Will higher education see a sea change?

11 Bills related to education sector are pending in Parliament. The Foreign Universities Bill is expected to improve quality of education.

From news about abolishment of the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Exam (IIT-JEE) to the pending Foreign Education Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2011 was touted to be the year of reforms in the education sector. So, when the sector ushers itself into 2012, the stakeholders see the new year as one requiring consolidation in several areas. Partly because most of the proposed reforms in 2011 fell by the wayside even as the Lokpal-Anna Hazare storm racked the Parliament paralysing the houses and postponing business in the monsoon and the winter sessions.

Business Standard tells you how the new year would look like for the higher education sector in India:

Bill please!
A total of 11 Bills were pending in Parliament, including the Foreign Educational Institutions (regulation of entry and operations) Bill, the Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Educational Institutional, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill, the Education Tribunals Bill and the Institutes of Technology Amendment Bill. These Bills have been pending for the past year-an-a-half. According to experts, one of the impact that the Foreign Universities Bill will have once it is passed, would be on the quality of education in the country in 2012.

"Even the lower end institutes in the US, for example, are better than the mid-level institutes in India. As and when foreign universities are allowed to set up campuses in the country, it will improve quality because of competition and give students more options," said Gautam Puri, MD, CareerLauncher.

Just because the reforms have not come through does not, however, mean that business has stopped, say industry insiders. "Many private universities are now engaging more actively with foreign partners for content creation, for getting faculty and for joint degree programmes, which foreign partners also find more lucrative than setting up independent campuses," said Sandeep Aneja of Kaizen Private Equity.

Many windows, one door!
Many are of the opinion that the problem with the current system is that there are too many authorities with too much overlap. The Medical Council of India, the All India Council of Technical Education and the University Grants Commission are always getting into turf tussles.

According to Gautam Puri, the regulation of the segment is fragmented and the focus is largely on the development of physical infrastructure in regulation rather than ensuring overall quality. This, say analysts, is where the need for an overall authority comes into the picture.

"Reforms and an overarching authority are essential because as of now the educational authorities have become licensing bodies. This needs to change, and a regulatory body should be put in place," said Narayanan Ramaswamy, head, education practice, KPMG. Ramaswamy also opined that even when these Bills were passed, the effect would not be immediate. The positive would be that the intent would become clear and things would be seen as moving in the right direction.

IIMs: Overseas bound?
Just when it seemed that faculty crunch had cut their wings, the IIMs Ahmedabad, Calcutta and Bangalore hinted at coming together in creating an international campus. On the sidelines of a joint IIM-A and IIM-C conference in October 2011, Samir Barua, director of IIM-A, said that the IIMs were awaiting operational autonomy, which he expects should come through within a year, after adding that overseas campus in Singapore and Dubai could be considered. So if things fructify, the three premier IIMs may as well begin work on their overseas campus in 2012. The HRD ministry had in October 2009 given an in-principle approval for IIMs to set up campuses abroad.

AICTE's maiden management test
Come February, country's technical education regulator, AICTE, will launch its Common Management Admission Test or CMAT. The test, a point of discussion in the academic circle, has made B-schools unhappy much before its launch. Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI), an association of B-schools, is mulling legal action against AICTE.