New Education Policy and Higher Education Reforms in India

Introduction

The Government of India announced the New Education Policy, 2020 (NEP, 2020 hereafter) in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, which upended education at all levels across the world. This was a long-awaited policy, coming 34 years after the previous one–the National Policy of Education, 1986 (NPE, 1986 hereafter). In the meantime, the global and national contexts have radically changed, driven by technological and other political economy factors, with immense implications for the labour market and the higher education system. The NPE, 1986 was adopted before liberalisation, globalisation, and the ICT revolution, among other factors, had completely transformed global and the Indian economy and technology and people’s tastes and preferences had radically altered the world of education and work.

In between the two policies, India’s higher education system had arguably moved away from an ‘elite’ to a ‘mass’ system—if one goes by the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for the age group 18–23 years. (Rao, 2017; Trow, 1973; Varghese, 2015). As recently as 2002–2003, the GER for the age group 18–23 years in India was 9 (Rao, 2017); in 2020–2021 it has tripled to 27.3 (GoI, 2021). India’s rapid progress in massification of higher education in the last three decades has been driven by private higher education institutions (HEIs hereafter), raising questions of quality and equity. This is different from the phase of expansion in the first two decades after independence—when public institutions spread to fill the yawning gaps in the colonial education system and to support nation-building on the basis of self-reliance, most significant part of which was rapid industrialisation. By 1970s, however, it was clear that the predominantly public higher education system that expanded in the first two decades after independence, remained elite. Since 1980s, fuelled by rising aspirations of the middle class—itself largely a product of the expansion of the public sector in the previous three decades—and entry of private capital into the higher education sector, higher education expanded rapidly, particularly since 2000 (Rao, 2017; Varghese, 2015).

At present, India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world, which is also, at the same time, complex and fragmented—woefully lacking in efficiency, equity, and quality (GoI, 2020). There are various reasons behind this—the specific choices made after independence, the inherited colonial system, the responsibilities of different governments in promoting higher education in the federal system of India, regional disparities in economic development, the social churning that has shaped politics over the years, the evolving structure of the economy, and the persistent problem of unemployment for the educated youth, to name a few.

Given that much was expected from NEP 2020, the terseness of the final document—only 63 pages long (the 1986 policy was 186 pages long)—is surprising. NEP, 2020 is a document with grand visions and national aspirations, and it needs close scrutiny to uncover some of the underlying big ideas. There is generous use of the following words in the document: ‘local’ (81 times), ‘multi-disciplinary/multidisciplinary’ (69 times), ‘holistic’ (41 times), ‘global/globally’ (25 times), ‘flexible/flexibility’ (23 times), ‘autonomy’ (21 times), ‘universal’ (20 times), and ‘creative’ (12 times) (GoI, 2020). There is much in the document that one cannot but agree with—for example, choosing mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary school, doing away with rigid and early specialisation in arts and sciences in high schools, making the education system sensitive to the local context, knowledge, resources, and needs, making the undergraduate curriculum flexible, along with multiple entry and exit points for students, replacing HEIs offering single or a narrow set of programmes by multi-department, multidisciplinary institutions offering the full range of education, etc.

In this essay, however, we confine ourselves to the prescriptions for HEIs in NEP, 2020. The principal objective of NEP 2020 in the realm of higher education is nothing short of ‘a complete overhaul and re-energising of the higher education system’, to be achieved through, among other things, by ‘light but tight’ regulation. The problem lies in the misalignment of the lofty objectives of the policy with the proposed structure of centralised governance. India is a continent-size country with constituent states often matching relatively ‘large’ countries in population sizes. Governance at national level is intimately connected to the issue of federalism. One of the charges levelled against the NEP, 2020, by its critics, particularly the political opposition at regional levels, is that it goes against the spirit of federalism in governance of education. Given the differences in history, natural resource endowments, language, social structures, cultural values, and divergent economic trajectories of Indian states, the last being particularly prominent in post-1991 India, any proposal for centralised governance is not only expected to face resistance from state governments but also to raise many questions related to equity and quality.

