A few months ago, I was browsing through our university course catalog to register for my classes next spring. For no particular reason, I began looking for the names of professors which sounded South Asian. By the time I was done browsing the business and computer science catalogs, I had come upon an inescapable conclusion: considering the number of South Asians in America, there were too many South Asian professors at UT.

By population, people of South Asian descent, especially Indians, are a very small minority of the entire American populace. I postulated that perhaps because I was looking at those two specific catalogs, the percentage of South Asian professors was significantly higher than expected. However, as I looked into the matter further, I found that this to be a systematic recurrence in many business, science, and engineering departments from marketing to biology to aerospace engineering. It’s not just UT. The demographics of faculties from University of California-Berkeley to University of Michigan-Ann Arbor show similar proportions of South Asian professors.

Very little interaction and a lot of lecture.

This statistical anomaly can best be explained by the failures of the Indian higher education system. There is very little doubt that some segment of India’s academic system turns out some of the very best career professionals in the world. Unfortunately, we encounter a very familiar economics problem: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

In fact, while the Indian universities have been educating the professionals, they’ve failed to sustain their own teaching pool. An hour spent in a regular Indian college class is enough to understand my point. The teachers don’t encourage research and discussion and the students are expected to do little more than absorb the information. Furthermore, there is a widespread understanding that studying basic sciences means unemployment in the future. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), in its 2006 evaluation of the Indian academic system, says that the impressions of the Indians students are indeed correct. Of the unemployed post graduates, 74% hold a science degree. The report goes on to define the fundamental problem: “[Indian] Universities have long abandoned the accent on research and have become mere teaching centers. Research aptitude in students is not properly developed during their course of study. Their curriculum is neither research-oriented nor updated.” ¹ The report concludes that teachers abstain from research because their research successes do not lead to career advancements.

Even in developed countries, there is an ongoing debate as to how effectively pure science research today converts into prosperity tomorrow. Nevertheless, there is little doubt what sustains the quality of education: research. Philip G. Altbach elaborates: “There was a time when countries could achieve economic success with cheap labour and low-tech manufacturing. Low wages still help, but contemporary large-scale development requires a sophisticated and at least partly knowledge-based economy.” That means research-focused education for some and research-based teaching by all teachers. While some institutions such as IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, and the Tata institutions have begun changing their curriculum, they still enroll under 1% of the population. ²

Experience in research today translates into teachers and researchers tomorrow. While the amount of research produced by India has been increasing somewhat over the past ten years, there has also been a much greater and much noticeable decline in the quality of that research. Started by a Spanish research team, the SCIMago project measures the research output of each country in the world by counting both the articles published and the citations to these articles. A look into this report reveals the both the veracity and the extent of this failure. According to the report, India’s H-Index (the scientific impact and productivity of a country) ranks 25th in the world. ³ For an academic system with 2.5 million graduates each year, this statistic indicates a clear inability for the system to sustain itself.

From SCIMago: Graphic reveals the decline in the quality of Indian research

The solution for this problem is neither cheap nor quick. Research takes many years to get going and setting up self-sustaining research institutions takes even longer. Regardless of the difficulty of the change, inaction is a choice India cannot afford if it expects to produce graduates with the same level of expertise it does now.

India has to solve this problem in a two-pronged approach. First, the government must tear down the bureaucracy and the rules that prevent university systems from recruiting top researchers. Many of these researchers today end up at foreign universities doing the same research for which they were not appreciated either monetarily or professionally back home. Dr Basu, an economics professor at Cornell, says it best, “…in today’s India to tie all universities to the same level of support and rules is to commit them all to mediocrity.” He refers to China’s star system, where “leading academics salaries and research funding are allowed to rise to match productivity.” He goes on to give an example of a talented Indian PhD, who despite being paid extremely well in the private sector, decided to do research at an Indian university for “the standard 14,000 rupees ($305) per month for a starting academic.” ⁴ Leaving Indian higher education’s future to the random acts of self-sacrifice by people is as silly as it sounds.

Second, the government must define and clarify rules for foreign universities to set up campuses in India. Foreign universities have both the experience and the necessary prerequisite research to immediately begin training new future researchers and teachers. According to LiveMint, a business newspaper launched by The Wall Street Journal, foreign educational institutions are not permitted to offer degree certifications in India. ⁵ However, the education department does allow “…nearly 150 foreign institutes [to] offer courses with Indian varsities under a twinning arrangement - part of the course in India, the remaining abroad…” The logic behind the current rules escapes me. According to Philip G. Altbach of The Hindu, “Perhaps half [of the IIT graduates] leave the country immediately upon graduation to pursue advanced study abroad — and most do not return. A stunning 86 per cent of students in science and technology fields from India who obtain degrees in the United States do not return home immediately following their study. Another significant group, of about 30 per cent, decides to earn MBAs in India because local salaries are higher — and are lost to science and technology.” Why not offer these students an option closer to home that gets them a degree valid worldwide? If not for these students, how about for those who are stuck studying an age-old curriculum either because they couldn’t get out of India or into one of India’s premier institutions? After all, the selection rate for the IIT’s and the IIM’s is frighteningly low. Georgia Tech, for example, has decided to offer its Industrial engineering program, ranked number 1 in the world, at its campus in Hyderabad. ⁶ In fact, according to the Business Standard, both Oxford and Stanford have claimed “interest in setting up campuses in India but have been hesitant about moving forward until they are clear about the degree of regulation, funding, and other issues.” ⁷ The way forward seems clear on this issue. According to LiveMint, there is a foreign university bill that is going to be brought up before the Indian Parliament soon. While the government should ensure no fraud takes place, it should place minimal restrictions on the incoming foreign universities so that the ineptitude of the Indian bureaucracy does not begin affecting the educational value of these institutions.

Hopefully one day, a Georgia Tech building like this will host Indian scientists and students.

This approach will only begin healing the extensive damage caused to the Indian higher education system by the government’s neglect. The key will be to maintain a constant stream of funding so that a research-based career becomes a viable option for future Indian teachers and students. Otherwise, the Indian economy, now fueled by the service industry, will inevitably begin stagnating in the future. Either the Indian government can wait to act until that day when it is too late - or it can prepare its people for a different and a better tomorrow.

References:
1. UNESCO - G. Varghese - UNESCO Report:
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001530/153099e.pdf

2. The Hindu - Philip G. Altbach - Higher Education in India:
http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/12/stories/2005041204141000.htm

3. SCImago. (2007). SJR - SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Retrieved January 06, 2009, from:
http://www.scimagojr.com

4. BBC News - Dr. Kaushik Basu- India’s faltering education system:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4793311.stm

5. LiveMint - Pallavi Singh - Foreign universities Bill unlikely to be tabled soon:
http://www.livemint.com/2008/11/10222533/Foreign-universities-Bill-unli.html

6. The Cyberabad Times - Georgia Tech SEZ:
http://www.cyberabadtimes.net/archives/georgia-tech-sez.php

7. Business Standard - Govt to ease investment norms in higher education:
http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=329690

Photo Courtesy: Piyush Chandra, goingstuckey