organizational autonomy, andenabling them to develop collaborative links with universities abroad. One o the Plans variousobjectives is to establish thirty new Central Universities, sixteen in states where these do not existand ourteen as World Class Universities. Each o these universities is expected to develop a newadmissions system; robust processes o course evaluation, review and credits; strong incentivesor aculty; and linkages with industry and research institutions. Funding is also allocated toestablish a National Science and Engineering Research Board or the rejuvenation o research inuniversities, and or the launch o a National Mission to ensure greater broadband connectivitythrough a National Knowledge Network. Over the past ve years, sta salaries have been increasedsignicantly, making employment in higher education more attractive than it has been or decades.Te Indian government has also allocated substantial new unding to enable greater access to highereducation in rural and regional areas, leading to an explosion in the emergence o new colleges.

Most o the resources promised by the Eleventh Five Year Plan are in act being delivered. Under thecharismatic leadership o the new HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, the pace o change has accelerated.New local educational entrepreneurs have appeared on the scene, taking advantage o the undsallocated to set up new private colleges. A Foreign Education Bill has been introduced, permittingthe entry o oreign educational providers in India, and encouraging transnational collaborations.

As signicant and welcome as this new investment is, in what ollows, we wish to argue that it is notsufcient to bring about the reorms required. Tis is so because much o the new money is eitherallocated to allow sta salaries to be raised to a more acceptable level or to build new institutions,both at the elite end o the institutes o technology and management and at the level o colleges in

various disadvantaged areas.

TensionsWhat this new investment regime does not adequately address is the quality o educational provisionin the colleges. Nor does it adequately deal with the issue o the organizational cultureso Indian universities and colleges which, aer years o neglect, are widely known or theiroutmoded approaches to curriculum and pedagogy, their ineective modes o assessment,and corrupt practices o sta recruitment and promotion. Pouring good money into a largelydysunctional system cannot be expected to produce the desired changes, or the sources odysunction lie not only in the lack o resources but also in a range o reorm dilemmas thathave become an inherent eature o Indian higher education. Tese dilemmas have their originsin both t he historical constitution and the contemporary organizational practices in Indianhigher education. As we have already noted, previous attempts at reorm have not enjoyed greatsuccess in India, and this has not been solely due to the lack o resources but also to a deep-seatedorganizational culture resistant to reorm.

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Tis being so, unless issues o organizational culture are addressed, it is likely that the currentattempts at reorm, too, will similarly become embroiled in a politics shaped by a range o complexdilemmas that have proved intractable in the past. Te notion o dilemma implies difcult

choices within a context in which a particular course o action designed to a lleviate or solvecertain problems may also bring about consequences that are undesirable. Tese dilemmas, itshould be noted, have historical origins, and are located within policy congurations linked to

various political and organizational structures. Tis raises the question o the extent to whichthese congurations should in act be disturbed; there is a risk that the consequences mightundermine the very intents o the reorm during the processes o implementation. It is or thisreason that traditions are invariably deended, sometimes in vigorous ways but more oen throughorganizational inertia. So, or example, in the case o Indian higher education, a policy choice inrelation to greater autonomy or institutions runs the risk o creating a system characterized by evengreater organizational incoherence. Similarly, the decision to pursue a vigorous regime o afrmativeaction creates conditions in which academic excellence is potentially compromised.

Policy and PracticeMany o the dilemmas o reorm in Indian higher education are centered on issues o governance.As noted already, the Indian system o higher education has experienced a massive expansion overthe past two decades, but this has happened in a rather chaotic and unplanned manner. As Agarwal(2009: 29) has pointed out, in an eort to meet rising aspirations and to make higher educationsocially inclusive, there has been a sudden and dramatic increase in the number o institutionswithout a proportionate increase in material and intellectual resources. As a result most studentsexperience curriculum and pedagogy that is outmoded, and which is taught by aculty who arepoorly prepared, lack motivation, are mostly disinterested in research and do not possess the kind oproessional attitudes necessary or implementing any program o reorm.

