Mainstream Indian newspaper article on Delhi University's Academic Council - "Everyone is terrified ..."

Last updated on September 1st 2014

Some notes from, Everyone is terrified: Why Delhi University's Academic Council may have allowed the FYUP debacle, dated July 25th 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Everyone-is-terrified-Why-Delhi-Universitys-Academic-Council-may-have-allowed-the-FYUP-debacle/articleshow/38995749.cms.

According to unnamed Delhi University (DU) faculty:

* Retirement benefits. leave, promotion, approval of funds for recruitment, maintenance, seminars - all are under control of DU administration

* Very few HODs are willing to go against view of DU administration

* FYUP (Four Year Undergraduate program) was pushed through using threat, incentive and humiliation. [Ravi: DU earlier had a three year UG program for science, arts and commerce streams, which was made four year, and then rolled back this year to the earlier three year program under pressure from the newly elected union government and the regulator UGC (the main academic regulatory agency of India).]

* Unprecedented coercion including threats of legal action.

* "Everyone is terrified, says a teacher, "That's how they got things passed in the AC."

--- end notes ---

Ravi: I am not at all surprised at the above reports due to my personal experience as a "Visiting Faculty" in a deemed private university in 2011-12. I must say though that I had initially thought that deemed private universities are notorious for arbitrary management practices but that public universities (govt. funded) like Delhi University would be better managed. However, over the course of the past two or three years as I read up on the Indian academic setup, I was very disappointed to note that many public universities of India have a lot of nasty stuff going on in their administration setup.

In my case at this deemed private university, a senior administrator X, instead of standing up for academic integrity, supported another administrator Y who, IMHO, had become power-crazy and dictatorial in opposing a project related to online school education, of the main body which funds the university, and which (project) had been heavily supported by the founder-chancellor. The senior administrator X told me that as I am a visiting faculty I should do whatever administrator Y tells me! Now this administrator Y was an electrical engineering and electronics industry (or some field like that) man who later on in his career moved into the Computer Science field. While he certainly may have some credentials in some Computer Science research areas he, in my considered opinion, was rather ignorant about the practice of software development. That was an area where my knowledge level was far superior to his (please excuse me blowing my own bugle). But the senior administrator X, instead of getting a feel of the academic truth regarding the matter, ordered me to do whatever the administrator Y says! Administrator Y was dead against the project even though students, some other faculty besides me and key people in the main body funding the university all were interested in the project and felt it to be a good thing to do.

I was shocked to hear such a directive from the senior administrator X. But that was a traumatic period for all of us (around July/August 2011) in the university, including the senior administrator X who must have been under tremendous strain then, as we were struggling with the recent huge loss of the founder-chancellor of the university. In the interest of keeping things peaceful and not rocking the deeply traumatized university setup then, I did not argue, swallowed my outrage and quietly listened to the senior administrator X's dictatorial directive and some pretty harsh words. I mean, I was the trouble-maker for him and his approach to solve the problem was to cut me down to size even if it meant that I left the university.

Over the next week I went through an emotionally draining and very stressful period of trying to understand what I should do next. I came to the conclusion that my considered view was that the senior administrator X and the administrator Y had failed to do their academic duty properly. But I recognized that others may have a different view. However I needed to go by my considered view, and so I felt that the right thing for me to do was to withdraw from the institution. After all, no matter what my level of knowledge about the practice of software development and my contribution to software lab. courses and M.Tech. and M.Sc. software projects in this deemed university over eight and a half years then, my designation was "Visiting Faculty" and so I was in no position to challenge this senior administrator X and the administrator Y. As I was acting as a technical consultant to an M.Tech. project student I decided to limit my activities to only providing support to him (otherwise the poor student would suffer), to which activity administrator Y had no objection. That required me to visit the deemed university, on the average, for only an hour a week (with some work being done via email separately).

