The demands of the education market vary a lot. Some like to have the standards of the IITs; there are others who are quite happy with the sub-standard of poor colleges. How can a central body bring them all under a single roof, asks P. V. INDIRESAN.

The basic problem with Indian education is at the primary stage.

As I said in my previous article, in the field of education, India has three options: The first option of retaining the existing system with suitable reforms to punish offenders is the simplest. Considering that the Indian judicial system is beset with inordinate delays, there is not much hope that recalcitrant colleges will be punished, at any rate fast enough or severely enough to deter them. Therefore, the real choices are only two: Have a new system of regulation or a new system of governance.

Current thinking appears to favour a powerful central authority that will oversee all aspects of education — from the primary school level to the post-graduate.

That choice has its own problems. What is the guarantee that such a body too will not be corrupted the way the UGC and the AICTE have been? Who will man the body?

If the same persons who are handling the UGC and the AICTE were to do so (that is highly probable) will they not carry the old baggage? If, for whatever reason, a wrong choice is made, a megalomaniac or a corrupt or a timid person becomes the chief regulator, will that not damage the entire system?

As we are not clear what the proposed system will be, one cannot be very specific. At the same time, we have to be concerned in instituting a monopoly to control the entire system of education.

Further, what will the regulator do — regulate courses, standards, admissions, fees? How will that help educators have their own autonomy? One wrong or bad choice of regulation can do untold and even irrecoverable damage.

SEBI can be cited as an example of a good regulator which regulates innumerable businesses performing entirely different tasks. However, SEBI does not regulate how a business operates but only its financial system.

For that purpose it has the support of innumerable accounting and auditing firms each one of which has decades of tradition and is regulated by well established laws. At present, we have no equivalent of auditing firms to discipline any educational institution.

The demands of the education market vary a lot. Some like to have the standards of the IITs; there are others who are quite happy with the sub-standard of poor colleges. How can a central body bring them all under a single roof?

We are witness to the problems faced by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India. Education is probably an even bigger business, and a far more complex one, than telecommunications is. Hence, a cautious administration should be more concerned about what is happening to TRAI than to SEBI.

Apart from a small minority of the very rich, for almost all others, the aim of education is to get better jobs. Unfortunately, the fact is that unemployment among the university graduates is much higher than among the others. In particular, under-employment of graduates is widespread in the country.

The problem starts at the school level: According to a Planning Commission report, most students cannot divide a two-digit number by a single digit, nor can they read a sentence even after several years of education.

The basic problem with Indian education is at the primary stage. That is where most dropouts occur and the best minds are lost. As the Centre has the responsibility to maintain standards, I suggest that the Centre should run or fund at least one institution in every tehsil where even the poorest child will get good education — provided it is among the top ten per cent. That kind of a system will do more to improve education than any regulator can.

Educational institutions may be funded either by the government or privately. Each system has its own problems. In many state-funded institutions, teacher discipline is poor; in many private institutions, admissions are arbitrary and fees can be extortionate.

Most governments have given up on disciplining teachers. Instead, they impose ceilings on fees and, at the same time, insist that teachers be paid properly. The latter is a rule that is bound to be broken. Looking at the issue objectively, there are three beneficiaries of the education system: The student, the employer and the society at large. As a simple rule, we might say that the cost of education should be divided equally among the three. The fees charged may not be the same for every student but students as a whole may contribute a third of the cost and the employers and the state a third each.

Unfortunately, the state is unable to charge students a third of the costs and has no money to spare beyond paying salaries. It is unable to discipline teachers.

It interferes with the system of admissions and has a great propensity for central entrance tests. It forgets that entrance tests cannot, and do not, assess the full potential of a student; that nationwide tests can at best be used (as the US does) for short-listing and not as the final arbiter of admissions.

The current problem in Tamil Nadu medical admissions has risen because the state and the judiciary have a biased view of the rich.

A rich child can enjoy many luxuries including exclusive school education which no poor child can ever hope for. He/she can even go abroad and enjoy an even more expensive education. All that is legal, accepted, and permitted.

However, at the Indian university level, the child cannot go to expensive and exclusive colleges by paying whatever the institution may charge. That is not legal. Suddenly, the rich child loses the freedom it enjoys elsewhere. That is at the root of the problem.

I suggest that private colleges should have the autonomy to decide what courses they will teach and at what standard, admit whoever they like and charge whatever they consider fit from each student but they should do so transparently, not secretly. Let them have the same rules by which Harvard and Stanford discipline themselves.

In the case of state-funded colleges, the state may impose its own policy on admission and on the fees to be charged. However, the state should give up its prerogative to transfer teachers. It is the transfer business that has destroyed most government institutions. If the IITs have done fairly well, that is because their teachers are not transferable.

Ideally, each institution should have its own management committee which will recruit (and promote) its teachers. That is the basic autonomy that state funded colleges need more than anything else.

The state may also consider the system of “Charter Schools”: Schools in the US that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for extra accountability.

It is best to leave private institutions alone. Let them prosper or sink according to the quality of education they provide and at the cost they charge. Sooner or later, they will find it necessary to admit more competent but poorer students – even free if that is needed – the way Harvard and other private universities do in the US.

If like the US, India does without a central regulator, what kind of Public-Private Partnership can it have?

(To be concluded)