Attempts by the central government to coordinate reorm initiatives have also met a great deal oresistance rom the state educational bureaucracies, as well as rom the universities and collegesthemselves. Indian ederalism has a complex structure, which worked reasonably well during therst two decades aer independence, but is now increasingly characterised by highly contentious

politics. State governments have become increasingly protective o their regional identity andpolitical power. Within the structure o this competitive ederalism, the authority o the UGC hasdeclined, with no other agency emerging that can develop, coordinate and steer the processes oreorm down to the local level.

However, even i it is possible to negotiate programs o reorm across central and state governments,an understanding o the reorms seldom reaches the local institutional level. Te structures opolicy communication in India are largely ineective, with policy ideas remaining conned toadministrative leadership, oen ar removed rom the level o proessional practice. Tis suggeststhat the capacity o the state to promote reorm practice is limited. At the colleges in particular,the curriculum arrives in a packaged orm, and the students are prepared or examinations thatare set elsewhere. At the same time, Indian institutions, while they are proud o their autonomy,rarely exercise this autonomy to debate policy ideas at the level o practice. Tere is urthermore nomarked tradition in Indian higher education o policy ideas emerging rom the bottom, despite

its distinctive democratic political traditions. In India, university teacher unions enjoy a proudtradition, but remain concerned largely with industrial conditions, and pay little attention toacademic issues.

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Autonomy and ControlTe system o afliated colleges, around which the Indian system o higher education is built,has oen been described as a curse. Te distinguished scholar and educational leader, ProessorKulandai Swami (2006), argues, or example, that the afliating system is outmoded, anachronistic,and acts as a real curse on the Indian higher education system. It holds back any genuine attempt atreorm and renewal. It ensures that reorms are inevitably symbolic and piecemeal, leaving most othe system unaected.

Te system o afliated colleges emerged in the second hal o the 19th century, in the image othe colleges at Oxord and Cambridge, which prepared students to sit or examinations set by theUniversity. In an era when very ew students attended higher education, this enabled a networkedsystem to be established quickly around a small number o universities, such as Madras, Bombayand Calcutta (Swami 2006). Te universities had very ew students o their own, but had the tasks odeveloping the curriculum or afliated colleges, overseeing teaching quality, and assessing studentperormance.

For a small elite system, this approach might have worked perectly, but in the era o massication,its contradictions have become all too obvious. At the time o independence in 1947, there wereewer than 500 afliated colleges. Teir number has now increased to almost 20,000, with the ratioo colleges to each university going through the roo. For example, Andhra University has over 400afliated colleges, Osmania University around 400, and University o Madras a little under 200.Accounting or nearly 90 percent o the total enrolment, colleges constitute the bulk o Indian highereducation, with over 9 million students enrolled in various programs under the aegis o the nearly 130universities that have afliating powers.

According to Swami (2006), this system has disastrous consequences or college teachers and studentsalike. For teachers, little proessional autonomy exists or developing their own curriculum, settingtheir own examination questions and grading the answers submitted. Tey teach subjects allotted tothem or the syllabus prescribed by an authority elsewhere. Tey seldom get a sense o participation inthe academic and administrative aairs o the system. With a ew notable exceptions, the system turnsthe colleges into narrowly ocused tutorial institutions, and teachers into tutors with no clear careerpath and no sense o proessionalism. It also turns the aculty at the universities into mere examiners,with little opportunity to conduct research, preoccupied as they oen become with oversight tasks.