Then I wondered what would I have done if I was receiving salary/fees from this deemed university for my services (my somewhat spartan spiritual lifestyle permitted me to offer free service) and was dependent on that salary/fees. I may have had no choice but to follow the dictatorial senior administrator X and administrator Y's instructions even if these instructions went against academic integrity. In other words I would have had to compromise my academic integrity due to the dictatorial senior administrator X and administrator Y's instructions. The above article shows that many people in Delhi University Academic Council had to face similar situations. As most of them would be dependent on salary and/or benefits which are controlled or influenced in some way by Delhi university administration, they had to compromise their academic integrity and simply toe the line of the dictatorial Delhi university administration.

In my case, the M.Tech. student project consultant activity came to a close in Feb. end or early March 2012. By that time I had learned a lot more about academic rules and procedures, the power that UGC & MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development which is the key Indian government agency providing funding to Indian academic institutions through regulators and funding agencies like UGC) have over deemed universities and how one, including visiting faculty, can approach authorities like the Chief Vigilance Officer of MHRD as well as UGC secretaries to complain about such matters. I spotted two key mistakes made by the academic administration authorities, one of which was showing me with an incorrect (very junior) designation in some reports sent to UGC. [My designations during my free service stint of 9 years in this deemed university, as given in the signed identity cards issued by the principal of the campus I was associated with, were Honorary Staff/Honorary Faculty/Visiting Faculty.]

The other mistake was that administrator Y had committed a breach of academic procedure (in July/August 2011) by sending me an email copied to the senior administrator X and another administrator Z, revoking permission I had been given to interact with the external software company which was involved with the software development part of the online school education project. The permission had been granted by administrator Z in a letter to me, and it was administrator Z (or his boss, senior administrator X) who had the authority to revoke the permission, not administrator Y. The proper procedure would have been for administrator Y to write to the senior administrator X and/or administrator Z and have administrator Z send me the letter revoking the previously granted permission. The senior administrator X and administrator Z had raised no objections to this clear breach of academic procedure by administrator Y. At the time it happened I was quite blissfully unaware of such academic procedural matters, and this mistake came to my notice some months later as I was learning about academic procedures related to such matters and discussing them with some senior academics.

By end Feb./early March 2012, I had heard a lot more of such crazy dictatorial happenings in this deemed university with a very respected senior faculty whom the founder-chancellor had given a lot of importance to, being severely ill-treated by the administration. After the passing away of the founder-chancellor it seemed that there was no check on the dictatorial actions of some administrators! I decided that, by the Grace of God, as I was financially independent, I was in a position to push back on these people. I slammed the administration over email on these two mistakes they had made. That resulted in some ridiculous behaviour from administrator Z which I do not want to waste my words on, but which was the final step in me formally terminating my relationship with the deemed university.

I have mentioned all the things above to show how really bad academic administration can become in some universities in India. Given the Delhi University case, which is a leading public university of India, where the skeletons are now tumbling out of the cupboard, I think this serious malaise would have affected many universities in the country. The urgent need of the hour is reforming Indian academic administration first and then worrying about improving teaching and research standards in Indian academia! If the top itself is rotten any efforts done to improve activities at lower levels will have minimal or no impact. Expecting academic administrators themselves to improve the situation will not work, IMHO. We need the funding agencies (UGC) and the government (MHRD), who have the power over these academic administrators, to put pressure on academic administrators to bring in transparency and accountability in their academic administration mechanisms, and also have grievance redressal mechanisms for matters related to top academic administration, where complaints against it are handled quickly and effectively with anonymity and protection from unethical disciplinary action being provided to the complainants.

Private study claims: Less than 9% of Indian engineering students have required programming and algorithm skills for IT product company jobs

Here is a now-normal, but still depressing, article in The Hindu, dated July 16th 2014, Less than 20 per cent engineers are employable for software jobs: survey, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-opportunities/less-than-20-per-cent-engineers-are-employable-for-software-jobs-survey/article6214929.ece

It is based on the Aspiring Minds, National Employability Report for Engineers - 2014, which can be downloaded (after providing contact info.) from here: http://www.aspiringminds.in/ (the link is towards the bottom right on the page and has the title, NER - Engineers Annual Report 2014).

Two small extracts from this (NERE-2014) report:

Page 9:

"The report is based on a sample of more than 1,20,000 engineering students from 520+ engineering colleges across multiple Indian states. All these candidates graduated in 2013."

