University Challenged - Behind the Veil of India’s Private Higher Education

The mushrooming phase seems now over, and the numbers appear to have stabilized. In their policy brief for Institut Montaigne called Demographic Dividend or Demographic Burden? India’s Education Challenge, Christophe Jaffrelot and Kiran Bhatty wrote: "the number of private institutions has peaked and is going down, especially in the Business schools’ sector". However, looking at the high numbers of Indians leaving the country to study abroad because they can’t find a university suited to their needs in India, one can assume that the domestic market of higher education is far from being saturated and that there is still room for newcomers, be they public or private.

Contrasted consequences for academic quality

Numbers aside, the consequences of the rise of private higher education in India should be nuanced. The shady side of the burgeoning Indian private higher education industry has been much written about, and justifiably so. Fake universities, unethical commercial practices, low insertion of the graduates on the job market amongst other issues are a reality which clearly advocates for a better control and quality norms from the Indian government. 

But on the other end of the spectrum, excellent private players have also emerged. Historically, the best universities in India have been public institutions: the colleges of Delhi University for example, or the famous Indian Institutes of Technology, reputed as the best engineering schools in India, all public, have acceptance rates below 1%, making them some of the most selective universities worldwide. 

Today, these marquee names of Indian academia are being challenged by private universities like Azim Premji University in Bangalore, OP Jindal Global University and Ashoka University in Haryana, Flame University in Pune, Krea University in Chennai, just to name a few. Students start applying to these private universities not only because they could not secure a seat in the most prestigious public universities, like it was widely the case for many average private institutions, but also because they are genuinely impressed by their academic quality. 

The question of social inclusion 

The newcomers can rely on serious advantages. Their private status allows them much more flexibility than their public counterparts which abide by the bureaucratic rules of the University Grants Commission - the authority coordinating and determining standards of higher education in India. They have to be strictly non-profitable, but are allowed to design their own curriculum, grant their own degrees (recognized by the government) and hire faculty members through ambitious recruitment policies and attractive packages, thanks to the financial backing of industrial groups or wealthy businessmen. 

In private universities on the contrary, the reservation rule doesn’t apply. Universities may or may not have an internal scholarship policy, and even in the ones that have such policy, social diversity is far from being accomplished and amongst students those who come from the higher casts remain overrepresented. All levels of tuition fees are practiced, from a few hundred euros a year to 50,000 euros for the 15 months "PGPMAX" at the famous Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, a MBA equivalent which doesn’t have the title… But is always full. 

Private universities are not protected from political pressures

What about academic freedom? Intuitively, the status of private universities can be perceived as a rampart against an intrusive government, compared to a public sector more acquiescent to politics. In Indian public universities, political nominations of vice chancellors are frequent. When you informally discuss with academics, those who are not in agreement with the ruling party easily confide that they are frightened to organize events or produce research which could criticize the power in place. 

Unfortunately, private universities are not protected from such pressures, as the resignation of renowned political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta from Ashoka University showed in March. Ashoka University is a young institution, specialized in Liberal Arts, which has achieved a reputation of excellence in less than 10 years, especially through its coveted "Young India Fellowship" programme. In media interviews, Pratap Bhanu Mehta explained that the founders of the university "made it clear that [he] was a political liability for Ashoka University". 

Behind each private university is a funding body, which can be a company (BITS Pilani is backed by the Aditya Birla group), an individual (Shiv Nadar University is funded by the owner of HCL technologies), or a group of donors, like for Ashoka University. When donors are business owners, they need the government to rule in favour of their companies activities and hence don’t want to take the risk of shooting themselves in the foot, as Christophe Jaffrelot describes in this article published in The Indian Express. 

The National Education Policy shuffles the deck

However, the new National Education Policy, which entered into effect in July 2020, could shuffle the deck very soon. This big set of reforms mentions very few elements about the private universities as such, except that "All Higher Education Institutions - public and private - shall be treated within this regulatory regime" and that "private philanthropic efforts in education should be encouraged". 

But the big change is somewhere else. The government aims at restructuring the scattered Indian higher education system by transforming higher education institutions into large multidisciplinary universities with 3,000 or more students. Yet, most of the private higher education actors today are very small structures teaching one or two programmes to a few hundred students. As a result, some might grow, some might merge, and some might disappear. 

The law also sets ambitious goals for the internationalization of universities, focus on research through start-up incubation labs, technology development centres, implementation of multidisciplinary education, greater autonomy for institutions, modernisation of pedagogy, better training of faculty… But the question remains whether the means will match the objectives: in the context of the pandemic, the 2021 Education budget has actually contracted and is 6% lower than in 2020. 

Copyright: NARINDER NANU / AFP