A second problem with the NEP 2020, lies in the vaguely conceptualised internal governance of HEIs. It appears to uphold the hierarchical model of corporate governance as the ideal model of internal governance of HEIs. Such a view needs careful examination in light of the specificity of HEIs as organisations and their role in the society.

The rest of the essay advances a number of arguments with respect to these problems. In the section ‘NEP, 2020 and Its Ersatz Normativity’, I discuss the multiplicity of values that appear to inform the NEP, 2020—viewed through a historical lens. In the section ‘HEIs in the Indian Federal Structure: The Political Economy of Massification’, I unpack the political economy of the processes driving the expansion of the higher education system in India, seen through the lens of federalism. In the section ‘Rolls-Royces, BMWs, and Fords’, I analyse the factors behind the fragmented landscape of higher education in India. In the section ‘Autonomy, Accountability, and Change’, I critically interrogate the governance model for HEIs that NEP, 2020 relies on, in radically transforming higher education in India. The section ‘Conclusion’ is the concluding section.

NEP, 2020 and Its Ersatz Normativity

The first National Policy on Education was announced in 1968, following the submission of, and as recommended in, the Report of the National Education Commission of 1964–1966, chaired by D. S. Kothari. The second policy, NPE, 1986, came within two decades of the first, and it was further modified in 1992 through a Programme of Action. With the economic reforms of 1991, which led to the dismantling of much of the legal and regulatory framework that guided State-led planned industrialisation, economic development, and social modernisation in the first three decades after independence, the Indian economy was liberalised and globalised, with the private sector now taking the commanding heights of the economy. Economic liberalisation coincided with significant political transformations as the one-party of dominance of the Indian National Congress, which first started to fray at the state level in late 1960s, finally gave way in the late 1980s at the national level, and the era of coalitions and alliances at both the state level and more so, at the national level, was ushered in. At the same time, reservation of seats for disadvantaged social groups contributed to the assertion of caste identities, the ascendance of caste politics, and aspirations of caste mobility. The rural transformations themselves were historic, as the villages ceased to be sites ‘where futures can be planned’ (Gupta, 2005, p. 5), and education became the privileged pathway out of rural and agrarian life.

Social media in the second decade of this century made images of middle-class consumption widely available to the poor and rich alike, reinforcing the desires and aspirations of the former. As these processes were unfolding, the world of work was silently changing, with older skill sets becoming irrelevant in the job market and automation and robotics threatening to wipe out many of the traditional tasks comprising today’s jobs. India itself underwent a tectonic shift in its distribution of income, from being a relatively egalitarian society in the 1980s, with income inequality close to the levels of European countries, to one of the most unequal countries by the end of the second decade of this century. India also witnessed rapidly divergent economic development at subnational levels, contributing to further strains on centre–state relations.

Given these transformations—economic, social, cultural, and political—the domestic and global context in which NPE, 1986 was announced had long ceased to exist, and the absence of a new policy on education for next three decades meant that higher education, which is the focus of this essay, was allowed to evolve without a guiding vision or strategic perspective. In fact, the massification of higher education, which has picked up pace since 2000, happened in the absence of any policy vision that was grounded in the social context of the time.

One of the most vexed issues in Indian higher education system is the centre–state relations. The NEP, 2020 has been criticised for the manner in which it was brought into effect—with the Union Cabinet approving it during the pandemic and without adequate discussion in the parliament. One of the charges levelled against the NEP, 2020, is that it goes against the spirit of federalism in governance of education (Sahoo, 2020). The nature of centre–state relations in India, that is, the Indian federation, has been characterised as a quasi-federation, semi-federation, or a federation with a strong unitary character or centralising tendency (Tilak 2017; Varshney, 2013). The evolution of education as a state subject exemplifies the ‘centralising tendency’ in Indian federal relations—a process that has been going on for several decades.