Page 12:

"The employability of engineers in IT product companies is exceptionally low, to the order of 3.21%. This is because jobs in IT product companies require a strong understanding of computer programming and algorithms. The study found that the candidates strongly lacked the required skills: around 91.82% of graduating engineers do not have the required programming and algorithm skills required for IT product companies, whereas 76.23% show lack of soft-skills and cognitive skills."

--- end extracts ---

Ravi: This report which says it is based on an extensive sample, tests programming and algorithm skills, and less than 9 % of engineering-student-candidates (presumably final year students) got the grades/marks considered suitable for IT product company jobs! I think AICTE (India's top technical education regulator) and NPTEL/IIT-Madras (leading educational institutions) should have a similar computer programming and algorithm skills exam as a stand-alone exam which any final year engineering/science student/graduate can take. Then we will have two sources for such skill level figures with one coming from the top agencies/institutions associated with technical education in the country.

Now, pundits may dismiss this dismal less than 9% qualifying figure as being private survey results and question its methodology. If AICTE and NPTEL/IIT-Madras is involved in this testing then they cannot dismiss it so easily.

Further, students and parents should have access to the results of such exams for each educational institution. That will give them some idea of the teaching quality of computer programming and algorithms in these educational institutions.

TRANSPARENCY - that is what is desperately needed in Indian CS & IT academia. However, until Indian CS & IT departments of academic institutions are forced to share such information with the public, most will refuse to do so. So AICTE must take the lead and force such transparency on these departments/institutions.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A correspondent responded (Nasscom is the premier Indian software industry organization):

Despite what the Hindu article says, according to Nasscom around 300,000 of the million or so fresh engineering graduates do get jobs in the software industry. Of course, these jobs can range from mainstream developers to people working in the BPO industry.

Nasscom's figures are credible because if you add the number of new recruits claimed by the big 3-4 software companies you easily get to 100,000+. The other 200,000 could well find slots somewhere else in the industry.

However, standards are indeed dropping and the big companies have to run 3-6 month training programmes (read this as remedial training) before the new recruits can be moved to project teams. Even so, these companies have between 15-30% of their staff 'on the bench', or unbilled, which is an enormous cost.

--- end correspondent response ---
My response, slightly edited, was as follows:

Copy-pasted from Page 11 of the report:

ROLE                                                                    EMPLOYABILITY
IT ROLES
Software Engineer – IT Product                            3.21%
Software Engineer – IT Services                         18.43%
ENGINEERING ROLES
Associate – ITeS Operations (Hardware and Networking ) 35.37%

--- end copy-paste ---

So there is a differentiation between IT Product and IT Services. 18.43 % of 1 million would be 184,300 jobs. And 35.37 % would be 353,700 jobs

Considering that the NASSCOM figures included the BPO jobs, we have to apply the ITeS Operations figure of 35.37 % - so the figures do not diverge very much.

BTW the report claimed that 600,000 engineers graduate every year. But for the percentage figures, given that the sample size was over 100,000, it does not matter whether the total size is 600,000 or 1,000,000.

...

I guess the "employable" criteria of this assessment would be such that a person who qualifies does not need remedial training.

I guess the Indian IT services industry realized long ago that most CS & IT graduates, let alone graduates from non-CS&IT streams, would need remedial training given the poor standards of teaching of programming & algorithms in Indian CS & IT academia, and so took that burden on itself.

However, many IT product company types are now an important and excellent-salary employer of CS & IT graduates, especially in Bangalore & Chennai (going by what my past students tell me). They do not have any scope (or interest perhaps) for organizing remedial training and so graduates who are taught programming & algorithms better in colleges itself, get a break in these companies. And those graduates & post-graduates (like M.Tech. (CS)) who are poor in programming & algorithms fail to make it, even if they have published some conference research paper as part of their M.Tech. work. I mean, the bottom line for many of these product company types is programming & algorithms; research is extra.

