Asia

Regulating Education in India: How Much?

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ November 13, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The Wall Street Journal is carrying a front page article (at least on the webpage) on the extent to which India’s higher education is failing its people. Not surprisingly, I also found an interesting commentary on Atanu Dey’s blog on this WSJ piece (education is one of his pet peeves).

The WSJ goes into excruciating details of how India’s license Raj is stiffling education and education providers.

“There is a quiet crisis in higher education in India that runs deep,” said Sam Pitroda, chairman of commission, in a report. “The system as a whole is overregulated.”

India’s national and state governments are pouring billions of dollars into expanding higher education. The Indian government, which funds about a third of India’s public higher-education costs (states pay the rest), plans a ninefold increase in spending to $17 billion over the next five years, according to a plan unveiled in 2007.

But reducing the bureaucratic burden on the sector won’t be easy. Any change in the powers of the All India Council for Technical Education requires a vote of Parliament, whose members can derive influence by pressuring educational institutions to admit children of supporters, several officials of colleges and college boards say.

“Education is a vote-getting patronage item,” says Ajit Rangnekar, deputy dean of the Indian Business School. That school, launched in 2001 with the support of India’s business elite, isn’t under the purview of the Council for Technical Education.

So far so good – that politicians and beauracrats use their position for power is hardly surprising. So yes, overregulation is a problem. And if lower regulation helped the boom in telecommunications, it is natural to expect it will also help education. But how far is enough?

Atanu goes too far in concluding that if too much government is bad then no government whatsoever must be the only way forward. The idea, that has been espoused often by many free-market economists, is that unbridled privatization of education will save us all.

To a certain extent, this assertion comes down to ideology – privatization has been en vogue. Yet, with the pendulum swinging the other way in America and elsewhere amid calls for greater regulation of everything one must pause to at least review if the alternative is so great.

Second, the suggestion that privatization is in itself a solution is too simplistic. India’s colleges suffer from red tape. However, they also suffer from lack of resources, a general paucity of trained teachers, a social framework that no longer values teachers (as it did gurus), and extreanous calls upon the attentions of teachers. The idea that the withdrawal of the government will solve all of these problems is disingenous. As Martin Carnoy had commented with regard to education vouchers:

I would like to believe, with Professor West, in a panacea that could make everyone learn more without investing enormous time and effort in improving children’s nutrition, home lives, and the way all schools deliver knowledge. Our task as educators and social reformers would be that much simpler. Unfortunately, vouchers tend to divert attention from the overall complexity of the learning problem rather than providing a real solution.

Altbach and Jayaram provide a more balanced perspective in the Hindu. Theirs is a perspective on the specific initiative (that the WSJ mentions) - the creation of world class universities. The article pokes quite a few holes into the government’s strategy. Yet, it concludes

The challenges facing the creation of world-class universities are daunting. Indeed, if India is to succeed as a great technological power with a knowledge-based economy, world-class universities are required. The first step, however, is to examine the problems and create realistic solutions. Spending large sums scattershot will not work. Nor will copying the American academic model succeed.

This is a more realistic view. But it also highlights why privatization in education will not be so easy. In India, universities have not merely been vehicles for enhancing competitiveness of a “knowledge economy.” They have had at least as important a role to play in social cohesion by providing a secular curriculum and the appearence of equal access. If we are to change that role, it cannot be done without a debate on the pros and cons.

Finally, there is one more argument against complete privatization. By all means, the government is responsible for the failure of higher education. But there are two responses to that failure – ask the government to withdraw, or hold it accountable to its citizens. I much prefer the latter. Certainly, it may not be the easier of the two, but it is how democracies should work.

Tags: Education, governance, privatization, South Asia