If all sectors have benefitted from opening up, why are the stronger ones like education and agriculture still insulated?
By Our Correspondent
Let me first caution the reader with full disclosure. I teach at an institution that works with a foreign university in providing education to Indian students. And believe that it does a good job in providing good quality education to a small number of students. Now that I have revealed my bias, please so observe that I will try and be as objective as is possible.
Last week the Union Cabinet passed the bill on allowing foreign universities to operate in India. The old debate started again. Won’t these universities be very expensive? Will they not include some fly by night operators who will fleece the poor Indian student? Will they provide quality education? Won’t these high profile universities poach teachers from existing Indian institutions? Who will regulate these new players?
Even if we stop them from repatriating their profits back home, what is to prevent them from earning huge margins
and build large empires in India? Won’t these universities only focus on profitable courses like management education,
medicine and engineering? Will they not bring in an alien culture and ethos which could very well damage the social fabric of the country? Wouldn’t students who graduate from these institutions tend to leave the country and get jobs abroad? And of course, who will regulate these foreign entities and what ought to be the nature of such regulation?
The critical issue indeed is of regulation. How does the Indian government ensure that the education provided is of reasonable quality? There are various options here. The first is that only institutions that have authorization and certification by regulatory authorities in their home countries be allowed to set up campuses in India. This assumes that the regulator in foreign countries is at least as fair and honest as our own University Grants Commission (UGC) that approves university courses and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) that regulates technical and managerial courses. And that the respective medical councils in other parts of the world are as well equipped, respected and transparently run as the Medical Council of India or in case of legal education, the Bar Council of India.
If we do not trust these bodies, then should we, as the bill proposes, have independent certification bodies whose rating is made mandatory for all institutions that decide to open schools in India?
Make these new institutions publish annual reports, give evidence for all claims they make and be made criminally liable for any false advertising? The new bill proposes all this and in all fairness has indeed made it daunting for any foreign institution to set up fraudulent operations. The new bill also stipulates a 50 crore rupee corpus that the new university must set up, to ensure there is no fly by night operation afoot. The UGC will also ensure that the new institutions do not compromise national security. The cynics will of course argue that no legislation in India has the teeth required to implement its harsh provisions and that these educators will get away lightly. The other concerns are not simple either. What about profit making? The bill has addressed this issue by prohibiting the repatriation of profits made from fee collections. In fact, by making it mandatory for all foreign institutions to be registered as Section 25 companies, the bill has ensured that no profits will be made in the first instance. A Section 25 company, with limited liability is a firm that may be formed for “promoting commerce, art, science, religion, charity or any other useful object,” provided that no profits, or other income derived through promoting the company’s objects may be distributed in any form to its members. Will these foreign players only offer “profitable” courses? Clearly the big gaps in supply are for business schools, medical schools and technical education. However, the new knowledge economy has multiple demands today. Law schools, like the National Law School in Bangalore and now in other cities, have resuscitated demand for a profession that many thought was cleanly buried and forgotten. The other courses that have seen a surge in demand and a big shortage of supply are in journalism, media, fashion, English language and literature, public health, education and the list goes on. Note that a number of these courses are those our own universities have ignored for long. New institutions will indeed help bridge this supply demand gap. They will bring in the much needed internationalism to these subjects that are by definition cross cultural and dependent on best practice awareness from across the globe.
One argument being made for allowing foreign universities in is the fact that nearly an estimated one lakh students leave India to study abroad every year and that this is a 4 billion dollar industry in itself. This is a simplistic argument for it is unlikely these students who actively wish to study abroad will stop going because of campuses set in India. This bunch of students will continue to go abroad as many of their predecessors have, and work in multinational firms abroad and in research institutes there. Some of them will win Nobel Prizes too. In fact as per capita incomes in India go up and more Indians join the millionaire club, this number of students going abroad should only increase.
The more acceptable assumption is that after the lakh or so have left Indian shores, there will be another lakh or so who will join the Indian made foreign university here. These will be those students who for some reason could not go abroad, but have the urge and the money to study at an expensive place for a degree they value. The number of seats in Indian colleges is abysmally low and it is only the lucky few who are able to join university colleges in any case. With enrolment rates in primary schools doubling in the last six years, drop-out rates falling in secondary schools there are at least a million additional college seats that must be provided if school graduates must proceed to college. The
argument will also be put forth that these seats should be provided for by exiting state run universities, but what this line of thought ignores is the dismal quality of university education in India. Not one indigenous institution, university or otherwise, including the hallowed
IIMS and the IITs figure in any list of the top hundred schools in the world. Paradoxically the only school that figures in the top twenty of any kind is a business school set up in Hyderabad a few years ago, with three foreign universities coming together to offer a joint programme.
The interesting thing in this new debate is a point that has often baffled many India observers. Here is a country that clearly has benefitted enormously from opening up its various sectors to competition both domestically and from abroad. The auto sector has been revolutionized, the cell phone sector growth and its impact on social development legendary. A back office outsourcing revolution that has provided at least 2 million jobs to rookie graduates in big and small towns. If all sectors have benefitted from opening up, why are the stronger ones like education and agriculture still insulated? Why does the same benefit that accrues to all sectors that face competition be allowed to flow into sectors where many more millions would benefit? A country that claims to be a superpower in the new knowledge economy cannot worry about competition from foreign teachers. The public sector in areas where foreign providers have come in has not collapsed, despite some employees getting poached. Further, public institutions faced with competition have indeed shaped up better and performed laudably; nationalized banks being a sterling example of turnaround in service standards and profitability. Competition forces efficiency, bridges supply shortages, ensures better salaries and pushes up quality among all players. Higher education in India suffers from a complete absence of a research focus, an inability to adapt quickly to changing demands from technology and the workplace and a paucity of good teachers. A little bit of competition, for there are not many institutions rushing in to invest in India, will do well for a sector that will provide the country with skill sets required to keep up the momentum of a ten per cent annual GDP growth rate for the next decade at least.