The separate private and public universities league tables will aid and enable school and college leavers to select higher education institutions best in sync with their budgets, aptitudes and aspirations-Dilip Thakore Post-Independence India’s higher education system tightly regulated by the Central and state governments has proved to be a big disappointment. Although some of the country’s universities are of more than 150 years vintage — Bombay, Calcutta and Madras universities were established in 1857 — until very recently, none of India’s 979 universities has ever been ranked among the Top 200 WUR (World University Rankings) league tables published annually by the globally respected London-based higher ed rating agencies Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE). In the latest WUR 2021 published by QS, the only Indian universities ranked among the Top 200 are the IIT Bombay (estb.1958) ranked #172, followed by the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (estb. 1909) at #185 and IIT-Delhi (estb.1961) #193. Humiliatingly, seven varsities of the neighbouring People’s Republic of China (PRC) are ranked among the QS Top 200 with four in the Top 50. In the THE 2021 league table, not even one Indian university is ranked in the Top 200. India’s showpiece IISc, Bengaluru is ranked in the 301-50 range. On the other hand, the THE Top 200 league table includes seven PRC universities with Tsinghua ranked #20 and Peking University at #23. Quite clearly, in the global race of academic excellence, India’s higher education system which includes 39,931 undergrad colleges, 10,725 standalone institutions and 979 universities with an aggregate enrolment of 37 million youth, is an embarrassing also-ran. The prime cause of this embarrassing status is that the country’s higher education institutions (HEIs) rigidly controlled by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) are over-regulated, allowing them little elbow room for autonomy and innovation. UGC licenses and heavily subsidises all 54 Central government universities, provides ad hoc grants to state government universities and prescribes the syllabuses of all arts, science and commerce HEIs countrywide. AICTE licences all engineering and technical HEIs across the country including B-schools and pharmacy colleges, but excluding medical and law colleges which are subject to licensing and supervision of the Medical Council of India and the Bar Council of India. In turn these supervisory and regulatory institutions are tightly controlled by the Union education (formerly HRD) ministry. Thus for over seven decades higher education has been over-regulated by the neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood. Of the country’s 39,931 undergrad colleges, a mere 827 have been awarded limited autonomy. In sum the vast majority of HEIs are being micro-managed by generalist bureaucrats of the Union education ministry and their hand-picked appointees in an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies — UGC, NCTE, AICTE, MCI, NBA among others. The much-prized autonomous status conferred on 827 colleges is restricted to academic freedom. In the matter of introducing new study programmes and levying tuition fees, even autonomous colleges are obliged to obtain sanctions and clearances from affiliating universities,…
