Punjab is a case of how unfettered privatization without regulation can cause much harm to higher education.
The opening up of higher education to non-state entities has drastically altered the educational landscape in the country. Presently, the higher education sector consists of a large variety of service suppliers ranging from highly commercial ones to those purely committed to serving public interest. In some cases, higher education institutions are like corporates, some standalone and some are a chain operating under the same management-cum-ownership.
Courses, curriculum designs, cost of education, location dynamics, student recruitment, and staff deployment practices have all changed. For-profit private players are dominating the education delivery matrix with with considerable market power particularly in the professional segment of higher education.
Noticeably, within the ‘for-profit’ sub sector, some exceptionally good quality self-managed and self-regulated institutions, albeit limited in number, are emerging with strong commitment to ethical and academic values and the goal of establishing universities/institutes of global standards in the long-term. They are striving hard to provide world-class education in a transparent and accountable manner by hiring globally renowned academicians specialising in the frontier areas of technology, management, legal studies, medicine, computational sciences and so on.
File photo of students filling admission forms in Punjab University. When the market demand for any particular course goes up, many private institutions immediately expand the admission intake in that course without following any cut-off norms. | Photo: Akhilesh Kumar/The Hindu
Ironically enough, on the other side, a huge chunk of service suppliers is guided by forces driven by business and political interests that are out to make a quick buck. Media has reported the rampant unfair practices they indulge in. The privatization of profits and socialization of costs, inherent in the market mechanism, necessitates the creation of a regulatory mechanism particularly in the supply of educational services where information asymmetry happens to be large between the creator of services and its user.
A flawed policy
In 2010, the Government of Punjab notified the Punjab Private University Policy (PPUP). This policy initiated the process of establishment of self-financing private universities in the State through specific Acts of the State Legislature to be passed separately for each such university within the overall framework of this policy. As per the clauses (7, 8 and 9) of the PPUP, all the private universities have been given complete autonomy to start any course, fix the fee structure, and adopt their own admission process. They have the freedom to decide all the related issues including employment and service conditions of staff. These universities have been termed as ‘self-regulatory’ bodies in the PPUP (clause 7.3) thereby giving them complete freedom to take decisions on all important academic and administrative issues. In a way, the PPUP empowered the private universities to drive the higher education sector in Punjab as per their own programme of vision and action.
As per the University Grants Commission (UGC) website, Punjab has now 35 universities out of which, one is a Central University, 14 are state universities, 18 are private and two are deemed universities. As per functional autonomy provided to the private universities under the PPUP, that terms these “self-regulatory bodies”, there will naturally be a strong tendency among many of these institutions to concentrate relatively more upon those sets of professional courses which are more revenue generating.
The following case illustrates this. In the last couple of years ,many such private universities have started admitting excessive numbers of students (no cap on seats in each course) to the most sought-after course of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). The persistence of such a practice in due course may create deficiency of skilled people in other engineering trades which are foundational in nature.
Such market-driven tendencies may lead to skill disequilibrium and mismatch resulting in huge unemployment of qualified professionals with simultaneous existence of shortages and surpluses of specific skills. Experience shows that as and when the market demand for any particular course goes up, a majority of institutions immediately expand the admission intake in that course without following any cut-off norms. The contraction in demand for that course/s in a subsequent period affects the employment of faculty hired on a non-regular basis during the expansionary phase.
The start, expansion and contraction of academic programmes solely for the purpose of revenue generation erodes the basic mandate of a university as an institution dedicated for the generation and diffusion of fundamental knowledge for larger societal good. There has been a fear that, in the absence of a regulatory framework, many of these private universities in actual practice are just glorified coaching academies with weak linkages between teaching and research.
The exclusion of economically weaker sections from higher education is a real possibility as a result of this policy. A good majority of private universities avoid putting into the public domain, through the internet, the complete course-wise details of seats, associated fee structure, courses offered, details of qualified regular and other faculty, salary structure, recruitment procedures, balance sheets, and so on , though these are mandated by national level regulatory agencies such as the UGC and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The operation of private players in such a manner severely affects the interests of the students of the state aspiring for higher education. This further adversely impacts the state universities which are duty bound to follow all prescribed rules and regulations.
Unfulfilled promise
During the 2017 Assembly elections, the Congress party promised to reform the higher education sector by setting up a Higher Education Regulatory Authority (HERA) in the State. A three-member cabinet committee under the chairmanship of then Medical Education Minister Brahm Mohindra with Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and the Higher Education Minister Aruna Chaudhary as members was set up. This committee held its maiden meeting with Chancellors and Vice Chancellors of private and State universities in 2017 to get written comments/objections from stakeholders on the draft bill.
Subsequently, it was reported by the print media that the Punjab Government’s plans to have a higher education regulator for private institutions had hit a roadblock because of the pressure applied by some dominant private players. Even after the passage of more than six years, nothing concrete has come out in this regard.
It is worth mentioning that Higher Education Regulatory Authorities have already been established in neighbouring states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and nine others: Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttarakhand. The mandate of these bodies has been to ensure transparency and maintenance of high academic and administrative standards in order to protect the interests of all stakeholders.
The need for the establishment of a regulatory body becomes more urgent keeping in view the degree scandals that have come to light in Himachal Pradesh and other States. Grave irregularities in nursing and other courses were reported last year in Punjab and many cases were registered by law enforcement agencies after student protests.
Noticeably, clause 13 of the PPUP empowers the Punjab Government to establish a regulatory body through State legislation for reforming the higher education sector in Punjab. The establishment of the HERA in Punjab is the dire necessity to check substandard supply, malpractices, ruthless commercialization and exploitation. The situation demands complete overhauling based on credible governance structures that ensure transparency, quality and useful inclusion.
(The author is a professor of economics at Punjabi University, Patiala)
Published - September 17, 2024 01:56 pm IST
