Private colleges

One big reason for corruption is the government’s no-profits allowed policy for private institutes. Every educational institution has to be incorporated as a non-profit trust. Technically, you cannot make money from the college. The government somehow believes there will be enough people who will spend thousands of crores setting up good colleges for the millions who need seats every year, just out of the goodness of their hearts. On this flawed, stupid assumption that people are dying to run colleges without ever making money rests the higher education of our country.
    
Of course, none of this noprofit business ever happens. What happens is that shady methods are devised to take money out from the trust. Black money, fake payments to contractors and over-inflating expenses are just a few ingenious methods to ensure promoters get a return on their investment. This ensures that none of the legitimate players ever enter the field. Ex-academics, world-class corporates and honest people will never touch private education, for they do not want to pay bribes at every stage and devise shady methods to bypass no-profit rules. Thus, people like local country liquor barons, sari manufacturers and mithai shop owners open technical colleges for engineering and medicine. And we hand over our kids and their future to them.
    
You don’t need to be an expert to realise that what is happening is seriously wrong. However, policymakers are doing little about it. Perhaps, much like the bootlegging industry, so many regulators and inspectors are making money that nobody wants to fix it. However, corruption in the education sector is not to be taken lightly. When you have corruption in infrastructure, you have pot-holed roads. When you have corruption in education, you have pot-holed minds. We are destroying an entire generation by not giving it access to the world-class education it deserves.
    
I have nothing against commercialisation of education. Commerce and business are a good thing. However, when it comes to education, it needs a sense of ethics and quality. Good people must be incentivised to open colleges. Say, by a simple policy fix like allowing private institutes to make a profit. This would mean companies like Infosys and Reliance might open colleges, perhaps on a large scale, as shareholders will approve the huge investment required. If these companies open colleges, at least they will be of a certain standard. Competition can ensure that the ability to make profits never turns into greed. But if the business model is sustainable, many good players would be attracted to this sector.
    
This can be done. This needs to be done. Indians care about education. We can have one of the best education systems in the world. It is a matter of collective will and a few good leaders who will make this happen. It should not require a fast or dharna or yatra or antipolitician slogans. When something is sensible, it should just be done. For, that is what educated people do. And we would like to call ourselves educated, won’t we?

For the full text of the column by Chetan Bhagat in the ToI, click here.

Doesn't Mr Kapil Sibal understand this? So, what has he been doing about it in the over two years that he has been the minister for Education? All we heard was about his tinkering around with the school exams system, reactions to which have been mixed amongst the academic circles. If he addresses the above issues, he could perhaps expect unanimous support from the academic circles, though there could be some bit of opposition from the purely business types. So, is he pandering to the diktats of such businessmen? 

The system survives because of good institutions. It is corrupted by institutions, no matter how many or how few, in which seats and degrees even up to doctorate level could be purchased. At the other extreme, the Government expects private initiative on a large scale in education but with the hypocrite stipulation that profits shall not be earned!

Is it not the right time to insist that the Government comes out of its slumber, accepts the realities of the times and creates an environment in which transparency becomes possible and feasible?

For the full text of the article by J S Rajput, former director, NCERT, in the New Indian Express, click here.

Further reiteration from an expert in the academic field, if one was required.

Normatively speaking, education is a right that should not be dependent on the ability to pay. This aspiration is correct. But how do you square that with the idea of private education, where ability to pay will determine what you can access to some degree? Our answer: We will impose more regulation, more price controls (as the All-India Council for Technical Education is now proposing), more control over selection mechanisms. So what we want is a private economy with extensive price controls? Price controls can work in some areas but as a generalised principle, a price-controlled private sector is a bit of an oxymoron — with probably moronic outcomes.

But what the state cannot get itself to honestly answer is why so many students are at the mercy of the private sector. The state is willing to put all its energies into running loss-making airlines, reviving defunct fertiliser plants. But it cannot commit itself to infusing new energy in public education, at all levels. If you destroy public university after public university, the private sector will laugh all the way to the bank. And then, in response to an outcry, we will pretend that regulation of the private sector can produce social justice. In retrospect, it is truly extraordinary how much energy, focus and moral piety has been expended on “regulating” private education in India.

Yet proportionately, so little political effort has been expended to improve public education. It is a pipe dream to think that we can build a good, equitable education system without a major revival of public universities and government schools. And a strong public system will automatically “regulate” the private system by reducing demand. But it is a sign of how warped our thinking on the public and private has become that we are happy to hollow out the public where we should not, and regulate the private in ways that are counterproductive.

The increasing confusion over the role of the public and private has many sources. Some of it is ideological mystification: We thought reform meant rolling back the state, not building it in some areas. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy to the point where we do not recognise the potential within the public system. Some of it had to do with political economy. The whole logic of public-private partnerships was driven not entirely by the idea of efficiency gains but the creation of new forms for rent-seeking. This form of entanglement of state and capital ended up corrupting both.

Crony capitalism backed by the state delegitimised capital as well. The dividing line between an anti-corruption movement and an anti-private-sector sentiment became very thin indeed. The confidence that the Indian private sector, particularly its big players, was ready to play by anything other than crony capitalist rules has diminished.

For the full text of the must read column (emphasis added by me) by the redoubtable Pratap Bhanu Mehta, click here.

Tells you exactly where things have gone wrong. Do this government have the capacity to effect the necessary correctives, remains the important question.