Seminar on “Challenges in Higher Education: Present Scenario”
at Bharathiar University

Educationists anxiously await the passing of the four important higher education Bills, scheduled to be placed in Parliament on Monday. The Bills are: Foreign Educational Institution (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill 2010, the Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Higher and Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill 2010, the National Authority for Regulation in Accreditation of Higher Educational Institutions Bill 2009, and the Setting up of a National Education Tribunal.
Though these have got the nod of the Cabinet, whether they will be passed as Acts, is being watched with interest and trepidation by many educationists. At a recently held seminar on “Challenges in Higher Education: Present Scenario” at Bharathiar University, representatives of almost all college and university teachers' associations expressed fear. There was a unanimous view that if the Bills got passed they would only affect higher education.
Speaking pointedly on the entry of foreign education providers, Secretary, Kerala State Council for Higher Education, T. Thomas Joseph, said the Bill did not mean only universities and colleges, but also included institutions like tutorial colleges and academies. “These will be treated as national institutions and will be given subsidies. So the subsidies being allotted to Indian institutions would be divided and shared to include the foreign stakeholders”.
Mr. Joseph termed as a “false notion” the view of Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal that Indian higher education was by and large inferior to Western education.Mr. Joseph noted that the opinion that greater proximity to Western education could improve the quality of Indian education was a fallacy. “Their entry should be viewed with caution”. He asserted that the entry of foreign education providers would not resolve the problems of access, equity, or quality, but only aggravate them. Even the introduction of more universities and colleges would not address greater access if the fee was unaffordable. “What we need is equitable access, which the foreign education providers would not ensure. They will only wean away a large chunk of bright students from the Indian institutions”.
“Modernisation of higher education requires huge investments. With Government expenditure on education as a whole pegged at 3.5 per cent and on higher education alone at 0.4 per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP), public expenditure on education by Western standards in abysmally low in India.
“For real improvement to be seen, public expenditure on education should be increased to at least six per cent of the GNP, of which 25 per cent should be set apart for higher education,” Mr. Joseph said. In the allocation for higher and technical education, Rs. 30,682 crore had been set apart for new initiatives – 16 central universities, 14 world-class universities, 370 colleges, eight Indian Institutes of Technology, seven Indian Institutes of Management, and 10 National Institutes of Technology, besides others. The Planning Commission had estimated that a total of Rs. 2.52 lakh crore would be required for the implementation of the above schemes, indicating a resource gap of Rs. 2.22 lakh crore. In other words, only eight per cent would be the contribution of the public sector, and the remaining 92 per cent would be that of the private sector.
Pointing out that there were no quick-fix alternatives to adequate public investment in education, Mr. Joseph said that the Bill on foreign education providers did not provide for a ceiling on fee to be levied by them and the reservation of seats. The lure of such institutions would only result in the exodus of good students from Indian institutions and this would result to academic impoverishment and deterioration of these institutions.
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