Higher education system has expanded in the last decade. Critics say there is an engineering seat available for every two science students clearing the Class XII Board exam. Another statistic that puts the problem of plenty in perspective is that the total B Tech seats in the country are 15 times the MBBS and dentistry intake. Is this a problem of plenty? These propositions have invariably led to arguments on quality. Semantics apart, is the AICTE decision to close down Institutions legally tenable?
India is a country of 1.3 billion people. Higher education GER is hardly 22. 4.5 points of this is due to Technical Education. About 6 million graduates, pass out every year out of which a little less than a million are technical. They don’t find commensurate jobs today. Even the new IIT’s show only 60% employment for their premier efforts. Hence slowly people will look to do anything else, than spending a lot of time and money for technical education. Let the employment scene improve and we will find people going to the party again.
In Maharashtra, until institutions in the private sector, were setup in mid-eighties, people could only compare a few Institutions in the Government sector and were largely happy that they fared well because the students did well. Later a few private Institutions started doing well and the chasm revealed for everyone to see and take note. In the past, we will remember, capitation fee was charged for engineering seats. Today this has virtually collapsed to the great relief of parents. Quality comes out of numbers and not out of constricting or throttling the system. One can always say “I have two institutes and they are the best because there is nothing else to compare and challenge them” Hence expansion, for quality and social equity to manifest, is a must.
Medical seats are sold at a premium. There is an artificial sway, on how many medical seats are available both at UG and PG level. There is one doctor per 1700 in India. Can anybody accept that India needs only about 50000 doctors every year? India is short by five lakh doctors as in 2015 and has only seven lakh doctors in total. Can anyone vouch that the quality of these entire seven lakh doctors is world class, coming out, as it is, out of a restricted market?
Critics further argue that in 2016-17, 51 per cent of the sixteen lakh B Tech seats across 3,500 institutes had found no takers and hence we need to relook at this expansion. This is only the supply side. There is a massive deficit in Job creation on the demand side. Primary employment sector depends on produce of the earth like agriculture and Mining. This has a potential of creating about 15% jobs. Secondary sector depends on manufacturing and capable of creating 35% jobs. Tertiary sector or the service sector provides the remaining. If the primary and the secondary does not do well, even the tertiary suffers. When the job position improves the students will return to colleges. Are we going to setup institutions then again?
Having said this, it is a serious matter that quality also needs to be improved. However, quality does not lie end to end in any discipline. Like water finds its own level, students also find the colleges that they have to go to. Can any dispensation afford to stop students from going to colleges because of the state’s inability to either provide similar quality to every one or an inability to provide jobs for everyone? Vacancies will be there in every profession, incidentally, they are vacancies even in IIT’s and NIT’s. Efforts must be made to minimise vacancies but not by cutting down the feet in order to fit the cloths.
It is extremely important to look at why the enrolment at 10th and 12th, which is the feeder route for all degree education has almost remained static in the last few years. In a country where the demographics is firmly on the side of younger population, is this not a worry?
Another dimension to this problem has been that some branches of specialisation like IT and electrical engineering have not been finding favour in the recent past. Education and Jobs have a very synergetic value proposition that is being disrupted like never before.
One must understand that Industry has undergone a massive change and continues to do so. IT sector has been seeing changes that one could not have predicted a few years back. Artificial Intelligence has seen great strides in the last few years and has contributed to a virtual killing of entry level jobs. Even professionals with more than five years’ experience are forced to reinvent themselves to stay relevant. Several start-ups have systematically closed shop. Large scale automation with intelligent agents and Rapid development tools have rendered many jobs redundant.
Similarly in Manufacturing sector AI, hard automation and soft automation has been redefining the jobs sector. Electric vehicles which have made an entry in the market have a potential to disrupt the job markets and business models like never before. This will happen in the next couple of years and unless massive training and retraining is accepted as an order of the day, even more job losses would have to be endured.
There are many States like in the North east, Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan, which are not very well endowed with a vibrant Industry sector. Do we not setup and run Institutions in these states? Lack of good faculty and infrastructure also forces students to go to other States. Fundamentally the system must acknowledge that since employment sector has been undergoing a change, the education system must also change. Skills education must be institutionalised so that skills can be given at lesser cost, so that effective cost of education is lowered. Further, since the job availability has been bad, money in circulation has been bad. So people cannot afford the fees prescribed. Add to this, when jobs are not even available, the problem is compounded.
AICTE recently, announced that it wants technical institutes with less than 30 per cent filled seats to wind up and leave. Many of them are in AP, Telangana, Haryana, UP, Jharkhand and so on. There are 370 institutes on the government’s radar and risk closure. Private sector may gladly do that. Can an egalitarian society afford this? Why were they allowed to be setup in these locations in the first place if they were to be closed later for want of students or an inability to produce employable graduates? They also served an important purpose of social equity.
It does not take a lot to see the reasons in the main, for Vacancies in our Institutions, the prominent being, lack of employment opportunities, high cost of education, poor quality, deemed and private universities and inability to exploit alternates to degree education, like Skills education and effective use of blended learning methodologies.
Fundamental rights within the Constitution, allows every citizen to practice his or her profession. A private player spends his money, uses his land and follows the rules of the regulator. There is no way he can be prevented from setting up a college unless supported by state perspective plans and so on.
Similarly, there is no way he can be asked to shut shop forcibly unless there is a quality deficit.
Market forces can force an entrepreneur to close his institute. There are several institutes in the government sector managed by both State and the Centre with a serious quality deficit. There are no teachers in several colleges in the interiors and remote locations. Can we afford to close them? Today the Institutes have to work under a multitude of regulations and have no autonomy. The fees is pegged by every state through a State fee committee because the fee reimbursement component is for the State to bear. Good faculty do not come cheap. Good infra does not come cheap.
A major reason for vacancies is also the unbridled working of the deemed and private universities. Once they get permission to establish office, they are virtually free to administer themselves, They seek to add new divisions as they perceive the markets, close branches and divisions as they deem fit, change the fee structure, and start new courses as they wish. The admissions for a particular year start at least 6 months in advance, collect fees then and do not return for cancellations. Yes, they do start classes in time which is a silver lining.
As an example, there are some deemed and private universities who start ten divisions in a particular branch when they see a possible growth in that sector, each with almost 100 students and close other divisions that they feel may not run. AICTE allows one division of 60 students in an institution after several inspections. Most disturbing is that the concerned university to which the institute is affiliated does not even declare the starting dates for academic sessions. The States add to the problem with delayed admission dates, and the whole cycle is in a spin. Parents and their wards veer to deemed and private universities for they are at least assured of the academic sessions being followed. What is the effect of all this? Virtually ten AICTE administered institutes will have to shut shop in the vicinity of a deemed university.
A lot will be revealed, if the rise in private universities, deemed universities in the country, is plotted for the last ten years and how these universities have conducted their technical programs. Firstly, the policy rot needs to be stemmed for an organic growth.