[In contrast there are companies who seem to be looking for research assistant types and are happy to employ M.Tech. (CS) chaps as research assistants with some fancy designation. But, without a Ph.D., most of these chaps will surely hit a glass ceiling and get stuck doing lower-quality research work rather than great research work in these firms, IMHO. I mean, if you want to pursue research as a career a Ph.D. OR enough research publications to be counted as equivalent to Ph.D., is an absolute must.]

Eminent Indian computer scientist-cum-administrator Dr. S. Ramani writes: this Indian CS & IT academic reform activism blog is interesting

Dr. Srinivasan Ramani (well known as Dr. S. Ramani), one of India's eminent computer scientist-cum-administrators, first director of National Center for Software Technology. NCST (now CDAC-Mumbai, http://www.cdacmumbai.in/), significant contributor to India's academic network, ERNET, http://www.eis.ernet.in/, first director of HP Labs. India, and 2014 Internet Hall of fame inductee, http://internethalloffame.org/inductees/srinivasan-ramani, has put up a post on his blog titled, Regulating private educational institutions, http://obvioustruths.blogspot.com/2014/07/regulating-private-educational.html, which refers to this Indian CS & IT academic reform activism blog. He writes, "Ravi Iyer runs an interesting blog titled the Indian CS & IT Academic Reform Activism" (blog) and then goes on refer to discussions on this blog about profit-oriented private sector education.

I view this reference as an important and honourable one which encourages me in my efforts to improve the practice of software development in Indian Computer Science and Information Technology academia (higher education) in particular, and improve teaching standards in Indian academia (higher education) in general. I am very thankful to Dr. S. Ramani for these encouraging comments.

Illegal wealth case registered by CBI against former Vice-Chancellor of an Indian university

Some sad, but at the same time, good news on corruption in Indian academia front. Today's The Hindu carries a report stating that the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which plays a roughly similar role to the one that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) plays in the USA, "has registered a case against N.S. Gajbhiye, former vice-chancellor of Harisingh Gour Central University at Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, for allegedly amassing illegal wealth worth over Rs.2.54 crore." [Rs. 2.54 crore is Rs. 25.4 million which is approx. US $ 0.423 million i.e. US $ 423,000.] It also states, "According to the FIR, Mr. Gajbhiye was in possession of disproportionate assets amounting to Rs.2.54 crore in his name and his family members’ during the period under scrutiny, March 2009 to May 2014." Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cbi-books-former-vc-for-disproportionate-assets/article6178177.ece

Dr. Gajbhiye obtained his Ph.D. (in Chemistry it seems) from the prestigious Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) in 1981 and is with the Department of Chemistry of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, http://www.iitk.ac.in/chm/nsg.html. His Vice-chancellor stints seem to be like deputations from IIT Kanpur, after which he returned back to IIT Kanpur.

The sad part is that CBI had to register a case of corruption/disproportionate assets against an academic from the prestigious IISc and IITs. However, Dr. Gajbhiye is innocent until proven guilty - it remains to be seen whether CBI will be able to prove its case in a court of law. The good news part is that CBI is willing to probe corruption charges against top academic administrators like vice-chancellors even if they hail from prestigious academic institutions like IISc and IITs. This will send a clear signal to those top academic administrators as well as other academics who indulge in malpractices and corruption that they could face the full force of Indian law which may result in them being sent to jail and their career getting completely destroyed. That should act as a deterrent for such corrupt actions.

If you would like to read more about complaints made against Dr. Gajbhiye, here is another report dated 28th October 2013 from a mainstream media outlet, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/Rs-1000-cr-scam-rocks-Sagar-Central-University-CBI-begins-probe/articleshow/24789023.cms. It states, "The university vice-chancellor N S Gajbiye is allegedly embroiled in a scam involving siphoning off Rs 1000-crore of Central funds and committing irregularities in recruitment of professors over five years." [Rs. 1,000 crore = Rs. 10,000 million which is approx. US $ 166.67 million using exchange rate of Rs. 60 for 1 US $.]