Most students, especially those enrolled in tiny afliated colleges, do not have access to adequate libraryand other educational acilities. Teir teachers are oen poorly trained and unmotivated, with l ittleenthusiasm either or their disciplines or or teaching. Most colleges, even those that are subsidisedby the central or state governments, largely exist or prot, and are oen run by ex-politicians andentrepreneurs who have little knowledge or interest in higher education. With a system in which asmall number o universities are given the responsibility o quality oversight, considerable potentialexists or corruption, as is indeed is reported regularly in the media. O course these concerns are notnew. In 1966, the Education Commission o India introduced a system o autonomous colleges, and in1986, the National Education Policy supported a reer and more creative association o universities andcolleges. Neither o these policy initiatives can be said to have succeeded, with very ew colleges takingup the option o becoming autonomous. Indeed, i anything, the situation seems to have worsened,

with a number o universities in technical and proessional areas being given the authority to afliatenew colleges which have little autonomy to experiment with relevant and innovative curriculum orpedagogy.

Many in India would like to abolish the system o afliated colleges, but this is easier said than done.o begin with, deeply entrenched economic and political interests would make this impossible.But, more importantly, without a system o afliated colleges, India would not be able to absorb themassive increase in the demand or higher education. Te universities would simply not be able tocope with the demand. Since the system o afliated colleges has provided the growing middle classin India access to higher education, it has become a central plank in Indias capacity to implement theprinciples o meritocracy. Furthermore, there are not enough qualied teachers in India to carry outthe ull tasks o a university academic. Te dilemma acing Indian higher education is thereore nothow to abolish the system o afliated colleges, but how to better manage it.

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Public and PrivateOver the past two decades, as earlier noted, the level o demand or higher education in India hasincreased well above the Governments capacity to nance. As a result, private higher education hasourished, with a boom in commercially oriented or-prot colleges. Tere has always been a privatesector in Indian higher education, but the institutions which enjoyed government support werelargely run by various religious groups and were not motivated primarily by the pursuit o prot.More recently however, identiying lucrative opportunities, various entrepreneurs, businessmenand politicians have established institutions through amily trusts, or by taking advantage o otheravorable taxation conditions. Te state authorities have encouraged this growth not only to meetthe growing demand but also to introduce what is assumed to be a greater degree o institutionaldiversity in the system.

Yet a level o complexity that is seldom noted by the observers o Indian private colleges is that theyare invariably linked to public universities as afliated colleges, which means that many o themare oen little more than small tutorial colleges, requiring a very low level o investment to getstarted. A very complex symbiotic relationship thus exists between the public and privates sectors

o Indian higher education, raising a number o issues or the regulatory ramework under whichprivate colleges operate. Given their dependent relationship to public institutions they cannot beallowed to work totally under ree market mechanisms - a degree o state control appears necessary.Te dilemma that the state has is the extent to which, and how, it should steer the market, withoutturning private colleges into quasi-public institutions. Furthermore, a perennial dilemma acingIndian authorities is how to reconcile the policy imperative o institutional diversity on the one handand quality assurance on the other.

Tere is a widespread concern in India that a large majority o private institutions are engagedin various corrupt practices that consumer laws are oen unable to capture. Te Indian mediaregularly reports cases o corruption surrounding exorbitant capitation ees, manipulation oadmission processes, illicit payments or accreditation and bribes paid to the employees o the publicuniversities to which the colleges are afliated. Even when the tuition ee is regulated, variationsare enormous. Many private institutions ill-treat their aculty with unacceptable employment

conditions (Agarwal 2009). At the same time, most college owners are reluctant to invest in theresources and acilities needed or tertiary education, such as an adequate library, preerring tomaximise their prots. Te State thus aces the dilemma o how to regulate higher education,without becoming too intrusive, and remaining sensitive to the principles o diversity to which it isalso committed. raditionally, the state agencies, such as the UGC, have been expected to provideguidelines to regulate the system, but it is now widely believed that these agencies have been unableto develop institutional mechanisms or eective market coordination (Kapu & Mehta 2004). TeNKC has suggested an entirely new regulatory structure, though it is not clear how such an agencymight reconcile the competing demands o autonomy and control in a system that is increasinglytilted towards liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

