The scene
Many aspirants few avenues
Demand for higher education is outstripping supply. For 138 million aspirants, only 20 million seats are available across the country. Even though the government is trying to plug the gap by putting more focus on skill development and vocational education, it is still a long way off for the millions aspiring for higher education.
Aditi Tandon

It's again that time of the year when Class XII students, after appearing for the boards, wait for their results with bated breath. Only last year, the country had witnessed an unprecedented situation when exceptionally high scores in CBSE’s (Central Board of Secondary Education) school-leaving exam had sent the cut-offs soaring to 100 per cent for admission to Sri Ram College for Commerce, one of the most sought after colleges of the University of Delhi (DU).

No matter how vehemently the DU and the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) might state that this year would be better, chances that it would indeed be so are bleak.

Figures do not lie

India has 40 Central Universities spread across states. But DU alone, with its 83 affiliated colleges, accounts for over one-third of student enrolment in the central university system. The average annual enrolment in all Central Universities put together is about 3.5 lakh, out of which 1.32 lakh continue to be enrolled in DU alone.

Being the only Indian university to figure among the top 500 world universities, as per the 2011 QS rankings, DU, ranked 371 globally (down from 317 in 2010). It gets to bear its share of the brunt as the higher education system staggers to find feet in a scenario of soaring demand and limited supply.

The challenges of access, equity and quality, which HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had listed at the start of his ministerial tenure in 2009, remain what they were — challenges.

To begin with, there are more higher education aspirants than the system can accommodate. The country has 436 universities and university-level institutions, including 40 Central Universities, 227 state universities, 18 private, 105 deemed and 41 nationally important (including IITs, IIMs, IISERs) institutions.

It has 25,938 colleges, of which 14,321 are for arts, sciences and commerce; 2,894 for engineering and technology; 2,074 for medical, 3,357 for teacher training and 3,292 for other disciplines. There are 1,914 polytechnics and 14 open universities, which the Distance Education Council has approved to offer courses in the distance learning mode. These are located in Andhra Pradesh; Bihar; Chhattisgarh; Gujarat; Karnataka, MP, Maharashtra; Rajasthan; Tamil Nadu, UP, Uttarakhand, West Bengal; Guwahati and Delhi.

In all these institutes, put together, the enrolment for 2009-2010 (the latest available) was 20 million (2, 07, 40, 740 precisely) comprising 1, 24, 44, 600 boys and 82, 69, 140 girls. The share of SCs in total enrolment was 24 lakh (24,39,585 to be precise) and of STs 6.52 lakh.

On the other hand, the demand for education in any given year is much higher than the actual enrolment. The Registrar General of India’s population projection for 18 to 23 (college-going) year-olds is 138 million (13, 83, 29, 238 to be precise). Of these, 7, 27, 79, 214 are boys and 6, 55, 50, 024 are girls.

More autonomy needed

So while India has 138 million college-going people, its system has space for only 20 million. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (percentage of college goers to college- going population) is 17 per cent for boys and 12.6 per cent for girls.

Almost 66 per cent (1, 38, 72, 870 students) of all students in higher education are enrolled in undergraduate courses, arts leading the tally with 63, 04, 595 students followed by 21 lakh in science, 20 lakh in commerce, 5 lakh in education, 3 lakh in medicine, 2 lakh in law and 1.5 lakh in management. In all central institutes – IITs, NITs to IISERs, equality is a casualty as the percentage of girls, SCs and STs, in the total enrolment is abysmally low.

In IITs, girls made up 12.3 per cent of total students in 2009; SCs comprised 14.7 per cent and STs 5 per cent. Thrust in all the central institutions is on undergraduate study and doctoral courses have a few takers. In IITs, 48.53 per cent enrolment was in undergraduatecourses in 2009; 28 per cent in postgraduate courses and less than 10 per cent for doctoral degree.

"Statistics don’t lie. There is acute dearth of good teaching institutions. At SRCC (Shri Ram College of Commerce), we battle every year to accommodate students. But you would be surprised to know that we are not good enough for the UGC’s Centre for Excellence grant of Rs 1 crore. This scheme is meant for accredited institutes. We may be good but because we are not accredited, we can’t get the grant. The system is inflexible. Colleges have no freedom to start new courses," rues P.C Jain, Principal, SRCC.