For-profit Corinthian Colleges goes for orderly dissolution of company; One of the largest USA higher education closures; Lessons for India

Last updated on July 6th 2014

In response to a mail with similar content as that of this blog post, "Prof. Yashpal Committee: Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education Report (2009) - Extracts related to private higher ed. providers and capitation fee", http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/2014/07/prof-yashpal-committee-renovation-and.html, a US based academic shared the following New York Times, July 2nd 2014 report, "Corinthian Colleges Is Closing. Its Students May Be Better Off as a Result.", http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/upshot/corinthian-colleges-is-closing-its-students-may-be-better-off-as-a-result.html.

Some notes from the article [The Creative Commons Attribution License, CC-BY, does NOT apply to this post.]:

* Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit company, which enrolls 72,000 students across over 100 campuses, announced its imminent bankruptcy.

* The company was being investigated for bad educational and financial practices from multiple govt. agencies including the US Department of Education.

* The US Department of Education was investigating allegations of "falsifying job placement data used in marketing claims to prospective students and allegations of altered grades and attendance." and announced temporary withholding of part of federal student aid money. The cash delay was enough to send the company into imminent bankruptcy, as federal student aid money was a vital part of its annual revenues!

* The US govt. had proposed a new set of regulations to govern for-profit colleges which has been challenged in court by the for-profit education industry. But the govt. has gone ahead and released a report which has the results of the test it proposes to apply to these programs (a chart with the percentage of for-profit company programs that are deemed to be failures or are in a warning zone is included in the article). [Ravi: I am impressed with the transparent way in which the US government education regulator is handling this challenge of keeping for-profit education companies in check. I think Indian top education regulators should carefully study the methods used by the US govt. education regulator.]

* The report has 35 % of Corinthian Colleges programs (numbering 162) deemed as failures and 15 % (numbering 68) in the warning zone.

*  But some for-profit education companies have zero failures and zero warnings! [Ravi: So there are some good for-profits too in the USA higher ed. sector.]

* "At its peak, Corinthian received more than half a billion dollars per year from the federal Pell Grant program, more than the entire University of California system." Due to federal law limiting federal financial aid to no more than 90% of company revenue, it seems that Corinthian invested some of its own money for student loans! The calculation being that for every one dollar Corinthian itself gave as student loan, it enabled the company to receive 9 dollars of federal student aid! [Ravi: These sort of financial gimmicks to dig into government aid for economically challenged students, well within the law, is the real scary part for me. Already Andhra Pradesh state in India seems to have had a higher education bubble in engineering colleges fueled by the state govt. fee reimbursement scheme for economically challenged students. That bubble is bursting due to the state government's precarious financial state not allowing it to provide the promised fee reimbursements in a timely way (and perhaps the poor quality of education imparted in colleges mainly dependent on such students). From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_Reimbursement_Scheme_(Andhra_Pradesh), "Fee Reimbursement Scheme also called as Post Matric Scholorship is a student education sponsorship Programme by Government of Andhra Pradesh. It supports students belonging to economically weaker sections in the state. In 2012-13, more than 600,000 students in professional colleges were covered under the scheme, including around 150,000 students in engineering colleges." and "The scheme has been under controversies with some institutions misusing it. The government is planning to reduce the scholarship to Rs.35,000 for the year 2013-14. After the separation of Telangana from Andhra, the fee reimbursement has become a bone of contention between Andhra and Telangana. The new clause introduced by the Telangana government has affected around 39,000 Andha-origin students who had done their schooling and college education in Telangana."]

* The article concludes that more scrutiny and regulation of the for-profit higher education companies is working with those that fail to serve students well being faced with closure and those that provide job skills at affordable price remaining open.

--- end notes ---

Ravi: This is a lot of food for thought for me. A materially advanced country like USA with its far stronger implementation of law and regulations has had to struggle to differentiate between good for-profit education companies and bad. In India, the brutal truth seems to be that even though the law allows only not-for-profit private educational trusts to run educational institutions, there are a lot of private educational institutions which seem to be under-the-table for-profit trusts! The government and regulatory agencies have not been able to prevent clearly illegal activities like capitation fees of large value being taken on a large scale by these under-the-table for-profit education trusts. [For more, please see the post titled, "Private study (informal data): (Illegal) Donation/Capitation fees in India from KG to PG of Rs. 48,400 crores (US $ 8 Billion) per year", http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/2014/07/private-study-informal-data-illegal.html]