O course, not all private colleges are afliated with universities some have greater autonomy todevelop their own programs, award their own qualications, and can be relied upon to respondappropriately and honestly to the changing requirements o the labor market. Examples o such

institutions may be ound around the country. Te Manipal Academy o Higher Education, orexample, has given boost to educational opportunities in the region where none had existed.From the point o the view o these colleges, a regulatory regime that inhibits their autonomy isclearly undesirable, especially i they are making the appropriate levels o investment in moderninrastructure and the proessional development o the aculty. However, a problem with theseinstitutions is that they have so ar provided little evidence o pedagogic innovation, and havepursued little in the way o even inexpensive basic research. Many or-prot colleges, on the otherhand, have taken advantage o the policy ambiguity surrounding the regulatory ramework, andhave oered unaccredited training in vocational areas such as Inormation echnology, IndustrialDesign, ourism and Hospitality, and Media and Journalism, leaving many students and theirparents exposed to nancial misconduct.

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Policy ambiguity has also inhibited the entry o quality oreign providers into the Indian market.For many years, most oreign institutions have operated jointly with Indian partners, outside theramework o the national regulatory ramework. Te United Kingdom is the most active in the

Indian market, ollowed by the United States, Australia and Canada (Power and Bhalla 2006).Much o the interest has been shown by second tier oreign institutions, more interested in studentrecruitment through twinning arrangements than with any deeper academic relationship involvingboth teaching and research. Recently, a new bill to regulate oreign institutions has been introducedin the Indian Parliament. Although it proposes conditions that are very strict, the bill has beenhotly debated within the Indian polity, with ears expressed about the principles o social justiceand potential damage to national culture and indigenous cultural traditions. Interest by elite oreigninstitutions in providing education in India has so ar been disappointingly low, with greater interestshown in partnerships that are still just ocused on teaching and not involving joint programs oacademic development and research.

Equity and ExcellenceIn India, the push towards privatization, as expressed in the Indian governments support or thedevelopment o private institutions, both or-prot and non-prot, and or the entry o oreignplayers into the market, appears to have two main motivations: to diversiy the system and toprovide greater access to higher education. Private institutions enroll students who would nototherwise be in higher education. From the point o view o the government, they bring additionalrevenue into the system, and oen operate at much lower costs per student, even aer allowingor the act that their tuition is supplemented by government subsidies. It is assumed that privateinstitutions bring in greater institutional diversity into the system through innovation andexperimentation not only through reorm in nance and management but also in instructionalapproaches. It is also believed that the private sector is much more responsive to the changing needso the labor market, and that it is better able to address skills shortages and oer courses in astgrowing areas o employment such as inormation technology, business administration, nancialservices, tourism and hospitality.

However it is hard to nd evidence or such claims in India. On the contrary, there is greater

evidence that most private institutions are rather reluctant to experiment with new areas o studyand instructional approaches. Indeed most oer courses o low quality. Tey have ewer sta andmost o their teachers are employed on a casual, part-time basis. Costly elds o study are eschewed,as indeed is any attempt at aculty proessional development. Most owners o or-prot collegesshy away rom investing in even essential inrastructure and acilities. It is however true that theydo provide educational access to many students who are academically unable to gain entry intothe public institutions, especially in the high demand proessional disciplines. As Levy (2008) haspointed out, private institutions in India provide second choice access or those who perorm poorlyin the highly competitive entry tests. Tese students are oen ill-prepared to undertake a rigorousprogram o studies.

Tis variation in quality raises the question o the extent to which greater access to higher educationalone can in act promote educational opportunity and social equity. Tere is little doubt thatover the past ew decades, India has greatly expanded access to higher education or all sections

o the Indian community. Enrolment has gone up rom about 100,000 in 1947 to over 11 millionnow, and the enrolment ratio rom 1 per cent in 1950 to about 10 per cent in 2007 (Agarwal 2009:40). Tis growth has been achieved partly through the emergence o private institutions and alsothrough government policies o afrmative action that have addressed gender inequality, regionalimbalances, and other patterns o disparity caused by Indias caste system and by socio-economicdisadvantage. Many barriers to access have been removed through scholarship schemes, relaxationo academic standards, and what in India is reerred to as a quota-based reservation system,through which a certain proportion o places in public higher education are allocated to studentsrom each o the various categories o social disadvantage. In this way, the State has tried to correcthistorical wrongs and injustices.

