National Education Policy encourages granting autonomy to institutions provided they have been maintaining high academic standards, allowing them freedom to decide admission procedure, fee structure and curriculum. Many were granted autonomy in the past. Autonomy succeeds only when all its facets, Administrative, Academic, Managerial and Financial are accorded. How does autonomy pan out in practice?
There is nothing, be it finance, education, business or any other, that is not regulated in some form or the other, though self-regulation is the best. Unfortunately, we need a ‘Swachh Baharat campaign’ that cajoles its citizens not to spit in the open. However, foisting orders and command impedes innovation, competence and commitment of those involved in achieving excellence.
Do we have sufficient number of researchers in every discipline? Do they have adequate facilities to do both fundamental and applied research? What level of inter/intra/multi-disciplinary research exists? Are they provided sufficient funding compared with the best in the World? Are they sufficiently compensated so they remain in the system? Questions such as these need answers before autonomy delivers. India is a large country with almost 45000 colleges most of them currently affiliated to some 350 odd universities. Can we legislate and free them all, of the so-called ‘affiliation privileges?’ Some of them are so small that they are not even financially viable.
An Institution primarily must be known for its academics. The need to promote excellence in higher education, is certainly important. It is argued that IIT’s, IIM’s fare much better than some other public institutions, since they are autonomous. The truth however, is they are completely centrally funded with enviable financial autonomy and have facilitating structures to support. Not all public institutions are treated similarly. For probably 5% of the funds that IIT’s are granted, and almost nil financial autonomy, they are expected to deliver similarly.
Probably it’s time to cluster institutions on an academic criterion and bestow complete autonomy, including the permission to grant degrees and diplomas. Future survival must be on the basis of collaboration, not only of academics but of resources as well. Sharing faculty and using digital content must be made mandatory. A National digital platform will be the universal bridge.
Now that many of our autonomous institutions are more than two decades into autonomy, should we not audit their performance, so we have lessons for the future? Many of them were chaired by industry bigwigs. Have they delivered? Is this a sustainable model? What funding did they bring to the table? How has research improved under their watchful eyes? So on and so forth.
Public universities were set up to operate as a State within a State which means they were autonomous to begin with. Any cursory glance at the Act under which they operate will signal, they are anything but autonomous, except in a few academic matters. Even academic autonomy is abused, when a certain unwanted coursework is retained, since otherwise, someone would be required to relearn or lose job. That said about the public universities, most of the Private universities function as management owned fiefdoms with practically no autonomy either to the vice Chancellor or to the faculty.
Unlike Universities in the West, ours are too small to be viable. Many of them would collapse without external funding let alone provide quality. Our universities, when they started, had all disciplines of basic and applied sciences. Over time they collapsed for want of patrons. Social sciences, liberal sciences and even basic sciences have closed due to want of students, faculty and funding. Consequently, Multi-disciplinary research collapsed. None of our institutions lay stress on productization leading to disaggregated research.
Today we see yesteryear colleges converted to universities in the private sector ostensibly to promote autonomy and quality. One suspects it is, because it provides freedom to increase numbers and function with unbridled freedom as business houses, closing courses/departments or starting new ones.
True autonomy blossoms when the mind is unshackled and academic environment is facilitating. This calls for a leader who leads from the front, is committed, passionate, a team builder, has great domain expertise, understands the environment and its links with the external world and above all has integrity, honesty and a foresight that is matured with hindsight.