Quality in Higher Education and Building World Class Universities

Over the years we have seen that higher education is essential for national, social and economic development. It is no longer a luxury. Today, more than ever in the past, we find a nation's wealth lies in the quality of higher education. And, we are all convinced that knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness of people are important for the overall growth of a country. For a rapidly developing country like ours, therefore, high quality education system is the need of the hour. No country can think of making much headway without having a good higher education system.
Our country is home to 540 million people under the age of 30. By next year, 19 per cent of our population, an estimated 235 million will be in the higher education group. But the present scenario in the country is not as bright as it should be; considering the fact that we, after China and the United States are the biggest higher education providers in the world.
1.    Access: In India only 12 per cent of the students who complete secondary education enroll for higher education. And lamented those figures were nowhere near the 70 per cent enrolment in some developed countries. Worse, it was also much lower than the figure of 20 per cent in some Southeast Asian countries. One reason, perhaps a very important one, why the present gross enrollment ratio (GER) in the country stands at about 12 is because of the inadequate preparation of students while in secondary education stage. There is poor alignment between secondary and higher education and a lack of information on where and how to get to higher education institutions, which course to pursue and so on.
That barrier needs to be eliminated and every student needs to be enlightened about postsecondary education. That is where the departments involved in these two educations need to collaborate to build college aspirations among our students. Which means as soon as they are out of secondary education, they are prepared to take the first step towards their career. On the positive side, the government hopes to have 15 per cent enrollment in the 11th plan period (2007-12).
In India only a meager 20 percent of Higher Education Institutes are located in the 'rural' India which is home to more than 65 percent of our population. The remaining 80 percent of Institutions are located in Urban or SemiUrban areas which make up for only 30 to 35 percent of India today. The National Knowledge Commission has projected the need for 1500 Universities, but a recent more pragmatic approach of having atleast one University for each district in India needs to be paid due attention.
The present scenario where hardly 5 percent of our 460 million workers have received skills training, (In South Korea its as high as 95%) makes a strong case for India to allocate a substantial percentage of its budgetary allocations to promote vocational education to make the country a manufacturing hub. To turn around the scene in higher education, perhaps the key lies in encouraging Vocational Education like the way its been done in China. The challenge remains changing mindsets and facing social stigma.

Advisor, Charotar University of Science & Technology, Changa, Dist: Anand, Gujarat
Distance Education is another medium by which we can reach the working class and the rural populations.  
2.    Affordability: Broadly, access to postsecondary education is possible only when students can afford to attend college. Affordability is as much a consideration as any other factor. Perhaps, it means taking into consideration the weaker and underprivileged sections of our society. For many students in India, paying for college requires a combination of family contributions and some financial aid may be a student's loan.
Many of the problems involving higher education are rooted in the lack of resources. And because a whole lot of them depend on loans, it should be made easily available. No student should be denied access to education due to lack of resources. Banks can come out with better schemes and offers and publicize them. Meritrocracy needs to be honoured and scholarships must be set aside for meritorious students.
 
3.    Quality: Good education is seen as a stepping stone to a high flying career. And for good education higher education institutions clearly need welldesigned academic programmes and a clear mission. Most important for their success however, are high quality faculty and committed students.
While it may not be said of all institutions, there are many which have shortcomings in these areas.
Even if we meet our targets of higher access and enrolment, even if we spend huge amounts on higher education and even if we open a large number of new institutions, this issue of quality will not get addressed by itself.
To overcome this deficit of quality in higher education, the Central government has come out with a very progressive pay package for attracting and retaining talented faculty and the government was fully committed to structural reforms in higher education.
Yes, a major problem that we face is in the quality of higher education that our institutions impart. Unfortunately, most of them produce passouts who are nowhere near international standards. The quality of knowledge generated in higher education institutions is becoming increasingly important. It poses a serious challenge to our country specially now, at a time when we are poised to grow considerably over the next few years.
Responding to this demand without further diluting the quality will be a daunting task. This sudden growth could also entail a serious problem, that of finding faculty who can contribute gainfully to the system. Taking advantage of technology to overcome lack of enough good faculty can be one way of ensuring that our standards do not drop with the expansion.  
4.    PPP Model and Foreign Players: The issue of expansion and inclusion can be addressed by promoting private partnership and sincerely taking forward and practicing the Public Private Partnership modes of running institutes of higher education. The expansion has to see new providers gaining acceptance. New providers, namely, private players, PublicPrivate Initiatives and Foreign players.
As per Planning Commission calculations, we need atleast an additional 200 Universities to have on the average one university per district. Thus it is clear that, public resources would not be sufficient to meet the ever growing demand for quality higher education and increasing private sector investment and participation will be required to meet such demands. However, to attract quality and genuine private players our policy and regulatory framework should provide necessary enabling framework to encourage private investment and publicprivate partnership opportunities.
PublicPrivate Partnerships are imperative to expand higher education in India and to increase accessibility to it. PPP is considered an 'Apt' mantra for 'inclusive' and sustained 'growth'. The Govt. also needs to cooperate equally by simplifying regulations, creating policies favouring private investment and encouraging incentive driven structures.
Foreign Universities' entry may promote and provide 'world class' education, but their entry should be on a level playing field and policy should encourage their tieups with our Universities. We have talents in plenty but opportunities are limited. With such foreign collaborations, students at large can have the best of both worlds and R& D can be boosted.
Currently, there are around 25,000 colleges and 500 universities in the country. None is ranked amongst the top 100 in the world and only 2 are ranked in the top 500. That is a sad commentary on higher education in India. There is also a dire need to address industry academia gap to make our youth employable. What the policy makers need to ensure is that institutions of higher learning are not merely degree awarding bodies with little monitoring of quality of education they impart, but, a more responsible institute producing a professional in every sense of the word.
 

