46 INDIA TODAY AUGUST 13, 2018ductivity where 0.1 per cent of India’s labour force produces
8 per cent of our GDP vs agriculture, where 50 per cent of
our labour force produces only 10 per cent of our GDP). But
the medical council regulators thought the world of quality
through restricting quantity, which means capitation fees is
still common and India produces 100,000 less doctors than
it needs every year.
Despite stakeholder unrest, most universities have been
unable to heal themselves. Many have trapped themselves
into incentives that push them to become more expensive,
deprioritise teaching over research, diminish the quality of
education and deliver poor employability. All universities face
the difficult trade-offs between cost, quality and quantity and
therefore must think harder about purpose. University 1.0
was driven by religions. University 2.0 was
driven by the state. University 3.0 was driv-
en by philanthropy. But many of them aren’t
able to deliver employability at volume;
US student loans of $1.1 trillion will not be
paid back in full (at least not from the wage
premium after graduation). I recently met
a BA in English at a job fair who couldn’t
answer my questions in English and said
“Maine apna BA English Hindi mein kiya
hai,” and even though TeamLease has hired
1.7 million people since we started, we have
only hired 5 per cent of those that came to
us for a job.
A
ll three versions of universities will
continue but will need to accommodate
some attributes of University 4.0 (U4.0)
that will recognise employability as an im-
portant objective (not necessarily meaning
narrow specialisation but higher education
at a cost that can justify third-party financ-
ing which can be paid back from work after
graduation). U4.0 will have more flexibility;
equivalence for learning on-campus, online,
onsite, and on-the-job with most learn-
ing having a blended experience. U4.0 will
encourage modularity with multiple pathways of vertical and
horizontal connectivity between certificates, diplomas and
degrees because students need different levels of matching,
repair, prepare and upgrade.
U4.0 will encourage diverse institu t ional responses for
India’s higher edu cation challenges of affordability, access,
equity and employability because the private sector has a trust
deficit, the public sector an execu t ion deficit and non-profits a
scale deficit. U4.0 will target a 30 per cent Gross Enrolment
Ratio (GER or number of kids between 18 and 24 in college),
but strategise to expand GER by shifting from the traditional
response of ‘more cooks in the kitchen’ to a ‘different recipe’.
U4.0 will rethink financing (it is not clear whether Delhi Uni-
versity meeting only 4 per cent of its costs from fees is the right
number to create student accountability). U4.0 will rethink
access—higher education participation numbers for ‘outsiders’
like women, backward castes, Muslims and backward states—
by thinking cre atively about separating financing and delivery.
U4.0 will rethink the role of apprentices, technology and soft
skills and think harder about employer needs. U4.0 will fight
for the separation of the role of policymaker, regulator and
service provider. U4.0 will advocate for school reform—such as
the Right to Education Act to be amended to become the Right
to Learning Act because you can’t teach people in four years
what they should have learnt in 12. U4.0 will need philanthro-
pists to extend their time horizons because bui lding a great
university is the work of generations; the youngest institution
in a recent list of the Top 10 global universities
is 125 years and only four institutions in the
Top 100 are less than 40 years old. U4.0 needs
regulators to create the space for diversity
among universities in purpose, structure,
financing, delivery and governance. The way
to handle our higher education challenges
and bring employability to the fore are several
statistically independent and genetically
diverse tries.
Economist Surjit Bhalla’s great book, The
New Wealth of Nations, propo ses that educa-
tion is the greatest leveller of inequality and
biggest driver of prosperity; his discounted
cash flow analysis suggests that educational
wealth of $330 trillion is far more equit ably
distributed than the financial wea lth of $256
trillion. But universities are under challenge
because both the economy and society are
demanding more. The recent institute of
eminence tag to the Indian Institute of Sci-
ence is a fitting tribute to a dream seeded by
a chance encounter of Jamsetji with Swami
Vivekananda on a ship voyage between Japan
and America in 1893 but nurtured by his
generous posthumous endowment (his will
divided his fortune equally between his two
sons and IISc), strong sense of purpose for the institution
(research) and inspired leadership (C.V. Raman, Satish Dha-
wan and many others). But not every university can be—or
needs to be—like IISc. Our universities need to think harder
about purpose, create meritocratic cultures with a fear of
falling and a hope of rising, and adopt institutional funding
and governance mechanisms for resilience. Dinosaurs did not
die because the world changed; they died because they did
not change. Indian universities have many exciting, difficult
choices in the next 20 years. They must choose carefully. nThe writers are co-founders of TeamLease Services and
Schoolguru Eduserve, respectivelyAll universities
face the difficult
trade-offs
between cost,
quality and
quantity and,
therefore, must
think harder about
purpose
EDUCATION SPECIAL ESSAY