Elitism In Higher Education
Deccan Herald
19 November, 2003The Union government is trying to pass the Private Universities Bill in Parliament in the next session which will, among other things, permit the setting up of ‘self-financing’ universities which means such universities which will not require any financial support from the government. These ‘self financing’ universities can run courses in ‘emerging’ areas of science and technology by making available additional funds for them.
This bill is the result of the misguided report of the Task Force on Higher Education headed by industrialist Anil Ambani. Worried over the implications of the drastic changes that such a measure will bring about, Parliament referred it to the standing committee for the HRD ministry. By all accounts the opposition to it has been neutralised and could become law in a few months from now and change the face of higher education in India.
To summarise the Ambani report, university education is a “non-merit good”, not necessary for everybody, and that it is best left to the market forces. In short, the government should not concern itself with higher education; it should rather focus on basic education.
This means that only the elite and the moneyed will enter the “emerging’’ areas of study. The privileged will thus get more privileged; their place among the top will be further cemented by their specialised education. The foundation for a highly inequitable system is being laid.
When higher education is left to the market forces, it results in ‘elitisation’ of a basic need; it puts higher education firmly out of reach of the millions of under-privileged of our country who dream of going to the university one day. It firmly makes higher education a “commercial commodity’’ that is available only to those who can afford the price which, going by today’s rate of a seat in a professional college, could be anywhere between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 30 lakh.
The world has travelled a long distance from the earlier thinking that the government should focus on primary education rather than higher education. India’s subsidised higher education was much criticised but the last 15 years have shown that all that investment was worth it as the middle class reaped rich returns in the era of the “comptech’’ boom. It is noteworthy that several world organisations have spoken of the importance of higher education.
National priority
The UNESCO-organised first world conference on higher education in 1998 in which 182 countries participated, resolved that development of higher education should be one of the highest national priorities. The Task Force on Higher Education 2000 (set up by whom?) sent out the message that higher education was no longer a luxury. In total opposition to these sentiments, the Ambani report says that higher education is not necessary for every one.
Why this opposition to the government’s role in higher education? Why the campaign to privatise education? One of the World Bank commandments says that the government should reduce its expenditure and so the axe falls on items which will affect the underprivileged the most, and there will not be much opposition to it. The articulate middle-class, hitherto the biggest beneficiary of state-subsidised higher education, has outgrown state universities as their children are leaving for studies abroad even for under-graduate studies. The middle class has climbed the ladder and now does not hesitate to kick it down.
Is it true that we spend so much on higher education that we need to trim expenditure? Do we have so many specialists in science and technology that we need to cut down the numbers? Do we have so many of our youth in higher education that we can afford to sit back in contentment?
Far from it. In India, just about 6 per cent of the youth in the 17-25 years age group is in the university which is far less than 15 per cent in any Third World country. It is between 40 per cent and 60 per cent in the UK, Canada, Israel, Korea, Japan and the US. For a population of 45 million Korea has 120 universities; the 50 million population in the UK has 170 universities, 6 million Israelis have 10 universities. India? A paltry 280 universities for a population 1000 million.
What about our much-bandied army of science and technology personnel? According to an estimate there are 110 such personnel for every 1000 persons in Japan. In Israel, it is 76, in USA 55, Korea 46, Brazil 26, China 8. In India it is a mere 3.6! As for expenditure on higher education, it has been decreasing in the last 15 years of the reforms era. From an average expenditure of Rs 551 per student in 1991-92, it fell to Rs.429 in 1995-96. India spends 2.8 per cent of its GDP on higher education which is much less than most of the Third World countries. Even this meagre amount is now sought to be reduced in the name of reducing the “burden” on the government.
Positively scandalous
It is positively scandalous that while we invest so little on our youth to harness their potential and secure their future, we spend as much as 10 per cent of the GDP on the bureaucracy. Yet the World Bank will not insist on pruning the bureaucracy nor will the government of the day, or any in future, dare to even think of reducing the budget for the bureaucracy. No privileged class, caste or nation or a comity of nations will tolerate paring down of their privileges.
So, an all-out effort is made to deprive the lesser ones so that the privileges of the powerful remain untouched. India was not colonised by the English alone. Nor did colonisation end in 1947.What will be the ramifications of this commercialisation of higher education in the name of privatisation? For one, education will deepen the class divide between the already fragmented society of ours. Money becomes merit in this scheme of things since only the rich and the better-off will be able to access higher education. The poor will be further deprived.The state-subsidised higher education in the past had helped at least a small percentage of the rural, underprivileged, backward youth in getting a university degree. If higher education becomes an expensive commodity, yet another door will be shut on the under-privileged of our country.