India is home to the second largest higher education ecosystem in the world, with 4.33 crore students and nearly 15 lakh faculty across 1,168 Universities, 45,473 Colleges and 12,002 Standalone Institutions. While ‘Institutions of National Importance’ and ‘Central Universities’ have made their mark in frontier areas of knowledge and dominate national priorities, it is the nearly 500 ‘State Public Universities (SPUs) and their over 46,000 affiliated institutions that are the backbone of its higher education system. They currently cater to over 80 per cent of students. Technically, SPUs are established or incorporated by a Provincial or State Act, funded by the State Governments, and under their realm of control. However, given their phenomenal reach and hence their vital role in grooming talent across the country, their transformation is a collective national responsibility.
By 2035, the NEP 2020 target is to achieve a GER in higher education of 50 per cent. This implies doubling enrolment in our higher education institutions to nearly 9 crores over the next decade, with almost the same proportion of students continuing to study in SPUs. There are several outstanding SPUs, but the quality of higher education being imparted in many SPUs is hampered by a plethora of challenges. The primary one is the lack of high-quality physical and digital infrastructure. Limited funding negatively impacts the quality of research. Shortage of faculty adversely affects the pupil-teacher ratio. Above all, students’ employability is a major concern.
Published research has also observed that increased devolution of funds to States under the 14th and 15th Finance Commission cycles has not led to a consequent increase in several State Governments’ funding of social sectors, especially higher education. A fall in average growth rates in higher education expenditure in States during 2015-20 is evident, with median value coming down to 6.6 per cent compared to 10 per cent during 2005-10 and 2010-15. There are States with negative growth rates in spending on higher education.
While India’s higher education sector has witnessed remarkable growth over the last seven decades, the pressing challenge now lies in ensuring high quality. NITI Aayog’s recent report on ‘Expanding Quality Higher Education through States and State Public Universities’ focuses on this and attempts to bring higher education to the centre of India’s development and policy discourse. An outcome of extensive consultations across 20 States and UTs and with over 50 SPUs, it makes nearly 80 policy recommendations across 12 sub-themes to address major systemic and institutional challenges. Many interventions around internationalisation, governance and financial autonomy are geared towards ‘Leading’ SPUs, those that feature in the top 50 SPUs in NIRF 2024 Rankings, given that they are likely to possess in-house technical, managerial, and financial capacities to implement the suggested reforms. We provide a snapshot of policy recommendations and action pathways across four key themes.
The establishment of Research Hubs and Centres of Excellence in clusters of SPUs to leverage their core competencies and provide solutions to regional challenges can be a transformative step. Institutionalising holistic education including environment, human values and global citizenship education in the curricular and co-curricular domains of SPUs is a much-needed reform to create students with high levels of intelligence, and emotional and spiritual quotients. Handholding ‘Leading’ SPUs in each State to transition to MERUs (Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities), creating career pathways in research, and encouraging student and faculty-led research commercialisation and start-ups can bring research centre stage in SPUs. ‘Leading’ SPUs can also promote internationalisation through long-term partnerships for joint research projects, and faculty and student exchange programmes.
State Higher Education Councils and State-level NITI Aayogs can play an important role in preparing State-level Higher Education Vision and Implementation Roadmaps for 2047 by identifying priority areas. At the institutional level, a shift towards a ‘regulator-facilitator’ model for SPUs and granting greater autonomy to ‘Leading’ SPUs in areas like governance, curriculum development, and faculty recruitment is crucial. This must be combined with capacity building of faculty and administrators to ensure that academic and research standards are upheld. Given the scale of students that need to be provided higher education over the next decade, an all-hands-on-deck strategy is essential to mobilise funding and financing from all quarters including Governments, industry, and civil society. ‘Leading’ SPUs must be empowered to devise internal revenue generation strategies by expanding self-financed programmes in high-demand areas, establishing consultancy units, leveraging CSR funds, encouraging alumni and philanthropic contributions, and exploring innovative PPP models for infrastructure development and research. Enhancing autonomy to ‘Leading’ SPUs in financial decision-making including inflation-adjusted fee setting must be balanced with a robust system of merit-cum-means scholarships such that no deserving student is deprived of access to higher education.
Faculty must be encouraged to design and deliver industry-relevant courses to align with national needs. Promoting internships, apprenticeship-embedded degree programmes, and work-based learning opportunities is of equal importance to ensure employability. This requires strengthening collaborations with Sector Skill Councils, industry partners and trade associations to bridge the education-employability gap. It is equally essential that SPUs transition from a job-seeking to a job-creation mindset. Impetus must also be provided to physical education and wellness courses, language proficiency and lifelong learning programmes, to contribute to holistic and continuous student development. Many SPUs possess spare infrastructural facilities. In evening hours, these may be utilised to deliver short-term skilling programmes and generate additional revenues.
Given the prime importance of SPUs in India’s higher education ecosystem, their transformation into becoming institutions of excellence providing high-quality education is a sine qua non for reinforcing our position as a global hub of knowledge and talent. Above all, this transformation of SPUs is vital for our endeavour to emerge as a Viksit Bharat by 2047.
(Dr VK Paul is Member, NITI Aayog; Dr Shashank Shah is Senior Specialist and Oshin Dharap is Consultant at NITI Aayog. Views expressed are personal)