Economist Arvind Panagariya, a Padma Bhushan awardee, was vice chairman of NITI Aayog, India’s G20 sherpa, and chief economist of the Asian Development Bank. He is now professor of economics and the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University, the US. He has also been appointed as chancellor of Nalanda University in Bihar, designated an “institution of national importance”.
Panagariya spoke to THE WEEK from the US on the state of higher education and research in India and how these compare with foreign institutions. He also talked about the National Education Policy 2020 and the Common University Entrance Test. Excerpts:
Q What are your views on the state of higher education in India? How does it compare with the west?
A Colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom have full autonomy with respect to both administration and curriculum. The Indian system still remains centrally controlled. We need to give greater freedom to teachers to design courses and experiment with pedagogy―to at least the best 5 per cent to 10 per cent of colleges. Such a reform was started in February 2018 by the then human resource development ministry with 59 colleges given autonomy. As I had written in May 2019, the change produced excellent results within a year. So, I am saddened to say that recently the UGC (University Grants Commission) has issued no guidelines, essentially reversing that reform.
Q What about the overall research environment?
A If I infer the research environment from research outcomes, the news is not good. The National Science Foundation data shows that the gap in the absolute number of journal articles in science and engineering by faculty members in Indian institutions and those in the United States and China steadily widened between 2005 and 2016. Using Scopus (a citation database), I have calculated that in terms of the absolute number of citations to papers in all areas, China jumped from 19th rank worldwide in 1996 to second in 2017. The rise in India’s ranking over the same period was 16th to eleventh. In arts and humanities, we do especially poorly. China rose from the 15th to sixth and India from 28th to 25th.
Q How can the problems in our higher education system be rectified?
A Full autonomy to the top 5 per cent to 10 per cent universities and colleges, provision for the best colleges to be fully independent, including awarding their own degrees, genuine opening of the system to foreign universities, and a shift away from the affiliation system for colleges will help.
Q Will employing foreign faculty in our colleges help?
A Absolutely. And now, with the possibility of online courses, this avenue must be considered far more seriously. The education ministry also needs to get on with the HECI Bill (to establish the proposed Higher Education Council of India) to provide a credible legal framework for foreign universities to open campuses in India.
Q What are your thoughts on CUET?
A CUET was a much-needed change. Standards of grading in India vary so widely across institutions that basing decisions on a comparison of the marks received is highly problematic. CUET may not solve all the problems, but it represents a marked improvement over the existing practice.
Q The pandemic exacerbated the skill gap among students? What can be done to improve the situation?
A If our system had been more flexible, we could have offered additional courses to different students as per their interest and willingness to make up for the lost learning. This becomes harder in our current one-size-fits-all system. Whatever standardised intervention you design will prove too little or too much for a large majority of the students.
Q NEP 2020 aims to address some of the issues you mentioned. What are your views on it? Is there a similar system in the west?
A At 484 pages, NEP is an excessively long document. A policy should be a much shorter document. This being said, it does have a lot of excellent ideas. For instance, for school education, the focus on foundational learning is critical. I also favour the option to learn in one’s mother tongue. On higher education, its key recommendation to separate the functions of regulation, funding, accreditation and standard setting ought to be at the heart of future reform.
It is essential that a liberal and transparent regulatory body such as the HECI replace the current multiple, command-and-control institutions of the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education and the National Council for Teacher Education. In these respects, the policy is broadly in the spirit of many ideas I have championed for years.
At the same time, the recommendation that a National Higher Education Regulatory Authority of India be all-encompassing and subsume the functions of not just the UGC, AICTE and NCTE, but also of professional regulatory bodies such as the Bar Council of India would create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Reforms of professional regulatory bodies should be on a separate track, with the National Medical Commission Act providing a possible roadmap.
Q Many technical graduates are without jobs. How can our students be made more employable?
A This is a huge challenge with no shortcuts. Part of the solution to the employment problem lies outside the education sector. Good jobs are produced by industrial growth and we have much work to do in that area. There is only so much skill formation that can happen in the college. Lot of the skill formation happens on the job and this is where we have a large gap.