India's new NEP and higher education domain

Analysing the role of new National Education Policy (NEP) in the domain of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)

India's new NEP and higher education domain

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• The story: India has several hundrede higher education institutions (HEIs) and a brand new National Education Policy (NEP) too. The government's approach now is to transform higher education by making HEIs work on “solutions to the problems” rather than “solutions looking for a problem”.
• Details: India has over 1,000 HEIs, including over 150 of national importance. Over the years, it has also become a hub of scientific research. HEIs have shown a consistent growth in both the quality and the quantity of research in the past decade. India currently ranks third globally in terms of the total research output, accounting for 5.31% of the total of research publications. Of three aspects — education, knowledge generation (research and development) and innovation — Indian HEIs have performed very well, in relative terms, in the first two aspects, but lack on the innovation front.
• Problem areas:

1. Enrollment - According to the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) report 2019-20, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in Higher education in India is only 27.1%, which is quite low as compared to the developed as well as, other developing countries. With the increase of enrollments at the school level, the supply of higher education institutes is insufficient to meet the growing demand in the country.
2. Quality - Ensuring quality in higher education is a big challenge, as many colleges and universities are unable to meet the minimum requirements laid down by the University Grant Commission (UGC).
3. Interference from politics - Increasing interference of politicians in the management of higher education jeopardises the autonomy of HEIs.
4. Infrastructure - Poor infrastructure is a challenge to the higher education system of India, particularly the institutes run by the public sector suffer from poor physical facilities and infrastructure. Faculty shortages and the inability of the state educational system to attract and retain well-qualified teachers is unresolved. A large numbers of NET/PhD candidates are unemployed even though there are a lot of vacancies in higher education.
5. Research paucity - There is inadequate focus on research in HEIs, and insufficient resources and facilities doesn't help. Most research scholars are without fellowships or not getting their fellowships in time, that directly or indirectly affects their research. Indian HEIs are poorly connected to research centres and to industries.
6. Governance structures - Management of Indian education faces challenges of over-centralization, bureaucratic structures and lack of accountability, transparency, and professionalism.

• NEP and HEIs: There are many areas it will operate -

1. National Research Foundation (NRF) - Indian academia has focused on R&D without much emphasis on relevance and delivery. The establishment of the National Research Foundation (NRF) is expected to connect our academia with ministries and industry and fund research that is relevant to local needs. Each government ministry, be it central or state, is expected to allocate separate funds for research. The NRFis expected to pose well-defined problems to the researchers, so that they can find solutions in a goal-oriented and time bound manner.
2. Multi-disciplinary University - In order to unleash the technology development potential of HEIs, our institutions need to not only become multi-disciplinary in their scope and offerings, but also collaborate among themselves. Bringing “unlike” minds together in terms of disciplines, cultures (international programmes) and attitudes (academia-industry collaborations) is the need of the hour.
3. Scaling up - With the goal of increasing the gross enrollment ratio (GER) from the current 27% to 50% by 2035, India needs to not only open new HEIs and universities but also scale-up existing HEIs. This massive expansion will not only require additional financial resources but also calls for a new governance model.
4. Funding - The NEP is expected to bring in significant funding. For higher education, for the first time, the government promises a budget allocation for education as a fixed percentage of Gross Domestic Product at 6%.
5. Focus - Under NEP 2020, Indian HEIs will focus on 3 Is – Interdisciplinary research, Industry connect and Internationalisation, the three pillars needed to elevate our institutions to global standards. Until now, Indian HEIs lacked international diversity and remained predominantly local; they hired only Indian faculty and trained only domestic talent. The lack of international faculty and students in Indian elite institutions is one reason for the poor rankings of Indian institutions.

• Summary: The new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 may prove to be a good policy as it aims at making the education system holistic, flexible, multidisciplinary, aligned to the needs of the 21st century. The intent of policy seems to be ideal in many ways but it is the implementation that will matter finally. India's demographic dividend deserves the best from its administrators.

 

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