5.    Building World Class Universities: Over the next two days, you will hear about many of the most pressing issues facing higher education in India, issues that are also challenging universities in the United States and across the globe: reforming regulation and accreditation; using technology; ensuring afford ability; and promoting publicprivate cooperation. All of these issues present opportunities to improve our universities and further the good work they do in society.
Government of India has ambitious vision for higher education in India. It has shown intrepid leadership in fashioning the Ministry's plans for new worldclass universities, and for making the challenge of improving India's higher education system a national priority.
There is no doubt that India possesses a number of educational institutions that have made their mark, and will continue to make their mark, on the world stage. The Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science, and the Indian Institutes of Management are among these. But the rise of this country to become one of world's economic powerhouses begs for expansion in India's higher education system. The need is a striking one. India is already the world's largest democracy. In two decades, it will be the most populated country in the planet, and by 2050, it is likely to become the second largest economy in the world.
We hear much about today's "knowledge economy,” and for good reason: it is the innovation born at the world's great universities and the leaders who are trained there that will drive the economic growth and continued prosperity of India and the world's other leading economies in the coming decades.
With this in mind, Educationist and the Indian government have rightly set the dual goals of increasing access to higher education and creating a group of new, worldclass universities. Today, only 12 percent of collegeage Indian students pursue higher education. By contrast, in the United States, 63 percent of students go to college; among the 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average is 56 percent. Government has articulated an ambitious target of 30 percent of Indian students pursuing higher education by 2020.
Increasing access will require the expansion of enrollment at existing institutions and the creation of many new ones at all levels. The new worldclass universities will only contribute a small fraction of the required increase in enrollments throughout India, but they will play an especially prominent role in India's future development. First, however, these universities must be built, and that is what I will speak about today: the challenge of building worldclass universities.
A great research university is not built from the bricks and mortar of its campus, but of the students and scholars who inhabit it, and the discourse and ideas they share. A university exists not for the purpose of handing out diplomas to those who go through its doors, but to advance knowledge and to educate young people to become critical thinkers and society's leaders. Building a worldclass university is far more than a construction project it is building a community of knowledge, far more than it is building a campus. A worldclass university avails its students not just of courses of study, but of an environment that facilitates learning and growth in all areas of human endeavor. The university is composed of many things: a distinguished and engaged faculty; broad library and museum collections; stateoftheart laboratories and computing resources; and a wide range of extracurricular, cultural and athletic activities, to name just a few essential components.
At the most fundamental level, a worldclass university contributes to the world in three ways: through research, through education, and through institutional citizenship.
First, by facilitating advancements in science, technology, and medicine, research universities help spur economic prosperity and the advancement in the health and quality of life in communities across the world.
Second, by educating students, great universities prepare the next generation of leaders, leaders who will be able to tackle new problems and new situations with maturity and flexibility and who see the world with curiosity and an open mind.
Third, by acting as models of institutional citizenship, worldclass universities contribute to the betterment of society and instill in their students social responsibility and an appreciation of service to their communities.
Let me discuss each role of the university in turn.
 
