Achieve clarity on the goals to be pursued, and appropriate public policies will follow

Few issues are likely to have as crucial an impact on India’s future as its ability to rapidly and significantly improve its human capital. Even though higher education is critical to this goal, few policy areas have been as politicised or poorly executed. I begin by addressing the lack of clarity in thinking about the fundamental underlying question: What are the goals of Indian higher education? Appropriateness of public policy, after all, depends on the aims being pursued.
   All societies wrestle with the “proper” role of higher education. Is the intention to train people to enter the labour force, or to prepare them to be easily trainable by their employers? If the former, then one might emphasise professional education; if the latter, then an education that develops analytical and critical thinking skills would be more desirable. Should the emphasis be primarily on developing skills, disseminating knowledge or creating new knowledge? Is an important goal the creation of a middle class, or a society with greater social mobility? Is it to mould the minds of young people? If so, to what end? Do we seek to create better citizens or promote a stronger sense of nationhood?
   The most discernible instrumental outcome of higher education is its links with and impact on labour markets. Let us say one of its key goals is to provide skills to a very large number of new entrants to the labour force. But then, should one invest in IITs or ITIs? Suppose we want to leverage the human capital resulting from investments in higher education to improve Indian health care. A supply chain of health care would require doctors, nurses and paramedics, pharmacists and lab technicians, hospital administrators and even accountants. If the goal then is better societal health outcomes, where should resources be directed? In India, investment in the human capital of nurses and paramedics might matter much more than specialist physicians, and in civil and environmental engineers who can ensure clean water and sanitation much more than the high-tech engineering behind MRIs. But what do we
do? When we think of skills we are obsessed with IITs; when we think of health care we can scarcely think beyond doctors.
   But suppose the priority were different: designing higher education to promote greater socioeconomic mobility. Many underlying handicaps faced by students from lower socio-economic groups appear to occur much earlier in life. Indeed, they begin at the prenatal stage and are subsequently amplified by poor health care in early childhood followed by poor education at the primary and secondary school level. Policies seeking to rectify these handicaps through affirmative action in higher education admissions, together with financial transfers in the form of scholarships, are undoubtedly important, but they are far too late and benefit only a privileged few. This is not a reason to discontinue these policies, but we must apply much greater energy and investment in earlier stages of individuals’ lives for this goal to be achieved in any significant way.
   What if the goal of higher education focused less on narrow instrumental benefits and instead on something fundamentally deeper but less discernible: shaping the sensibilities and values of citizens? Should policies have national integration as a goal, transforming universities into sites for creating a more cosmopolitan Indian identity out of multiple parochial identities across the country? That too might require a form of affirmative action – but with a difference. Fifty years ago, even regional Indian universities had faculty from all over India. By contrast, faculty at most state universities today are locally recruited (often products of that university itself), and there is a virtual absence of mobility in faculty labour markets in the country. Apart from the nepotism and mediocrity that result from such in-breeding, state universities have failed to light the spark of a more cosmopolitan Indian sensibility and instead become petri dishes of parochialism. Should there be reservation policies to ensure greater representation of out-of-state faculty and students?
   What if India could conceive of higher education in a more strategic sense, as an instrument of Indian foreign policy and “soft power”? A country with renowned universities is able not only to retain its own best and brightest, but also to attract talent from around the world, generating knowledge, wealth and influence. Would India then create tiny “islands of excellence”, while allowing its broad-based universities to go to seed? Would it create universities catering to a narrow clientele, such as NRIs or the SAARC community, or broad-based institutions of learning open to all? Would it rather push its talented students to do their research in the best foreign universities, or instead invite these universities to flourish in India?
   These broad aims are not mutually exclusive – indeed there will always be multiple goals underlying higher education. But clarifying these goals and placing them within an overall vision of India’s future that helps prioritise tradeoffs is an essential first step if the country is to take advantage of its most important and expanding resource: its people.
   The writer is director, Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, US.