Commercialisation Of Higher Education

Nalini Taneja

A small booklet brought out on the occasion of a seminar organised by SAHMAT and the Democratic Teachers Front (DTF) in Delhi recently on the theme of commercialisation of education gives a lot of useful information as well as analysis of the direction that higher education is being given in this country. As far as commercialisation of higher education is concerned there is not much difference between the NDA government and the present regime, although there are many other factors as well that have contributed to this direction in education.

As obvious from Vijender Sharma’s article, these reasons include, apart from the socio-economic policies adopted by the successive union governments, also “the ideological commitments of the ruling class, proactive role of the judiciary, vested interest of the business houses, the failure of the state funded education system due to gradual withdrawal of the state in responding to the needs and requirements of the people and growing choice of the elite, neo-rich and affluent sections for the private sector institutions both local and foreign.”

PRIMARY REASON

All these factors he shows are linked with developments intrinsic to the process of globalisation, and were accelerated during the nineties, with the Punnaiyya committee recommendations that 25 per cent of the recurring expenditure be recovered from the students, and the 1997 finance ministry proposal that higher education, including secondary education, be designated a “non-merit good” for which subsidies must be drastically cut. This is the primary reason for the crisis in higher education today. As a percentage of the GDP, the government expenditure on higher education was 0.46 in 1990 which decreased to 0.37 in 2003-4 (p.7). State withdrawal has contributed to privatisation and commercialisation, while courts have contributed to this trend by giving conflicting and ambiguous judgements. The verdict of the Supreme Court in P A Inamdar Vs State of Maharashtra on August 12, 2005 has virtually given a licence for converting education into a commodity that can be sold in the market to those who can afford it. Both quality and equity are victims of the fast proliferation of private self-financing colleges, which given their market-driven goals emerge mostly for professional education, he argues. In this context he also discusses the Private Universities Bill and the government-sponsored scheme of autonomous colleges and the Birla-Ambani report, all of which make a case for or have as their consequence the full cost recovery from students.

GATS 2000 & EDUCATION

Dinesh Abrol focuses on the implications of the GATS 2000 negotiations, and the Indian government’s agreement on various proposals of GATS, which have resulted in overturning the concept of education as public service to replace it with the primacy of the profit motive and of education geared to serve the interests of corporate industry, particularly the multinationals. The Indian government already permits 100 per cent FDI controlled institutions to be established in India (p.15). He says that, therefore at stake in the WTO negotiations on trade in educational services is “how the country is itself going to think about education in the coming period.” Giving in at these negotiations would lead to a state of “dependent educational development” apart from proliferation of institutions of poor quality and shrinkage of access. It would also increase the social discrimination that is already inherent within the system of education.

The GATS system is designed obviously to benefit business interests of the advanced capitalist countries and to facilitate their drive for profit through trade in services. Education is big business for them and their demand is for breaking down of all barriers that prevent their entry or impinge on the quantity of their profits. They want to enter into the Indian educational system through distance education programmes, setting up offices for third rate foreign universities which will provide ‘foreign degrees’ to Indian students on the ground in India itself, through the admissions of Indian students to the colleges in their countries and through sending teachers here. The entire gamut of interventions, particularly in professional education and science and technology and hospitality sector, is bound to affect the content of what is taught in these courses, apart from the fact that the best is not likely to be made available by them. All this is very different from international cooperation in fields of science and education, and should therefore be opposed by the democratic sections of our society.

JUDICIAL INTERVENTIONS

C P Chandrashekhar’s paper deals with the implications of judicial interventions in the matter of higher education. He says that we tend to look only at the factor that it impinges on reservations and affirmative actions in favour of the less privileged, but tend to ignore their over all contribution to legitimising the process of privatisation of education. It is a form of legal institutionalisation of a process that seems to argue for minority rights over their own established institutions but in effect affects all private institutions. The right to “establish and administer” encompasses the right to levy whatever fees they like and ultimately the content of education, not to say the forms of governance which could mean denial of trade union rights for teachers and end to “politics” by students.

Ashok Agarwal, analysing the recent judicial decisions, argues that “these judgments are not influenced by the social justice philosophy of the Constitution of India but are primarily influenced by the philosophy of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.” The Supreme Court judgments in the TMA Pai Foundation case (2002) and P A Inamdar case amount to “nothing short of granting licence to perpetuate the existing equity in education.” In a nutshell these judgements imply that the state cannot insist on the implementation of the state’s reservation policy in private institutions, although such a reservation can be made available for 15 per cent seats to NRIs depending on the discretion of institutions (i.e. such admissions can be lucrative). The guiding principle of the draft Right to Education Bill, 2005 as prepared by the Kapil Sibal Committee appears to be to grant complete immunity to the unaided private schools from all existing regulatory measures. This is obviously being contested on the basis of constitutional rights in the face of extreme pressures on the government from commercial barons who today run the private unaided educational institutions.

GROWING DISPARITIES

Sukhdeo Thorat has presented data which reveals the low levels of enrolment in higher education in India as compared to countries with similar levels of development and also in relation to countries with a much lower level of development. “The current enrolment ratio in India is less than average of lower middle countries in the world.” It stands at 8-9 per cent when international level shows that 20 per cent is necessary for sustainable economic progress. But even this low aggregate hides the stark disparities in access to higher education. It follows the pattern of household income even without privatisation having taken control of general higher education. There is a wide gap between urban and rural areas as well, and across social groups. For example despite years of reservation the share of SC and ST in higher education in rural areas is just 0.7 per cent and 0.8 per cent as compared with 3 per cent for non-SC and ST groups. A similar gap exists in urban areas as well.

He argues that the processes of ‘reform’ will actually increase these disparities. The fees even with the public funding are higher than in many other countries, and privatisation will send them rocketing high, beyond the reach of those struggling for access to higher education today. With the proliferation of private institutes, as compared to public funded institutions, the competition within public funded institutions will result in driving out the less privileged even from these unless affirmation action (reservation) is properly implemented.

Kamal Mitra Chenoy’s argument is that erosion of reservations and full fledged play of market forces will contribute to making India a country with largest number of illiterates rather than meet the goals of universalisation of education that the government claims to promote. He also debunks the claim that private unaided institutions are not subsidised at all: they are, in the form of cheaper land prices for schools and public facilities like water, electricity and roads at subsidised rates. It is not just the marginalised but also the middle strata that will find the going difficult.

AUTONOMY

The focus of Madhu Prasad’s paper is on the notion of autonomy and the turn that has been given to it in the current drive towards privatisation. For teachers and student organisations autonomy has traditionally meant the right to dissent, representation in decision making bodies of institutions and therefore to determine the working of their institutions democratically as opposed to government dictates, etc. It is a notion that can bear fruit only in the context of universal access to education and a widespread mass system of quality education. It cannot be selective she says, and certainly cannot be achieved through subservience to market forces. She analyses how the notion of autonomy is being used to justify the privatisation drive, and that it is public spending rather than private investment in education which can promote academic autonomy and critical thinking among teachers and students.

Commercialisation and privatisation of education means abdication of social responsibility in favour of private greed.