In the colonial period, specifically, that is, at the very end of the rule of the East India Company, the first universities appeared in India in 1857—in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. These universities were modelled after the University of London, illustrating the ‘servile fidelity’ of the colony’s institutions to its mother institutions in London (Schenkman, 1954, p. 24). These universities were ‘not to be themselves “places of education,” but were to test “the value of the education given elsewhere”’ (Schenkman, 1954, p. 24).

The [colonial] government was explicit about its lack of interest in providing education through the university, paying for higher education in the colleges or sponsoring growth through publicly owned institutions. It was primarily interested in regulating quality. (Carnoy & Dossani, 2013, p. 598)

The higher education system created by the colonial government thus had several characteristics—(a) a ‘federal university system’, in which the lead institution—the university—may or may not have teaching departments; (b) the university itself is owned and governed by the state (‘provincial’) government; and (c) the constituent and/or affiliated colleges are privately owned and managed.

In independent India, the Constitution listed subjects under the Union List, the State List, and, in cases of overlapping responsibilities, the Concurrent List. At the time of framing of the Constitution of India, education was explicitly made a state subject. For nation-building and social justice, however, some major functions were reserved for the Union government, and few aspects were placed on the concurrent list as joint responsibilities of state and central governments. These included, for example, the role of the Union government in ensuring free and compulsory education of children, setting of standards of higher education, funding and governing institutions for ‘“scientific and technical education” and all institutions legislated by the Parliament to be institutions of national importance’. All other residuary powers were vested in the state governments (Tilak, 2017). Particularly, in higher education, in view of the high costs and the requirements of technical and professional education, scientific research, etc., the Union government enjoyed much of the jurisdiction over higher education as these institutions were considered critical to successful implementation of the strategy of planned rapid industrialisation of India to strive towards self-sufficiency, necessary for economic sovereignty of the nation. In effect, ‘[t]hese several provisions, described by many as “exceptions,” are so large that they circumscribe the constituent states’ authority over education, and make it look more like a ‘joint’ responsibility than strictly a state preserve’. (Tilak, 2017, p. 11).

With the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976, education was moved from the State list to the concurrent list, as a result of which ‘education is considered not only as a joint responsibility, but almost like a “partnership” in which the union government plays a very crucial, if not dominant, role in education’ (Tilak, 2017, p. 12). In the modification of NPE, 1986, through a Programme of Action (1992) (PoA, 1992, hereafter), the “partnership” is made explicit.

The states have resented this trend towards ‘centralisation’ in education, particularly since 1980s,—since, by then, the regional parties had established their dominance at the state levels and affirmative action and social justice issues firmly began to be articulated to the state government, leading state governments to spend more on education, while being subjected to ‘quality controls’ through standard-setting and accreditation by central government (Carnoy & Dossani, 2013; Tilak, 2017).

The National Education Commission of 1964–1966, chaired by D.S. Kothari, in its report recommended an expenditure of 6% of GDP on education, which has never been fulfilled (Motkuri & Revathi, 2023). All national policies—in 1968, 1986, and 2020—affirmed and reaffirmed their acceptance of this goal. In 2019–2020, according to revised estimates (second revision), total expenditure on education (of all levels) was 4.3% of GDP, out of which the states and Union Territories contributed 3.29% and the Union government contributed 1.01%. The expenditure on ‘University and Higher Education’ was 0.61% of GDP (State/UTs and Union governments accounting for 0.42% and 0.19%, respectively). The expenditure on ‘Technical Education’ was 0.95% of GDP (State/UTs and Union governments accounting for 0.55% and 0.36%, respectively) (GoI, 2022). This clearly shows the legacy of the focus on technical and scientific education during the days of planned industrialisation of India. But, more importantly, in higher education (which includes official categories of ‘university and higher education’ and ‘technical education’), it is clear that states share much of the financing responsibilities, while the Union government retains standard-setting and governing roles. This is the source of centre–state tensions.