If this corruption in a lot of private educational institutions in India is so bad now itself, what could be the picture if the government changed the law to permit for-profit education companies to operate! Yes, that certainly may allow some genuine and law-abiding education entrepreneurs to enter the field of private education in India but, at the same time, the floodgates may get opened for scamsters and tricksters to swamp the private education sector in India, who will adroitly use legal loopholes and their clout & leverage with the political system, to create fortunes for themselves, at the expense of students, parents and government aid money for economically challenged students & parents. Given the very poor track record of Indian higher education regulators in preventing malpractices and fraud, I doubt whether they will be able to implement strong regulation like the US department of education and other US agencies like consumer protection agencies.

In conclusion, I am now having a serious re-think about supporting policy changes allowing for-profit education companies to operate in India, given today's rather dismal state of affairs in prevention of malpractice and fraud in some parts of Indian higher education. Maybe India is just not ready for such free market education entrepreneurship in the field of higher education.

----------------------------
Dr. Srinivasan Ramani, one of India's eminent computer scientist-cum-administrators, first director of National Center for Software Technology. NCST (now CDAC-Mumbai, http://www.cdacmumbai.in/), significant contributor to India's academic network, ERNET, http://www.eis.ernet.in/, first director of HP Labs. India, and 2014 Internet Hall of fame inductee, http://internethalloffame.org/inductees/srinivasan-ramani, has put up a post on his blog titled, Regulating private educational institutions, http://obvioustruths.blogspot.in/2014/07/regulating-private-educational.html, which refers to this Indian CS & IT academic reform activism blog.

Prof. Yashpal Committee: Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education Report (2009) - Extracts related to private higher ed. providers and capitation fee

Yashpal Committee (Chairman Prof. Yash Pal, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yash_Pal) Report (seems to have been done sometime in 2009), Formal name of committee: “Committee to Advise on the Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education”: http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/YPC-Report_0.pdf [Obtained from Page 2 here: http://mhrd.gov.in/documents/term/83 on July 3rd 2014. So the report still seems to be an important one (only 14 reports are listed under MHRD committee reports)]

The report seems to be an exhaustive one and perhaps was (perhaps still is) the key report for the formation of a new National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) which would have (perhaps may still) replaced UGC & AICTE. But the bill to create NCHER got stalled in the last (UPA-II) government. Don't know exactly what the current NDA govt. thinks about it. [For Puttaparthi folks & Sathya Sai devotees, former Vice-Chancellor of Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Sri S.V. Giri, is one of the 24 members of the committee (no. 6 in the list on page 85).]

As of now, I focussed only on the private higher educational providers and corruption parts of the report that I could dig up quickly in my quick browse. I plan to read the whole report sometime in the future - I mean, it is the academic top-guns report on Indian academic reform.

I felt it appropriate to copy-paste one section of the report from Page 32 below (with some comments of mine):

2.3.2 Growth of private-commercial providers

The absence of any significant expansion in different sectors of higher education by the State has created a space for the growth of private providers.

However, there has been no policy or guidelines to measure the competence of private investors in starting and managing a technical institution other than the requirement that it should be registered as a non-profit or charitable trust or society.

This lacuna has been exploited by many investors, who have no understanding or experience of the responsibilities associated with institutions of higher education. The trusts or societies that have been formed largely consist of immediate family members – some of whom had little or no educational background - with some exceptions.

All investments on the institution and all appointments and service conditions and, to a considerable extent, most decisions on admission of students in the management quota have been under the control of such family trusts or societies. The principal or the other academic staff members have been mostly excluded from these processes and asked to mind only the requirements of the university in terms of syllabus and examinations.

Specific studies need to be done regarding the sources of funds utilized by such family trusts or societies as there are allegations that such funds are either unaccounted wealth from business and political enterprises (occasionally with some bank loans for purposes of legitimacy) or from the capitation fees charged from the students in addition to a plethora of unexplained fees charged whimsically by these managements.

