The deemed universities scam is the tip of a humungous iceberg of corruption in the higher education regulation, accreditation and financing system. HRD minister Kapil Sibal must be complimented for appointing a review committee that has brought to light this rot. In the five years that Arjun Singh lorded over the ministry, with his acolytes actively engaged in the vetting of applications and granting of permission, the pre-existing rot in the system had only gone deeper. Using the veneer of a left-of-centre’ ideology, with helpful comrades and cheerleaders in the academic world and media hailing him as a messiah of liberalism and secularism who was repairing the damage done to education by his Hindutva predecessor, Singh allowed market forces to run rampant in the higher education system. In the name of widening access to education, the Congress party allowed the dilution of the system of accreditation and regulation. The University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education and other such bodies were usurped by a range of vested interests. All of them stand collectively indicted on this issue and must be purged of the malcontents that run them.
The corruption in the system became so pervasive and daring, given the ideological, sectarian, communal and casteist shields used to defend it, that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was driven to lament the sorry state of affairs on several occasions. He repeatedly cautioned against the “quantitative growth” in higher education outpacing “qualitative growth”, but with little impact on the outcome. India needs more private investment in education. Indian students spend over $3 billion every year on tuition fees paid to institutions outside the country. Clearly, while many students will continue to go abroad for better opportunities or just the experience, many may prefer to stay home if they secure access to good and affordable educational opportunities. In the enthusiasm to punish the guilty, the government should not go to the other extreme of stifling private sector growth. The last words on this policy challenge were in fact uttered by the PM when he told the Harvard Alumni Association in India, in March 2006, that: “Private initiative can and must supplement public investment, which is vitally necessary in the sphere of education. However, we must make a distinction between public investment, public support and governmental facilitation, on the one hand and over-regulation, on the other hand. Paradoxically, our educational system faces the conflicting threats of anarchic growth in quantitative terms and moribund stagnation in qualitative terms. We need a balance between populism and over-regulation; between unbridled marketisation and excessive bureaucratisation.” The deemed universities scam shows that bureaucratic regulation is no barrier to “unbridled marketisation”. Identifying and punishing the guilty are the best cure. Now that a skeleton has tumbled out, the government must flesh out its personality, and name and shame the guilty.
