In Indian higher education, a crisis of two kinds of autonomy

The academic autonomy of institutions is crucial to rigorous research across disciplines because it ensures academic independence and constant and consistent standards over long periods of time, while simultaneously protecting the scope of diversity in visions of research. The academic community has been in favour of institutional autonomy in the academic sense. Different admission policies are a reflection of this approach, deprivation points in JNU being one instance. This points system has always stood JNU in good stead, reaching deep into the pockets of regional, caste, class, and gender deprivation to bring the best and brightest to avail of solid higher education. It seems that policy, legality, and ideology are all coming together under this dispensation to root out an innovative approach to widening access to higher education.

Since the 1990s, however, policymakers have used the expression to mean financial autonomy, short for the retreat of the state in its responsibility to fund education, making way for education for profit. And yet, while pushing for such “financial autonomy”, the present dispensation is placing curbs on academic independence through the imposition of civil service rules, prohibiting academics from speaking publicly on issues of political and social concern.

Centralisation of examinations and appointing faculty that are ideologically favourable are another way to cut down institutional autonomy. Since 2014, funds for public education have been massively slashed, entire degree programmes have been abolished, and there are severely reduced seats in research programmes. In 2017, the NTA was established and registered as a society, keeping its finances opaque to audits by the CAG. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, appointed as VC of JNU in 2016, quickly placed entrance exams to the university in the lap of the NTA in the form of MCQ-type tests even at research levels, unheard of anywhere else.

To no one’s surprise, not fixing the ruin in education while appearing to do so is a useful strategy. First, India has lower gross enrolment ratios compared to its international peers despite the fact that it is one of the most extensive education systems in the world. The brain drain is very real and has reached shocking proportions over the last decade, with India ranking as the highest globally in outmigration of students to study abroad, spending a total of well over $50 billion in institutions in developed countries. The ruling forces have tried to convince the present generation of students that, in centralising education, it is creating standards and maintaining them in the interest of a uniform playing field for all. In reality, however, not only are prospects before students entering higher education sparse, but the hurdles placed in their way in even preparing for and accessing higher education appear insurmountable.

Policy tempts students with certification at multiple exit points in degree programmes, in reality further reducing employment opportunities. Centralised and computer-based testing not only leaves out large sections of youth completing school without hands-on work with computers, but it allows for aptitude for research to go completely undetected under “objective type” questions. The NEP is very keen on student turnover, and wants to create some sort of record in the number of students “completing” higher education. One way to do this is to increase enrolment. This is very clever: it both gives the government the figures of pass-outs that it wants on its own report card, but also ruins the standards of teaching and learning in the absence of funds for infrastructure and libraries.

In sum, bringing all education under one leaky umbrella — through testing, centralisation of regulatory bodies, and policy that cripples autonomy — destroys the promise of potential in future generations.

The writer is with the Center of German Studies, School of Language, Literature, and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University