College daze

If there is one thing that is worse than too much regulation,or no regulation at all,it is confused regulation. Rules and norms that pull in different directions make for a sector in which confusion stifles growth. Unfortunately,that lesson does not seem to have been internalised by our higher education establishment. This newspaper reported on Wednesday that the UGC has decided to tighten control over private universities,ensuring that they adhere to stringent regulations with regard to not only programmes offered and quality testing,but also admissions procedures,faculty pay,physical infrastructure and tuition fees.

This is an unhappy development. We certainly need careful regulation and accreditation of our higher education. The number of aspiring students is exploding; and protecting their investments of time and money,allowing an informed choice,should be the highest priority. There must be no more problems like what we now see in students of deemed universities that face having their degrees annulled or cancelled. But this is not the way to go about protecting students. Rather than certifying the quality of output,the educational establishment has fallen into its customary trap of choosing to exert excessive control particularly over inputs. Why should the UGC,rather than the head of a university,determine a lecturers salary,or tuition fees? This will simply make it harder to set up and run well-functioning private universities,surely the opposite of what regulation should achieve.

Yet the haphazard policy confusion on display is worse,in that it appears the HRD ministry and its associated organs have no idea what good regulation looks like. On the one hand,the UGC expands control. Meanwhile,HRD Minister Kapil Sibal announced nine new universities which,notably,he said would be of Ivy-League quality,and he would free them from the shackles of government control! We need to debate why it appears to make sense to so many in the establishment that world-class universities would necessarily have to be outside the current regulatory framework.