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India's Regulators Won't Agree on Single Accreditor
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELHI
Issue
cover-dated May 7, 2008
New Delhi: India's 16 higher-education
regulatory bodies are notorious, many here say, for mistaking
regulation for governance. Every move to change a course, add
more faculty members, or alter the examination format is stubbornly
resisted while the system as a whole stagnates for want of leadership.
Now it appears that the latest effort to better coordinate higher-education
oversight has fallen victim to the beast that is Indian bureaucracy.
The four largest regulators, which
oversee India's national universities, technical colleges, and
law and medical schools, have refused to agree to the creation
of a single, independent higher-education regulator, a junior
minister in charge of higher education reportedly told Parliament
last month.
According to a local newspaper, D.
Purandeswari said the ministry had washed its hands of the matter
after the regulators termed an independent body "nonfeasible."
The Chronicle's calls to Ms. Purandeswari for comment were not
returned.
The problems facing India's higher-education
system are staggering. They include poor academic quality at
many institutions, a severe shortage of seats at public universities,
tremendous challenges for private players—especially
foreign institutions—trying to enter the system, and
a vast gap between what universities offer and what the market
actually needs.
Complexity, Multiplicity, Rigidity
Last year the National Knowledge Commission,
an advisory body to the prime minister, harshly criticized the
regulators, saying that strong institutions were hamstrung by
bureaucracy, which discourages innovation and creativity. Meanwhile,
storefront operations are allowed to open with little concern
for quality.
"There are several instances where
an engineering college or a business school is approved, promptly,
in a small house of a metropolitan suburb without the requisite
teachers, infrastructure, or facilities, but established universities
experience difficulties in obtaining similar approvals,"
the commission said in a 2006 report. "The complexity,
the multiplicity, and the rigidity of the existing regulatory
structure is not conducive to the expansion of higher-education
opportunities in India."
In a telephone interview, the commission's
chairman, Sam Pitroda, said that "regulators need to worry
about [course] content more than regulations."
Last month, India's former president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, said
that only 25 percent of engineering graduates were employable.
The rest lack the technical knowledge, critical-thinking skills,
and English proficiency needed by India's booming information-technology
sector.
The commission has recommended the
establishment of an independent regulator at an arm's length
from the government and not beholden to any stakeholders.
It would be the only agency authorized to accord degree-granting
power to higher-education institutions. The existing regulators,
the commission said, should function more as professional associations.
The commission had said the independent
body should be responsible for monitoring standards not just
at public institutions but also at the private institutions
that have mushroomed across India in the last decade. Many of
those largely unregulated institutions charge exorbitant tuition.
Seeking an Independent Regulator
Just days after the minister's comment
to Parliament, a 21-year-old student in India tried to kill
himself when he realized that IIMR Pharma Business School, a
private college he was attending here, was not recognized by
India's technical-education or higher-education regulators.
Both regulators' Web sites post partial lists of unapproved
institutions, but IIMR does not appear among them.
Will India ever have an independent
regulator? Mr. Pitroda thinks so.
"I look at this as a process, and the process has started,"
he said, comparing higher education to the once-unregulated
telecommunications industry, which the government eventually
reined in.
"It happened in telecom,"
he said. "In this case, too, it will happen."
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