| The day she took charge as the HRD Minister, Smriti Irani said that the Government was mulling increasing the spending on higher education to six per cent of the GDP.
The Government, in the Union budget 2014-2015, allocated Rs 27,656 crore for higher education. The new figure is an increase of almost 13 per cent on the amount allocated in 2013.
That is a welcome move. It can go a long way in addressing the concern of poor quality of higher education in India. However, that will mean cutting spending from somewhere else to accommodate the increase to 6 per cent spending on higher education. What if there is already another way of such funding? India only needs to reroute those funds to domestic avenues.
According to Brookings Institution, Indian students spent $3bn to study in US in between 2008 to 2012.
“If India allows non-state sponsored education eco-system to evolve, imagine how many university towns can be created with $3bn investment!” tweeted Amit Malviya.
Many State universities are in bad condition, the gap can be filled by private universities. These private universities will be able to provide adequate faculty, research facilities, relevant curriculum and adequate infrastructure – the reason why Indian students go abroad to study. With greater autonomy, these institutions can change the way higher education is imparted in India. Indian youth needs learner-centred model of higher education where they can be mentored to make their careers in the areas of their strength and abilities. This will not only enhance India’s ability in Research and Development but also make the youth more employable.
These Universities will also help Narendra Modi’s plan to build smart cities across the country. Like Bangalore’s electronic city and Hyderabad’s HITEC City built around Information technology hub, smart cities can be built around universities with world class academic infrastructure.
Economist and Urban theorist Sanjeev Sanyal in his column ‘Building Bostons, not Kanpurs’ validates the abovementioned argument:
Around the world, universities are the stuff that makes great cities. Imagine Boston without Harvard, MIT and the myriad other institutions that are clustered around the Boston-Cambridge area. In Britain, Oxford and Cambridge are vibrant urban centres that derive their vigour almost entirely from playing host to famous universities. Even large and diversified global cities like London and New York would be much diminished without the intellectual clustering of LSE, Columbia, UCL and NYU.
The liberalisation of Indian higher education will bring many top foreign institutes to India. It will also help solve the problem of brain drain to some extent as it may prove to be helpful in keeping home those who go out for higher studies and settle down there.
Indian higher education — currently the third largest in the world — will surpass the US in the next five years and China in the next 15 years to be the largest system of higher education in the world. The largest, but will it be the best or better is the important question. India’s higher education is plagued with poor quality academic and physical infrastructure, inadequate and substandard faculty, and irrelevant curriculum. Liberalising higher education by making way for more autonomous domestic and foreign educational institutions will not solve the entire problem but will definitely be an important step in the right direction. |