End The Licence Raj

Even as the mercury soars, in Delhi University the rush for college admissions begins. Each year the number of applicants increases, the cut-off marks rise higher, and more students turn away disappointed. Less visible but equally consequential is the exodus of children of affluent families to foreign universities. Indians spend more than $4 billion abroad annually on higher education, a huge amount for a developing country. Eastern states like Bihar and Bengal witness the migration of students to Delhi for general courses and to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh for engineering and medical courses. All this is symptomatic of the vast gulf in our country between the demand and supply of quality higher education. And as any HR manager will tell you, our universities and colleges are also failing in one of their basic objectives of producing a sufficient number of high-quality, employable candidates. Public institutes: stuck in a quagmire With government spending on higher education languishing at an abysmal 0.37 per cent of GDP, government-funded universities and colleges suffer due to inadequate funding. The government baulks at the idea of hiking fees, believing this will deny access to students from unprivileged backgrounds. But then quality higher education is expensive all over the world. Granted lifetime tenure, the faculty at many government institutes has little incentive to perform. The syllabus is out of sync with the needs of the job market. Hence the median quality of education at government universities and colleges has plunged very low. Private institutes: choking under state control The licence ra

This article was originally published on June 30, 2011.