Autonomy oils the wheels of higher education excellence 

Autonomy oils the wheels of higher education excellence 

• None of India’s higher education institutions appears in the list of the top 100 universities of the world.

The reason behind top ranks 

• The best universities in the world are flush with funds. 
• They insist and get a great degree of academic, administrative, and financial autonomy.

Autonomy is important 

• Autonomy is regarded as a necessary and sufficient condition to attain excellence.
• In tandem, they allow a fairly high degree of autonomy to institutions under their jurisdiction. Their colleges and schools work as a ‘university within the university, and the top leadership of the university has no qualms about this.

World rankings and India

• The 2023 edition of the QS world university ranking reckons that three of India’s higher educational institutions are among the top 200 in the world. Another three are counted among the top 300 whereas two more are in the top 400.
• The Times Higher Education (THE) ranking places only one Indian institution among the top 400 of the world. It is the same with the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

Story of IITs 

• Barring one of the most eminent public-funded deemed universities of the country, all the rest are Institutions of National Importance (INIs) — the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), to be specific.
• They are not only better funded but also generally self-governed, enjoying a greater degree of autonomy as they fall outside the regulatory purview of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). 

Role of regulatory authorities 

• Funded through the University Grants Commission (UGC), universities are all subject to a strict regulatory regime. Abiding by UGC regulations and AICTE guidelines, encompasses almost all aspects of their functioning be it faculty recruitment, student admission and the award of degrees. 
• In many cases, they are micromanaged by the regulatory authorities. Therefore, most of them have become so comfortable with the practice that they rarely assert their autonomy. 
• Central universities in the country are also ranked based on their ‘obedience’ to regulatory compliances. 
• Even in the academic domain, many of them are comfortable in publicly stating that they have adopted the model curricula, pedagogy and syllabi prescribed by the regulatory bodies, even though the same may have been only indicative.

Autonomy is prime

• The best universities in the world are continuously sensitised about the importance of their autonomy and are trained and enabled to make their own decisions. 
• The European University Association (EUA), for example, prescribes a ‘university autonomy tool’ that lets each member university compare its level of autonomy visàvis the other European higher education systems across all member countries.
• By focusing on four autonomy areas (organisational, financial, staffing, and academic) the EUA computes composite scores and ranks all the countries in Europe.
• It is not that policy planners in India are oblivious to the idea and the importance of autonomy in higher education. Many commissions and committees, including the national policies on education (including the National Education Policy 2020), have highlighted the need for higher education autonomy. 

New education policy

• The new education policy seeks to completely overhaul the higher education system, and to attain this objective, repeatedly emphasises the need for institutional autonomy.
• The NEP regards academic and administrative autonomy as essential for making higher education multidisciplinary, and that teacher and institutional autonomy are a sine qua non in promoting creativity and innovation.
• The policy considers a lack of autonomy as one of the major problems of higher education and promises to ensure faculty and institutional autonomy through a highly independent and empowered board of management which would be vested with academic and administrative autonomy.
• It argues for a ‘light but tight’ regulatory framework and insists that the new regulatory regime would foster a culture of empowerment.
• Further, it goes on to say that by relying on a robust system of accreditation, all higher education institutions would gradually gain full academic and administrative autonomy. These are but an excellent exposition of academic and administrative autonomy. 

Losing autonomy 

• Universities in India have been losing their autonomy. In the two years since the approval, announcement, and gradual implementation of the NEP, universities in India today are far less autonomous than earlier.
• Higher learning centres in ancient India enjoyed no less academic, administrative and financial autonomy than the most autonomous universities in the world today. 

Nep & excellence 

• Forcing higher educational institutions to follow uniform standardised rules and regulations run counter to what the NEP provides for. 
• Micromanagement of student admission, faculty recruitment, course contents, programme delivery and administration is a sure-fire recipe to take higher education farther away from excellence.