To the blackboard

The long-awaited release of the report of the UGC’s pay review commission, chaired by G.K. Chadha, has at least demonstrated that the UGC correctly identifies the enormous problem that India faces in attracting and retaining sufficient talent to its colleges and universities, particularly at the entry level. As the commission pointed out, over half of teaching positions remain unfilled — clearly the pay is far too low to attract enough people with the necessary qualifications, even after the bar is set lower and lower as to what those qualifications need be. Let the importance of motivated, qualified professionals in higher education not be minimised: one quantitative cross-country study after another has found that the size of that group is a major — among the most major — determinant of the rate of economic growth.

The commission has suggested a slew of increases across pay grades — lecturers earlier earning a derisory Rs 22,000 a month will now be earning Rs 40,000. The commission has also suggested an increase in the complexity of the teaching profession’s hierarchy: while this is, on the surface, unnecessary bureaucratisation, it is nevertheless an unavoidable corollary of centrally-standardised salaries, as in such a system flexibility of any sort can only be introduced when there are sufficient grades to support that flexibility.

It would be a grave mistake to think, however, that higher salaries alone will solve the problem. Any form of labour market reform needs to take into account the choices faced by individuals; in this case, reform should act to change the choices faced by talented, highly-educated individuals choosing between a lifetime in teaching and other careers. In such a choice life-cycle salaries are of course one major determinant — but many others exist, including freedom from political pressure, academic independence and the work environment. Fortunately an improvement in those will be closely correlated with improving educational qualifications overall. We should not expect, thus, this long-overdue salary rationalisation to solve all the problems of higher education; much more needs to be done, including greater decentralisation and more flexible contracts, but it is a necessary start.