[Ravi: Congratulations to the committee for frankly putting down the state of affairs. This is a top-shot committee engaged by HRD minister Shri Arjun Singh (in 2008) and then supported by later HRD minister Shri Kapil Sibal, and has top academic administrators in it. So its words are very weighty giving enough ground for the government/legislature to act by introducing changes in existing higher education acts or creating new acts to fix the problems. Terrific stuff from this committee! They have done a great service to the nation, IMHO, by writing the above five paragraphs in the report.]

It must be mentioned that during the past two decades there have also been many respectable institutions established by private individuals or corporations either with some funding from the government or with no public funding. However, investors and philanthropists wishing to set up
institutions of higher education with noble motives have been deterred by the unpredictable and often whimsical rules and regulations imposed on them by regulatory bodies in this sector.

[Ravi: This is the other side of the coin; Well said.]

[Ravi: Boxed comment]
In many private educational institutions, the appointment of teachers is made at the lowest possible cost. They are treated with scant dignity, thereby turning away competent persons from opting for the teaching profession. A limited number of senior positions are filled at attractive salaries, especially from other reputed institutions, mainly for prestige. Otherwise, there are many terrible instances of faculty being asked to work in more than one institution belonging to the management; their salary being paid only for nine months; actual payments being much less than the amount signed for; impounding of their certificates and passports; compelling them to award pass marks in the internal examination to the “favorites” and fail marks for students who protest illegal collections and so on.
[Ravi: Wow! Hats off! This is what one hears about some of the poorer quality colleges - this committee wrote it down in the report. OK, so now the HRD ministry has got this picture from this top-committee. It must explore legal ways by which such private educational institutions are forced to mend their ways or close down.]
[Ravi: End-boxed comment]

The solution to the unscrupulous methods of some private investors should not mean doing away with their participation in the field of higher education altogether.

In order to reach the goals of doubling the higher education capacity from the present level, it will be necessary to encourage participation of the private sector. At the same time it must be emphasized that governments cannot afford to abandon the responsibility for further augmentation of the existing capacity entirely to the private sector.

In fact we must recognize the need for different layers of institutions in the field of higher education, including state-run, private and those established through public-private partnerships. What is required in order to make all of them work efficiently and serve overall national goals is the framing of rational and consistent ground rules overseen by a transparent regulatory mechanism.

[Ravi: I think the above three paragraphs are a very balanced view and I tend to support it.]

Purely private initiatives require a credible corrective mechanism to do away with the ills associated with it currently. It would be necessary for instance that the present practice of family members who sometimes don’t have the experience or the competence relating to education occupying the controlling position of the governing systems of the private educational institutions be prevented. Similarly, the practice of conferring academic designations such as Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, and Pro Vice Chancellor on members of the family has to stop.

There is a need to have a clear understanding of the difference in the roles of a promoter or philanthropist as a trustee as opposed to being an executive of the institution he or she establishes. Executives must have appropriate abilities and qualifications required for the job.

All private institutions, which seek the status of a university, will have to submit to a national accreditation system.

It is also important that private initiatives in the field of higher education are not driven by the sole motive of profit. They should not confine themselves only to ‘commercially viable’ sectors of education, such as management, accountancy and medicine etc. but should also encompass areas of social and natural sciences by establishing comprehensive universities.

Alternately, such institutions should be allowed to confer only diplomas and certificates and not university degrees. These certificates or diplomas, however, may be recognized by universities for further upgradation to degree levels through programmes of a more holistic nature.
[Ravi: Certificates & diplomas by private educational setups focusing on 'commercially viable' sectors of education being recognised by universities for further upgradation to degree levels through additional programmes seems a very viable option! Maybe certifcates from MOOCs of NPTEL/IIT-Madras could be recognised by universities similarly and they could provide a (shorter) upgrade path for a proper degree.]

All this would mean modification in the legal framework under which such entities operate to include very tight regulations on auditing their accounts, on transparency, on paying a minimum stipulated salary to qualified and competent teachers, and an insistence on a certain percentage of seats being provided full scholarships/freeships on the basis of merit. The modalities of this and of any mandatory reservations can be worked out.

