With the departure of the control-and-caste-conscious (3C) politicians from the Ministry of Human Resources Development there is a window of opportunity for Mr Kapil Sibal, the new incumbent, to finally get India going on the road to high quality education. Newspaper editorials written by sane and civilized people have made numerous suggestions and -- not surprisingly -- most of these would like to see a sharply diminished role of the AICTE and similar sarkari inspectors. Let me add my 2-paise worth of ideas to this great melting pot.
Education policy in India has been motivated crass crony capitalism masquerading as concern for the customer. We are asked to believe that if the government -- consisting of the corrupt neta and the inefficient babu -- does not control all aspects of a service then the poor customer would be fleeced by the unscrupulous businessman. This is the same set of lies that kept preserved government monopolies and government supported oligopolies in telecom, aviation, postage, steel until the great bankruptcy of the 1980s forced the government to liberalise and the results are there for all to see.
Going forward we need the government to play two kinds of roles -- that of a lean regulator and of an honest financier.
While SEBI and TRAI have often been showcased as instances of positive regulation, I would suggest that we go even further and take the Registrar of Companies as a model. The Registrar of Education ( why just Higher Education ) should be the nodal agency for simply registering -- and not approving -- any educational entity in India. All that this body needs to do is to keep track of who the owners are and whether they are in compliance with the laws of the land. The Registrar of Companies does not go about the evaluating or approving the goods or services that a company provides ... it simply ensures adherence to the Companies Act. In the same vein, we could have an Educational Institutes Act and the Registrar of Education should ensure compliance with the same.
What should be there in the Educational Institutes Act ? As little as possible to ensure that Institutes declare who they are, what they offer and how much they charge. Nothing in the Act should allow the Registrar to decide who should offer what course and how much should they charge -- just as the Companies Act does not specify what goods or services are offered by any company nor how much should they charge for the same. The Act and the statutory disclosures under the Act should ensure total transparency in terms of ownership and financial status.
The second role that the Government can and should play with far more vigour is that of financial support. Here we should have bodies like the UGC that would lay down funding criteria an decide how much money should go to each Institute. All Institutes -- private or government owned -- can apply for funds and all allocations should be based on a appropriate guidelines and made visible on appropriate public platforms like websites.
We can have a multiplicity of funding bodies -- for example, in addition to the UGC, there can be state level bodies, bodies funded by specific government departments like Biotechnology or Space, or even public-private bodies set up with private participation. Each funding body can have its own criteria -- based on courses, locations, caste status of students or any other condition that is not in violation of Constitution of India -- but the information about their disbursements should be in the public domain. This will reduce arbitrariness and unfair discrimination.
The Institutes, on the other hand, by having to publicly compete for these funds will have to make sure that they meet and exceed the various criteria and this to an extent will improve the quality of education that is delivered.
This two track approach -- with a lean regulatory framework supporting a robust financial support mechanism -- would need to be thought through in greater detail but if established and operated honestly will ensure a solid foundation for higher education in India.
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