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However, the dilemma surrounding afrmative action is that while it might promote some measureo equity, it is a very costly exercise, resulting in loss o organizational efciency, and arguably alsoa ocus on excellence. It is impossible to do away with the inuence o amily background. Te

students rom amilies with academic traditions inevitably have the kind o support at home andin their communities that is oen essential or success in higher education. Students rom poorerbackgrounds oen lack such support, and thereore struggle to cope with the demands o academicwork. What this suggests is that while simple access is a necessary condition or educationalparticipation, it is not sufcient to ensure educational success and airer social outcomes. For aireroutcomes, issues o instructional approach and student support structures need to be addressed,something most institutions, and in particular private colleges, have ailed to do in India. Equityis a complex notion, and even harder to put into practice. It demands attention to all aspects oeducational provision, so that students rom disadvantaged backgrounds are not only admitted butalso retained, and that issues o equity o employment opportunities at the successul completion ostudy are also addressed.

Research and TeachingDebates about instructional approach, student support structures and employment outcomes arelargely absent in most institutions o higher education in India. By and large, a tradition o criticalreection on their teaching, and how their instruction is dierently experienced by studentso varied backgrounds, has not yet been established among higher education aculty in India.eachers are given little opportunity or support to consider the academic difculties students mightencounter, and how pedagogic approaches might be better aligned to their diverse needs. Tis isnot an individual matter but a structural one, or the unctions o teaching and research are sharplycontrasted within the structure o Indian higher education. Faculty who are employed as teachersdo not view research as important to them personally or proessionally, even i educational researchmight have a great deal to say about their approaches to teaching. Most institutions too viewthemselves as being concerned with teaching alone. Tis sharp dichotomy has not served the causeo equity well, or it has not introduced a tradition o debate inormed by evidence and research intoIndian higher education.

Nor has it created an organizational culture o research that applies to all institutions o higherlearning, not just to those specically mandated to conduct research. Indeed, or a country that isnow reliant or its continuing economic success on knowledge-based industries, and thereore onresearch and development, its research perormance in globally comparative terms is remarkablypoor. Investment in research and development in India is barely 1 percent o the gross domesticproduct, compared to 1.75 percent in China (Bettel le 2007). Te number o active researchers oreach million people in India is a very low 119, compared to over 4,605 in the United States and 708in China. In the areas o publication and citations, Indias perormance is poor, with barely 1 percent o the global output. Indian universities also perorm very poorly in research training, with

just 9,000 PhDs in Science and technology graduating in 2008. And the quality o most PhD theses,especially in the social sciences, is widely regarded as unacceptable.

Problems surrounding the coordination o research eorts in India have also been widely noted.Much o Indias R &D is conducted by transnational corporations and at specialist government-

sponsored research centres, and not at the universities where research training is mostly provided.Parthasarathi (2005) has pointed out that research in India suers rom a two box disease whereinuniversities and the government R & D laboratory system work in isolation o each other, urtherinstitutionalising the dichotomy between research and teaching. Key researchers in these centreshave little opportunity to contribute to the development o a new generation o researchers anda research culture at the universities. Not surprisingly, thereore, there is a serious and growingconcern in India about the quality o doctoral education in India. As Agarwal (2009: 279) argues,academic research in India is severely under-resourced. Moreover, he points out, there areinsufcient linkages between researchers and with society at large. Indian research suers romcronyism and academic in-breeding that prevents cross-ertilization o ideas and is an impedimentor good science.

