Issues in public funding of quality educational institutes

Public funding of higher education has always been linked, to some extent, with the quality of higher education in such a way that it should encourage and incentivise quality initiatives in higher educational institutions to help them attain excellence in due course of time. Additionally, public funding has also been used as a lever to modify the growth and development of higher education so as to accomplish national goals.

Until recently, the funding was linked to the regulatory processes. The University Grants Commission (UGC) Act 1956 as amended in 1972, still provides that “no grant shall be given by the Central Government, the Commission, or any other organisation receiving any funds from the Central Government to a University, unless the Commission has, after satisfying itself as to such matters as may be prescribed, declared such University to be fit for receiving such grant”. And this “fitness” is meant to ensure that only such universities that meet a minimum threshold level of quality could access public funds.

The 12B universities (and also the colleges), besides receiving development grants, were also supported under ‘Special Assistance Programmes (SAP)’  which provided financial support on selective basis to the Departments of Special Assistance (DSA), Departments of Research Supports (DRS) and to the Centre/Institutes of Advanced Special Assistance (IASE). Such support enabled select departments to grow on identified parameters. Lately, the schemes like Colleges with Potential for Excellence (CPE) and Universities with Potential of Excellence (UPE) sought to provide enhanced assistance to the identified universities to realise their potential and emerge as leading centres of excellence in their chosen areas of specialisation and expertise. 

At present, the funding is being increasingly linked to the rankings. This in turn connects a number of financial assistance schemes and enablement to such scores, grades and ranks. These include schemes like Graded Autonomy, and Institutions of Eminence which accord certain special privileges to such higher educational institutions which have attained certain scores and ranks in the accreditation, national rankings and global rankings. So is the case with the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) which seeks to fund state universities and their colleges only if they get quality assessed and accredited. As funds for higher education, relative to the demand, are getting scarcer, public funding of higher education is getting tilted in favour of competitive bidding linked to quality. 

Looping public funding with quality and excellence by encouraging competition for quality may be justified on the ground that scarce resources meant for higher education need to be put to best use and that there cannot be a better proposition than financing only such institutions which have track records of proven performance. This sounds good but suffers from pitfalls with adverse consequences for the overall objectives of education.  

Quality must indeed be encouraged and excellence rewarded. But, at the same time, we must not lose sight of the fact that the country presently has a small number of higher educational institutions that could be considered of respectable quality and that such institutions account for a minuscule percentage of total enrolment in higher education. This means, an overwhelming proportion of students are catered to by a large number of higher educational institutions that are of poor quality. Promoting a few islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity is not an option. This must prompt authorities to focus funding on ameliorating the condition of the dominant majority by mitigating the big quality gap that exists between the best and the rest. Critically, the quality-connected competitive funding can work best only when there is a level playing field, but for which the public funding for higher education shall get monopolised by a few privileged ones.

With the average year of education crossing 12, coupled with the current demographic structure, the country is bound to see a surge in demand for higher education and the nation has to be ready with adequate capacity to accommodate the same. Strategies for expansion, thus, become an exigent imperative. The required capacity addition need not come through the establishment of new institutions, though some may still be needed to address regional imbalances. The best approach could be to encourage and reward capacity addition in the existing institutions of higher education by adding more seats and increasing the number of programmes, thereby making them multi-disciplinary. Such a strategy would improve quality of higher educational institutions across the board because it is only the institutions operating at a critical size that are able to benefit the most through reforms like choice-based credit system and skill development leading to better research and employability. We need to use public funding to bring about this change. It is also imperative to focus on making higher education inclusive, particularly by addressing the affordability barrier, and that would be possible only if public funding is carefully calibrated to promote access to hitherto deprived sections of the society. 

The writer is Secretary General, Association of Indian Universities (AIU). Views are personal.