This guest post has been sent to us by VRIJENDRA, who teaches at a college affiliated to Bombay University

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Of late, higher education in India has been in the news for many reasons. The new HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has been busy drafting new bills and formulating new policies to give a big push to higher education and to open up the higher education sector to foreign universities and their affiliates. In this scenario, two issues have been the major focus:

(a) The need to improve the enrolment ratio from the present, dismal ratio of about 10 percent – that is, only 10 percent of eligible young students enrol in colleges in India – to about 15/20 per cent in the next decade to catch up with the rest of the world in some ways. (Though the official enrolment ratio in India is about 11 per cent, if we go by how many of these students are really learning anything in reasonably well–equipped colleges, my guess is that the ratio will be down to alarmingly low level of about 5 per cent.)  For example, in the US and Europe, the enrolment ratio is more than 60 percent. Even in China, our favourite competitor these days, the ratio is about 19 percent.

(b) The need to urgently improve the quality of higher education in the country to make it more competitive globally and to emerge ‘global knowledge hub’ in the near future.

However, any meaningful discussion on these two issues has to recognize two alarming features of higher education system in the country.

These are: (a) The low public spending by the government on education. For decades, central government in India has not spent more than 3-3.5 per cent of its total budget on education despite committing itself to 6 per cent target on different forums and only a part of this low budget is spent on higher education. Similarly, education, specifically higher education, has been a low priority for state governments as well.

(b) Further, even out of this relatively low spending on higher education by the central government, a major portion of this money is spent on institutions like the IITs, IIMs, other similar institutions and central universities, like Delhi University where only a few lakh students study while state universities and colleges – the backbone of higher education in the country with a large number of students – continue to suffer from chronic lack of resources, facilities and infrastructure.

Thus even with a low enrolment ratio of about 10 per cent, the system of higher education in India is highly stratified  and includes diverse institutions, colleges and universities with marked distinctions and differences among them. The HRD ministry itself has divided these institutions in two broad categories:
(a) university and higher education, and (b) technical (higher) education.
While institutions imparting higher education are governed by the UGC and include central universities, state universities and colleges, deemed universities and private, unaided universities and colleges, institutions of technical education including IITs, IIMs and similar institutions are governed directly by the MHRD.

There are 39 central universities in the country – 15 of them were established early this year in a major policy decision by the government – and are directly funded by the central government through the UGC. Similarly, 60 institutions of technical education are directly funded by the central government through the ministry and governed by different laws and regulations. These include 13 IITs (including 6 new IITs set up in 2008-09) and 13 IIMs (including 6 new proposed IIMs to be set up soon). On the other hand, 251 state universities are the primary responsibility of the respective state governments even though the UGC defines the regulatory framework for them and provides some funds to many of them (not all) from time to time.

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Almost on all parameters of education and facilities, there is a marked difference between these different types of institutions, universities and colleges. One major parameter is the terms of conditions of recruitment and pay scales of faculty in these institutions and colleges.  Though teachers, the backbone of any system of higher education, have broadly the same qualifications, depending on which institution, university and college they join, their working conditions and opportunities for professional career and promotions dramatically change. In terms of pay scales and the age of retirement, as of now, there are these four categories of institutions and colleges:

A. IITs and IIMs:
In an IIT, a new teacher with Ph D starts with a much higher basic pay than a university and college teacher with Ph D. Further, IIT faculty moves up the ladder at a much faster pace throughout his/her career. IIT/IIM professors do not have to pass any NET/SET examination for any department. So, a young lecturer with Ph D, say in sociology or even in a branch of engineering, can directly join an IIT/IIM at a much higher pay without NET/SET, but will need to first pass the additional NET/SET exam to join a college and university department at a much lower pay and much slower pace of promotion throughout!

Other centrally funded professional colleges like IIITs and others offer pay scales which are slightly lower than scales for IITs and IIMs, the overall promotional policy for teachers in these institutions is better than that for college and university teachers.

B. Central Universities and affiliated colleges:
Central universities and their affiliated colleges offer pay scales distinctly lower than for centrally funded technical institutions, among institutions of higher education, they offer the UGC recommended pay scales to their teachers.

The age of retirement for teachers in all centrally funded institutions, including IITs and IIMs is now 65 years, extendable up to 70 years in some cases on contract.

C. State Universities and affiliated colleges:
A few of them revise scales (with Basic Pay and DA) as per the UGC recommendation  and at par with central universities but other allowances are always as applicable to their large state bureaucracies and not much else. Here, the retirement age for teachers also varies enormously: from 55 years to 62 years.

Then, there are many states which have not yet implemented the last (fifth) pay commission recommendations for their college and university teachers. It is highly unlikely that they will now implement the new UGC package in a hurry.

The retirement age of teachers across states varies enormously between 55 years and 62 years.

D. Others:
Finally, we have a large number of teachers in self-financing course and colleges where there is no state funding and their scales are at the mercy of their managements. Some will pay the new scales and many will not, though all of them insist on UGC recommended qualifications in most cases, as in Maharashtra.

And, of course, there are thousands of contract teachers all over the country whose fate remains uncertain at all times. Many of them are paid as low as Rs 8000-1000 per month as a consolidated amount though they carry out all the work in their colleges. Alarmingly, this number is steadily growing. For example, in Maharashtra, many professional colleges have been set up and, many new courses in existing colleges and other arts, science and commerce colleges have been sanctioned by the state government in recent years. All of these new colleges are on no-grant basis. All these colleges have to sign a legally binding agreement that they will never ask the state government for any grant in future for anything including the salary of teachers! In other words, while the number of colleges and courses is going up, the commitment of the state towards higher education is declining as a matter of state policy.

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Further, there are issues regarding teaching and assessment work load, administrative work, facilities, laboratories, research grants and grants for national and international conferences, infrastructure, library and computer facilities and the gap continues to widen.

The stark contrast between IIT / IIMs and other institutions is again evident through the wide gap between the proposed allocation of funds for new IITs/ IIMs in the central budget and the funds allocated for colleges in 354 educationally backward districts of the country. While each new IIT and IIM has been allocated hundreds of crores per institution, for these 354 model colleges, approximately Rs 10 crore per college by the UGC in deemed sufficient to set up the college. And once the college is set up, the respective state government is expected to pick up the tab for recurring expenditure! For thousands of other colleges, there is no money at all.

Thus, ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, in India, we have the strange spectacle where the renewed focus on higher education by the central government means liberal, enhanced, continuous funding by the state for a few elite institutions like IITs/IIMs and central universities with only a fraction of total students, some funding for a large number of existing colleges and universities in states and almost no funding for colleges and universities where crores of ordinary, poor students – the large majority – enrol and study.

Unless, we have a concerted public campaign demanding some core parity between the state funding of colleges of all kinds – from IITs to small colleges in remote areas – and some basic uniformity in facilities in all kinds of colleges and terms and conditions of work, including pay scales, for teachers employed in these institutions and colleges, the dream of India as a global knowledge hub is likely to remain a distant dream.