Privatisation via graded autonomy

Context: The National Education Policy will have an adverse impact in terms of accessibility and equity.

Background:

• The Indian Cabinet approved the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, despite vehement opposition to several of its provisions that were earlier circulated as a draft policy document.
• Among these provisions is the phasing out of the system of affiliated colleges and the grant of greater autonomy in academic, administrative and financial matters to premium colleges, and essentially, to the top ranked universities of the country.

Reason:

• This measure has drawn on the long-standing anxieties about the perils of politico-bureaucratic interference in the internal functioning of universities, and concerns about the substantial burden on universities, which have to regulate admissions, set curricula and conduct examinations for a large number of undergraduate colleges.
• The Mahajani Committee on Colleges (1964), for example, took the position that one way of improving the standard of higher education in India was by selecting a few colleges “on the basis of past work, influence, traditions, maturity and academic standards and give them what might be called for want of a better phrase an ‘autonomous’ status”.

Perils of autonomy:

• This model of autonomy has adverse ramifications for accessibility, equity and quality for the higher education sector.
• In response to the widening gap between the demand and supply for education, successive governments have pushed through measures that have largely allowed for greater penetration of private capital in higher education, and its corollary, the persistent decline in per-capita government allocation of funds towards education.
• Consequently, private colleges and universities have grown in number, and there has been a rapid expansion of the open and distance learning (ODL) education.
• In line with these developments, recommendations of recent education commissions have promoted the already existing unequal structure of funding for higher education.
• Importantly, the model of graded autonomy is not based on universalisation of educational resources and equal access to quality higher education, but on furthering the prevailing hierarchy that exists between different colleges within a public-funded university, and between different universities across the country.
• While the best colleges gain the autonomy to bring in their own rules and regulations, and graduate to a privileged status whereby they enjoy the benefits of special funds from the newly proposed funding agencies, it is estimated that affiliated colleges with lower rankings and less than 3,000 students face the threat of mergers and even closure. Such collateral damage contradicts targets set for higher gross enrolment ratios.
• A shrinking of the number of public-funded colleges will only further push out marginalised sections and relegate them to low-grade private colleges and/or to informal education in the ODL and online modes.

Conclusion:

• More than deliverance, autonomy represents the via media for greater privatisation and enhanced hierarchization in higher education, which needs to be corrected.

Reference: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/privatisation-via-graded-autonomy/article32396753.ece