--- end full section 2.3.2 Growth of private-commercial providers extract ---

Extract from section 2.3.4 Issues of affordability (Page 38 onwards) and some comments [The section has the word programmers instead of programmes - I have made the correction below] :

Many private institutions charge exorbitant fees (beyond the prescribed norms) in the form of many kinds of levy (not accounted for by vouchers and receipts) and are unable to provide even minimum competent faculty strength. The nonaffordability of the programmes of such institutions to a vast majority of eligible students is a matter of public concern.

The regulatory agencies have been unable to come to grips with the problems of capitation fee and unauthorized annual fees mainly due to deficiencies in enforcement instruments, and partly due to high-level reluctance to sort out this problem.

[Ravi: So here is the clear acknowledgement of these illegal fees and the "high-level reluctance" to fix the problem in a top-level official committee document.]

Since the norms for fixation of fees are vague, the quantum of fees charged has no rational basis. The illegal capitation fees range from: Rs. 1-10 lakh for the engineering courses; Rs. 20-40 lakh for MBBS courses; Rs. 5-12 lakh for dental courses; and about Rs. 30,000-50,000 for courses in arts and science colleges, depending on the demand.

[Ravi: Well, I think this just shows how toothless the govt. is in preventing this social menace. I mean, everybody seems to know the going rate for the illegal capitation fee - it is an open secret. I hope some new acts which give MHRD and other govt. authorities the teeth to act on such stuff gets passed, and then the govt. shows the political will to go after higher ed. institutions that charge these illegal fees. OR the govt. should make capitation fee legal. (one lakh is one hundred thousand; exchange rate for 1 US $ is approx. Rs. 60, so Rs. 10 Lakh is Rs. 1 million which is approx. US $ 16,666)]

Studies and research show that most of the private investment in higher education is in the field of engineering, management and medicine whereas the majority of enrollment is taking place in traditional disciplines. The private providers are, therefore, not putting their money in areas which attract the bulk of the students, especially first generation university goers. This remains the responsibility of the state. It is the middle class, which has for long benefited from the state education system and is now breaking away from it.

--- end extract from section 2.3.4 Issues of affordability ---

[Please note that the Creative Commons Attribution license, CC-BY, does NOT apply to this post.]

Private study (informal data): (Illegal) Donation/Capitation fees in India from KG to PG of Rs. 48,400 crores (US $ 8 Billion) per year

I was passed on a document over email which seems to be the same as this one on the net here: http://www.sysman.org/CRPCC-education-black-money-corruption-2014-06-27-001c.pdf (15 pages), and which is a private study of (illegal) donation/capitation fee from KG to PG in India. As it is a private study put up on a Mumbai IT security firm website (associated with/owned by the author(s)), one should not take the figures it quotes as validated figures. However, on reading/browsing through it, I felt that, at least some of its calculations do not seem outlandish, given what I have read and heard about donations/capitation fees in India over the past couple of years or so. But then there are no proper/authorised data sources for donation/capitation fees as they are illegal! [(Educational Institution) Management quota seats having higher fee structure seems to be legally OK. But, from what I have gathered over my readings, selling a management quota seat against a particular sum of donation money, is illegal in India. I think there is some Supreme Court ruling to this effect.]

Also, I think private educational institutions may be using this capitation fee/donations (black money) for some expenses related to their educational institutions like building infrastructure, labs. etc. I mean, one cannot presume that all this donation money is profit that is stashed away by the people who manage the educational institution, as the study seems to imply. In fact, I would not be surprised if there is an argument that it is this donation money from management quota seats that cross-subsidizes the open quota lower-fees seats.

But what is becoming clear is that it would be better if the donation/capitation fee is made legal so that everybody knows for sure what is going on. In my humble view, the rich paying donations for management quota seats which cross-subsidizes the lower-fees seats for the poor and middle class is a good thing. But the education and examination standards should not be lowered for these management quota seat students.

BTW here is the Rs. 48,400 crores approx. =  US $ 8 billion calc: Rs. 48,400 crores = Rs. 484,000 million (as 1 crore = 100 * 1,00,000 = 10,000,000 = 10 million). Rs. 484,000 million is Rs. 484 billion. Taking round figure of Rs. 60 for 1 US $, 484/60 is slightly over US $ 8 billion.