6.    Inspiring innovation: First and foremost, a worldclass university must have a worldclass faculty. This serves as the backbone of any institution. For a broad, comprehensive university to be considered worldclass it must have a faculty that, through its research, is making significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge.
In our "knowledge economy," nations prosper by virtue of their capacity to innovate to develop and introduce new products, processes, services, and even, new ways of thinking. The extent to which such innovation happens is a function of the continuing advance of science.
As the principal source of basic research, comprehensive universities playa fundamental and irreplaceable role in encouraging economic development and national competitiveness. This basic research is motivated by the quest for intellectual discovery, not some practical objectivebut in the long run, it is the wellspring for all commercially oriented research and development.
That fact, that fundamental research occurs within the university rather than in government laboratories, nonteaching research institutes, or private industry is an essential element of allowing a university to realize its full potential. When researchers are isolated in research institutes, students especially undergraduates are deprived of exposure to firstrate scientists, their methods, and their research. Absent the best scientists, the quality of teaching will suffer, and the curriculum is less likely to include the most novel thinking and innovative approaches.
Worldclass research requires substantial resources, and it is important to allocate these resources to produce maximum social benefit. This is one area where America has far outstripped the rest of the world, by allocating its public funding for research not by seniority and not by political giveandtake, but through the strict meritocracy of peer review. India would be well advised to adopt this model.
The research undertaken in universities must not stay in the academic buildings and laboratories where it is born. To drive national innovation, it must move from theory to practice, and the university plays a key role in this process as well. Engagement with industry is a central function of the modem research university, as commercializing faculty inventions benefits both the university and the broader society.
 
7.    Training future leaders: Second, just as faculty members contribute, through their scholarship and research, to the intellectual vigor of their nation and the world, they also serve to shape the future leaders of their nation and, again, the world.
The phrase "the knowledge economy" that is so often spoken about would seem to suggest that universities impart to young people what is most obvious that is, knowledge. But the best universities do not practice the mere transfer of knowledge from teacher to student. They focus not on the mastery of content, but on the development of their students' capacity for independent, critical thinking.
Universities exist to teach young people how to think, not what to think. The best American universities seek to educate undergraduates not to be experts in a particular field, but to be creative, flexible, and adaptive; to approach problems critically and to collaborate with others to solve them; and to be able to understand different cultures and adapt to new environments. Universities like Yale train undergraduates not for a profession, but for life.
The method of education employed by America's most selective universities what we know as the "liberal education" of undergraduates is particularly well suited to preparing students to enter the rapidlychanging modem world. Courses are not principally about a student mastering a body of knowledge, but about that student's mind being stretched. This must be a guiding light in the creation of a course of study: as many classes as possible should be small, small enough to take shape as active discussions, not as lectures passively attended. Students must be challenged not to memorize, but to analyze. Professors must serve as mentors, as sources of inspiration, not merely as lecturers and graders.
Students, too, should not find their development limited to the classroom. Students at Yale often say that they learn more over meals with their peers in university dining halls than they do in classrooms and lecture halls. In addition, extracurricular activities.producing a play, singing in an a cappella group, writing for a campus publication help teach skills in teamwork, communication, and collaboration that students later put to use as their careers develop.
 
8.    Bettering society: Third, a worldclass university leads by example, both in its local community and in theworld. Acts of institutional citizenship have benefits on two levels: they represent a positive force for human welfare, and they also inspire students to embrace social responsibility in their own lives.
We can create a comprehensive strategy to engage with our surrounding community, partnering with public officials and neighborhood groups to better the city in which we live. Our initiatives can include an internship program to allow students to work in schools, community service organizations, and local government; a Homebuyer Program to subsidize home purchases by our faculty and staff in neighborhoods around the campus; a concerted effort to spinoff Yale research into commercial ventures, particularly in biotechnology and medicine, and a major investment in the redevelopment of the downtown retail district. As a result of these actions, our community can be dramatically strengthened.
On a more global scale, consider the issue of reducing carbon emissions. The problem of global warming requires a multinational solution, and no solution will succeed without the cooperation of the United States and India. But universities can and should play an important role in the effort to curtail global warming, both in their research and in setting standards for their own carbon emissions.
Of course, we acknowledge that even the most ambitious sustainability efforts at the world's universities will not have a measurable impact on global carbon emissions. But in keeping with our mission as a teaching institution, we seek to inspire our students and lead by example. And I believe that the collective leadership of the world's universities on this important issue may very well serve, over time, to make meaningful global cooperation more likely.
 
9.    Conclusion: There is no doubt that expanding access to higher education in India is an imperative, and Government and others should be commended for understanding its importance. Expanding access to higher education will raise the general standard of living and create avenues of upward mobility for the most disadvantaged. With adequate investment of resources, expanding access is an achievable objective; it has been done before, in Europe and Japan following the second World War, and in China within the last eleven years.
But building worldclass universities is a Herculean task. It has never been done before in one concerted effort, by one country. And it requires more than money. But if India succeeds, the impact on Indian society and its aspirations to world leadership will be limitless. It is through worldclass universities that the seeds of innovation are planted arid the next generation of leaders acquires the capacity to lead. As this dream is pursued, it will be important to ensure that even these elite universities are accessible and affordable, and not merely available to those whose families can pay for it.
The challenge is immense, but the potential gains are commensurate with the challenge. Through their research, teaching, and institutional citizenship, a new set of great universities will strengthen this society, and the people of India and of the rest of the world will reap the benefits.