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In recent years, numerous attempts have been made to tackle these problems. Te UGCs SpecialAssistance Program or research has been greatly expanded, providing more realistic amountso unds to selected well established academic elds in specic programs. Tere are also moves

to establish a system o perormance measures around indicators such as degree completion,publication counts and quality. Various attempts are also being made to set research priorities, andencourage the sharing o inrastructure through partnerships with corporations and universitiesabroad. India is also investing heavily in internet connectivity in an eort to improve access toglobal inormation resources. As important as these initiatives are, they do not address the problemo attitudinal changes that are needed in India to recognise the importance o research or meetingIndias aspirations in the global knowledge economy. Shis are required in the common conceptionsabout the nature o research and how it might be done in dierent types o higher educationinstitutions, rom small colleges to leading research universities. Curriculum priorities need tobe set against evidence about the changing demands o the labour market, while instructionalinnovation needs to be initiated and supported by research conducted at the level o proessionalpractice.

ConclusionIn this paper, we have argued that, aced with a growing policy anxiety in India about the risks itconronts o losing its advantage in the ercely competitive global knowledge economy unless itsuniversities are re-engineered, the Indian Government has at last unleashed a series o reormsto its system o higher education. It has begun to view these reorms as inextricably linked to therequirements o the global economy and the shiing architecture o global higher education.Te Government has thereore greatly increased its level o investment in higher education, and hasalso begun to loosen some o the bureaucratic rigidities in the system, giving universities greaterorganizational autonomy. As overdue and welcome as these initiatives are, we have argued that whileadditional resources are clearly necessary to reorm Indian higher education, they are not sufcient.Tis is so because the problems o the Indian system o higher education are deep, and relate to arange o dilemmas arising out o the historical constitution o Indian higher education, and to theorganizational traditions and cultural attitudes about its nature and unctions in society. We have

suggested that unless these di lemmas are squarely addressed, the Indian system o higher educationwill continue to struggle, producing isolated pockets o academic excellence but leaving the nationas a whole poorly served.

NoteTis Working Paper is based on research unded by the Australia India Institute, whose support isgrateully acknowledged. Another version o this paper wil l appear as: Rizvi, F., (2012) Dilemmaso Reorm in Indian Higher Education in Adamson, B., Nixon, J. and Su, F. (eds) Te Reorientationo Higher Education: Beyond Compliance and Deance, New York and Hong Kong: Springer andComparative Education Research Centre (CERC) o Te University o Hong Kong.

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Basu, A. 2002 Indian Higher Education: Colonialism and beyond in Altbach, P. & V.Selvaratnam (eds.) From Dependence to Autonomy: Te Development o Asian Universities, BostonCollege.

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Nelson, D. (2010). Te smelly truth o Indias incredible growth. Te elegraph. Kent, elegraphMedia Group Limited.

Footnotes1http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-28/india-may-reach-growth-goal-or-year-even-aer-tightening-mukherjee-says.html

2http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/racking_the_growth_o_Indias_middle_class_2032

3http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12593755

4

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/health/08global.html5http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948421.htm

6http : //www.theaustra l ian.com.au/business/news/india-gloomy-despite-st rong-growth/story-e6rg90x-1226031227434

7http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/deannelson/100021409/the-smelly-truth-o-indias-incredible-growth/

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Professor Fazal Rizvi

Melbourne Graduate School of EducationFazal Rizvi is a Proessor in Education at the University o Melbourne, having joined the University

in 2010 rom the University o Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where he established and directed

its online Masters program in Global Studies in Education. He had previously held academic

and administrative appointments at a number o universities in Australia, including as Pro Vice

Chancellor (International) at the Royal Melbourne Institute o echnology and as the ounding

Director o the Monash Centre or Research in International Education.

Dr Radhika GorurMelbourne Graduate School of Education

Radhika Gorur is a Research Fellow at the University o Melbourne. Born and brought up in India,

she has also lived and worked in Nigeria, Oman and Australia. She has a Masters degree rom

Michigan State University and a PhD rom the University o Melbourne. Her research has ocused

broadly on education policy and evidence based policy, and more generally on how policy ideas

evolve, circulate and stabilise. Her current research ocuses on Indian higher education and on

issues relating to equity in education.

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