Higher education in India, which began with the establishment of Hindu College at Kolkata in 1817 by Raja Rammohan Roy and David Hare, is presently at the crossroads.

The growing number of institutions and unrestricted growth of students, teachers and courses do not seem to match with a suitably qualitative mechanism for improvement and knowledge advancement. After Independence, the department of education created in 1945 was converted into a ministry of education.

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The University Education Commission (1948-49) recommended expansion of higher education in the country on a priority basis and the period from 1947 to 1950 saw the setting up of seven new universities being raised to 27 with 695 colleges affiliated to them. During the period of 50 years since 1950-51, there has been a phenomenal growth of higher education. And now the number of universities is over 1,000 and that of degree colleges is over 45,000. But sadly, in the garb of quantitative expansion, there is a total qualitative failure.

This is evident from the huge pool of educated persons who lack employability which, in turn, reveals a low standard of learning. There is admittedly a state of near anarchy even in the administration of existing facilities leading to social tensions and mediocrity of output. Much of this condition is traceable to ethical, moral, and social values being divorced from the educational process. This has far-reaching consequences on the quality of manpower which holds the key to our country’s progress.

In fact, the expansion of higher education has been the most important post-war trend, regardless of political system, level of economic development or educational ideology. It expanded dramatically first in the USA, then in Europe and currently the focus of expansion is the Third World. The situation in our higher education today compares with the post-war situation in the UK in which new universities came into existence to meet the genuine demand that Oxford and Cambridge would not meet. It was marked by lack of financial resources and circumscribed by scarcity of meritorious students prepared for university education.

In general, they came into existence in a haphazard manner in response to certain societal needs. It does not require much wisdom to say that the present lopsided mismatch between what our economy demands and what our education industry supplies costs the country dear in various ways. A large body of young men and women waste several precious years in studying what may be irrelevant to them. Like Elizabeth Doolittle in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion who was transformed from an efficient, self-supporting flower girl into a useless and helpless society lady, these young people become less self-reliant and less useful after years of wasteful study.

In addition to the waste of time and atrophy of self- reliance, their positive qualities of enthusiasm flip over and become negative and destructive. The unwarranted expansion of unwanted higher education bestows a false sense of righteousness on the political, bureaucratic, and educational leadership, protecting their ego from the responsibility of discharging their duty.

Interestingly, the wise men who produced that interesting document called “The Challenge of Education “, on which the new education policy was drafted, avoided making any commitment on what should really be done. In terms of efficiency, productivity and utilisation of resources, our mushrooming education system has broken down. It is so completely absorbed in trying to preserve its structural form that it does not have time to consider its own larger purposes.

Further, due to the absence of a single machinery to look after the planning of higher education and Centre-state relations based on cooperative federalism in higher education, there is no viable alternative. A vicious circle of mediocrity has come to prevail in higher education which puts the whole system beyond redemption. Political expediency in our country is to increase the number of colleges and universities to make them accessible to all.

This expansion would not have marred educational health, had it been accompanied by sincere measures of consolidation and standardization, and by a prospective plan of linking universities with production units for ensuring growth targets. When the Centre came out with the New Education Policy, beneficiaries of higher education became very apprehensive at the prospect of privatisation. Many states started encouraging privatisation of higher education, particularly professional education, and many students became inclined to raising funds by such means as distance education. Vocational courses charging higher fees were introduced and abysmally low fees for general education were also enhanced. But it is observed that all these efforts amount only to cosmetic attempts at coping with the dysfunctionality of the system.

In fact, college education, often, only delays the days of fruitful endeavour of the youth, their period of productive service, and does not compensate for this reduction in quantity by any increase in quality. Thus, few students obtain any real benefit from the present education system; all that they obtain for their years of study is a bruised ego. Also, for the poor, the higher the education, the greater the strain.

Unfortunately, there is always an immense pressure in favour of expansion. It is not yet appreciated, let alone accepted, that the country just cannot afford to provide higher education to all those who demand it; that there is no alternative but to restrict, to be selective. Considering that there is so little available for elementary education, there is no economic or professional need for it. There cannot be a lasting solution to the problem confronting higher education unless purely quantitative expansion of the system is brought to a manageable rate. This may necessitate the enforcement of a policy of selective admission to higher education institutions.

Admittedly, a sizeable proportion of the students go in for higher education only because it is considered as a means of social mobility. In a democratic polity, it may be neither possible nor necessarily desirable in all cases to curb the urges of a vast majority of the population to secure higher education. It must be appreciated that expansion of college enrollment without regard to the economy’s capacity to gainfully absorb the educated manpower and the perpetuation of attitudes dysfunctional to development needs assume critical significance not only for economic reasons but for their socioeconomic implications. Swedish economist and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal had emphasized this point long ago: ”

More generally and vaguely, the students must be disturbed by their own bleak and uncertain future with mounting unemployment among the educated. This anxiety is magnified when so much tertiary education continues to be general rather than joboriented and is without purpose and motivation. ” Under a system in which there would be no mismatch between what the economy demands and what the education industry supplies, subsidized higher education would be reserved only for those who could find gainful employment; others would have to pay much higher college fees. But to enable graduates to secure jobs, new courses would have to be started in accordance with the economy.

Like many of the international institutions, the focus might be on practical learning, allowing creativity in the system. In certain universities abroad, curricula which are based on practicality do not only open doors to creativity, but also ensure that education is considered as learning for life, not a mere degree. By and large, the above suggestions may meet a variety of needs and yet function as a continuously self-regulating mechanism, constantly matched to the needs of the economy. It would also add resources to enable higher education institutions to expand systematically, but the courses which contribute only to unemployment would shrink.

Due to the unplanned growth of higher education, there is a shortage of qualified people in the frontier areas of knowledge and technology. The system, thus, is unable to fulfill its primary objective of providing manpower to a knowledge intensive economy. Even the Kothari Commission pointed out that the average standard of higher education has been falling and that rapid expansion has resulted in lowering of quality.

It may be remembered that the National Policy on Education, 1986, stated that higher education is crucial for survival. Hence the need to revitalize the system by downsizing it to enhance its contribution to national development.

(The writer, a former Associate Professor, department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata, is presently with RabIndra Bharati University and is the author of the recently published book English, Quo Vadis.)