NEP: Unaddressed equity concerns in higher education

That the recently unveiled National Education Policy (NEP) is considered visionary and transformational is now common knowledge. While this is largely right, the Policy, however, has a few gaps as far as the equity aspect goes that have remained unresolved for long. This piece tries to delineate those critical unaddressed challenges, which could be grouped under supply-side inequities.

The policy has focussed on improving access, equity, and excellence. However, the equity aspect is centered around the demand side, represented by the student community. Higher education providers on the supply-side of education too have equity issues to grapple with which have not been adequately addressed.

The Policy states that “All HEIs [Higher Education Institutes] - public and private - shall be treated on par within this regulatory regime.” However, the constraints faced by the private sector vis-à-vis the public and also within itself is an old issue having far-reaching consequences.

The public vs private skew

The Policy is explicit in encouraging philanthropic private parties into higher education. It speaks about “transparent mechanisms for fixing of fees with an upper limit” and ensuring “reasonable recovery of cost while ensuring that HEIs discharge their social obligations.”

A public higher education institution (HEI) does not bother about its financial health, as it is fully bankrolled by the government. This luxury is not available to any private higher education provider. Even with noble intentions, any attempt to fix upper limits to the fee for private institutions would only dilute transparency, which the Policy aims to promote. Providing education costs and providing quality education costs dearly. As higher education is not a complete public good, it is only proper that the one who benefits from it also pays for it, at least in the private segment.

With almost 10.9 lakh Indian students pursuing higher education abroad, affordability is certainly not an issue for a segment of a population. When the Policy is categoric in letting only multi-disciplinary institutions henceforth, providing higher education would cost considerably more. To achieve 50 per cent gross enrolment by 2035, there is a clear need to allow for-profit institutions into the sector, in addition to philanthropic organisations. To profiteer is bad, but to profit is not. Within a short period of time, the sector itself would eliminate profiteering private parties and retain only the performing profiting ones. With public funding severely limited in recent times, it is better to unfetter the private segment fully.

Inequity within the private segment

The policy has proposed to declutter the structural complexity in university category by stating that the “present complex nomenclature of HEIs in the country such as ‘deemed to be university’, ‘affiliating university’, ‘affiliating technical university', ‘unitary university’ shall be replaced simply by 'university' on fulfilling the criteria as per norms.” A similar decluttering within the private segment concerning minority and non-minority would have been helpful.

The prime privileges allowed to private minority institutions include non-applicability of the policy of reservation in the admission of students and employment of teachers, which are otherwise applicable to both private non-minority institutions and public institutions. In addition to these, the private minority institutions also enjoy a few other benefits like freedom to fix reasonable fee structure on their own, putting them ahead of even government institutions in terms of autonomy, administrative ease, relaxation from bureaucratic norms and other legal procedures, etc.

De-bureaucratising and extending the same relaxations to the private non-minority institutions would not in any way curtail the protection extended to the minority institutions, but enable the whole private segment to operate better. The number of institutions, both colleges and schools, granted minority status by National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) in the last 15 years is 13,565. A simple search with the keyword “college” on the NCMEI website retrieved nearly 2000 units, which is almost five per cent of the total colleges in the country. Creating an elite group within the private segment skews the segment and makes it unsustainable and unfair. The NEP could have provided a level-playing field for all the private institutions.

Domestic vs foreign private segment

The Policy also speaks about facilitating the entry of the top 100 universities in the world into India. This is welcome and needs to be encouraged. In this connection, the Policy also mentions that “such universities will be given special dispensation regarding regulatory, governance, and content norms on par with other autonomous institutions of India.” While this is fair technically, the prevalent constraints on the private segment, including the ones indicated above, make the proposal practically not so fair. The existing barriers need to be eliminated in the first place. Otherwise, only a few autonomous institutions, from both the public and private segment, would be able to compete with the global top 100. The domestic private segment is still not mature in the country and needs assistance to compete with global institutions. Doing away with the barriers of the private segment is essential much before the higher education sector is opened to global competition.

The Policy is pathbreaking in its vision and approach. If adopted with adequate zeal, the higher education sector would become globally competitive yet locally rooted. One hopes that the equity issues highlighted above are addressed in some manner.

(M Saravanan is a higher education consultant based in New Delhi. Views are personal)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.