Ficci outlines steps to reform higher education

In a bid to give a face-lift to the country’s higher education system, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) has submitted a string of recommendations to the government.

The apex industry body reasons that low public spending of 0.63 per cent of GDP on higher education has been a cause for concern for the government. Hence, allocation for Higher and Technical education during the 11th Plan has been raised from Rs 9,600 crore in the 10th plan to Rs 84,943 crore in the 11th Plan. However, this “massive increase in public investment” would not be sufficient to meet the needs of the country.

 

“If we take into consideration only the Government's new initiatives of establishing 16 central universities, 370 colleges in low GER districts, 8 IITs, 7 IIMs, 10 NITs, 20 IIITs, 5 IISER, 2 SPAs and 50 Centres for training and research in frontier areas, for which Rs 30,682 crore is allocated, the required resource gap identified by the Planning Commission, is Rs 2.22 lakh crore. The country needs an additional 200 universities, on an average one university per district,” Ficci notes in a press statement.

To reform the system, Ficci has suggested that higher education institutions should be allowed to set up under Section 25 of the Company Act, which permits surplus generated to be ploughed back for the future expansion and quality development of the institution. It has also recommended that to attract corporate and individual contributions for educational development, all contributions should be considered business expenses and be provided with appropriate tax exemptions.

Another key recommendation includes allowing market forces to determine the fee rather than enforcing a standardised fee structure through a fee committee for all types of institutions. This would mean that non-performing institutions would automatically disappear, as students would prefer not to enrol.

The issue of fee regulation, the industry body notes in a press statement, has been dealt by clear-cut judgments passed by the apex courts including a seven-judge Bench judgment that states that the fee charged by unaided institutions cannot be regulated, subject to the condition that no institution should charge capitation fee or allow profiteering, but reasonable surpluses to meet cost of expansion and augmentation of facilities have to be allowed.

Ficci has also suggested that to combat the shortage of quality faculty and attract talented professionals from the industry to teach at universities or higher educational institutions, a professional with 10 years of industry experience could be given equivalence to PhD for qualifying to teach. Similarly, the position of Director need not necessarily be a PhD and can be equated by 20 years of professional experience.

FICCI has also recommended that a single regulatory authority, independent of government should be set up with its role limited to regulating public and private, aided and unaided, institutions at the initial stages; institutions with credible reputation over a period of five-years should be given "autonomous" status; delinking the quality assurance mechanism from the regulatory authority and making it independent; having an alternative benchmarking mechanisms drawn from the best practices of UK and integrating it with mechanisms adopted by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).

FICCI also states that the government should facilitate self-financing higher education institutions to set up campuses without any entry barriers and let the market forces work, as seen in case of Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad or Great Lake Institute of Management, Chennai. These would be mega projects of substantial amount whereby the private partner would do complete funding.