This concern is echoed in the Madhav Menon Committee report on "Autonomy for Central Educational Institutes (CEIs)" submitted to the HRD Ministry last year. The panel noted how, under the existing Acts of some universities, powers to start new courses, departments, schools were listed under Statutes, which mandated approvals from the UGC and MHRD.

Depoliticisation of university appointments was sought and the panel said the President should have no role in the university system. "The President, being the highest constitutional authority, should not be asked to be involved in administrative and academic matters relating to universities as the Visitor Laws must be changed to transfer Visitor’s power to the Chancellor who should be an academician and not a politician as is the case now," according to the committee chaired by Prof. Menon, founder-member of National Law School.

Regular upgradation

The panel also demanded accountability from the universities recommending a 10-yearly review of every institution as is the practice abroad. It also suggested that each university should set up an independent quality assurance cell to assess and declare its output publicly.

Additional Secretary, HRD Ministry, R.P. Sisodia also admitted that quality and access were huge challenges. The UGC, he said, was working to make accreditation of all higher educational institutes mandatory. "This would ensure quality and create incentives for improvement. Till the National Accreditation Authority Bill is passed by the Parliament, we will not have a system in place," he said.

The Government realised this year that honing skills of the people was as necessary as educating them. Annually, about 12.1 million students seek vocational training in India but the system can handle only three million. "Now that we have rolled the National Vocational Education framework from 2012, we will train five million students annually in different vocations," S S Mantha Chairman, All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) said.

The framework will allow Class X dropouts to enrol in polytechnics and seek diploma and degree in vocational education. The latter would be provided by the industry which will work as a skill knowledge provider under the central scheme. For the IT sector, the Government has roped in Microsoft.

The framework will roll through 8,361 technical institutions approved by the AICTE. Of these, 3,393 are engineering, followed by 2,385 management, 1,137 pharmacy, 116 architecture and 102 hotel management institutes.

Funds for skill-development have also been made available. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee proposed an allocation of Rs 1,000 crore for the National Skill Development Fund in 2012-13. Considering India will see 63.5 million new entrants into the working age group between 2011 and 2016, this grant will help if spent wisely.

But right now there is no data on gaps in the vocational sector. The Government has only recently approached the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to survey the sector and project the demand. "Under the three-year MOU, we will determine the demand and design courses for 15 industrial and five social sector occupations," Prof S. Parasuraman, Director, TISS said.

Skill development

Once the courses are ready, not everyone would need to pursue general education. In 2008-2009, for example, out of the 157 lakh students who took the Class XII exams, only 79 lakh passed; Of these, 30 lakh could not get entry into college. This population can benefit from the new skill -development schemes.

That apart, creation of new colleges and universities would need to remain top priority if India has to meet its professed goal of 30 per cent GER (as against 15 per cent now) by 2020. For this, we need 1500 new universities and 33,000 new colleges.

The annual FICCI-Ernst & Young report recently projected that the sector would require an investment of Rs 10 lakh crore by 2020 to create additional capacity for 30 per cent GER.

The Government, too, knows the odds it is pitched against. Sibal has repeatedly said, "For a GER of 30 per cent, we need a three-fold increase in the number of institutions to create space for 40 million students who will seek education by 2020."

But alongside the creation of new institutions, the Ministry would also have to strengthen college faculty whose current shortage is pegged at 54 per cent nationally, the highest being in Central Universities. Nationally, the pupil-teacher ratio is 24 whereas it should be only about 14.

"To correct the ratio, India needs to recruit an additional 3,83,868 teachers over the 12th Plan period," reveals the report which a committee headed by the Director IIT, Kanpur, Sanjay Dhande recently submitted to the government. The report showed how even Delhi Universitywas short of 910 teachers mainly because the university, under the present statutes, lacks the freedom to recruit faculty.

That brings us to the merit of the Madhav Menon committee which noted well, "Universities should have the freedom to recruit faculty, award honorary doctorates, shift towards choice-based credit courses along with semester system to promote students’ mobility within and outside the country. They must also continuously assess their performance and declare their output to ensure accountability. Quality after all is the best guarantor of autonomy."