Expectedly, NEP, 2020 attracted sharp responses from its critics on similar grounds. Some of the boldest recommendations in NEP, 2020 pertain to the overhaul of the framework of regulation of higher education—consolidating the regulatory authorities in a single umbrella institution, the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI)—with four separate verticals for regulation [National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC)] for the entire education sector, excluding medical and legal education, accreditation [National Accreditation Council (NAC)], funding [Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC)], and standard setting [General Education Council (GEC)]. One can hardly discern any role for the states as an equal partner in policy-making; instead, the states are mentioned in the context of ‘careful planning, joint monitoring, and collaborative implementation’ of the policy (GoI, 2020, p. 63). Even the language of partnership visible in the modifications of NPE, 1986 through PoA, 1992, has been dropped, and full authority without responsibility is vested at the Union level.

Such a model of centralised governance of higher education is problematic in a continent-size country like India with more than 1.4 billion people, dozens of different languages, diverse histories, and divergent economic and human development at state level. While NEP, 2020 emphasises the ‘local’ context, it is unclear how such an overarching governance system can remain sensitive and flexible with respect to the ‘local’ context, needs, and aspirations.

Among the problems of the higher education system in India identified in NEP, 2020 are fragmentation of higher education, narrow specialisation, lack of institutional autonomy, and low quality. NEP, 2020 seeks to address these issues by moving the system towards a system dominated by large, multidisciplinary universities, ‘governance of HEIs by high qualified independent boards having academic and administrative autonomy’ combined with ‘“light but tight” regulation by a single regulator for higher education’ and a host of measures to improve quality and equity, including ‘increased access, equity, and inclusion through a range of measures, including greater opportunities for outstanding public education; scholarships by private/philanthropic universities for disadvantaged and underprivileged students; online education, and Open Distance Learning (ODL); and all infrastructure and learning materials accessible and available to learners with disabilities’.

These policy prescriptions illustrate the ersatz normativity (Donaldson & Kingsbury, 2013) of NEP, 2020—visible in coupling the emphasis on the ‘local’ with the tendency to centralisation, equity and inclusion with corporate-style governance of individual HEIs, access with promotion of public–private partnerships in higher education, knowledge with labour market outcomes, etc. What is missing is any acknowledgement of the political economy of higher education in India, which has played out at the level of centre–state relations, strangely aligned with the private–public divide, and rooted in the particular manner in which popular aspiration has coalesced at sub-national levels of government while reform-seeking agendas pushed by international agencies and foreign and domestic private actors have crystallised around central government. The NEP, 2020, appears to be masterfully silent on these processes, even as it eloquently seeks to address the problems unleashed by them.

HEIs in the Indian Federal Structure: The Political Economy of Massification

The policy prescriptions in NEP, 2020 need to be understood in the context of the structure of higher education system in India as it has evolved since independence. The first category of HEIs, the ‘universities’, includes several types of institutions (Table 1), which can be categorised into state and central universities. State universities include those that are set up by state/provincial legislatures—like state public universities, state public open universities, institutions under state legislature, government-aided deemed universities, private universities, private open universities, and private deemed universities. Central universities, central open universities, government-deemed universities, and institutions of national importance are clubbed as central universities.

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Table 1.

Number of Universities and Enrolment in India.

Sl. No.	Category	Universities		Enrolment
		Number	Share (%)	Number	Share (%)
	State-level Institutions
1	State Public University	403	36.2	2,778,080	30.8
2	State Open University	14	1.3	1,514,737	16.8
3	Institutions under State Legislature Act	5	0.4	7,307	0.1
4	State Private University	365	32.8	1,475,669	16.3
5	State Private Open University	1	0.1	4,796	0.1
6	Deemed University—Private	80	7.2	889,794	9.9
7	Deemed University—Government-aided	10	0.9	55,332	0.6
	Centre-level Institutions
8	Central University	51	4.6	703,776	7.8
9	Central Open University	1	0.1	1,252,286	13.9
10	Institutes of National Importance	149	13.4	306,513	3.4
11	Deemed University—Government	34	3.1	39,902	0.4
12	Total	1,113	100.0	9,028,192	100.0

Source: GoI (2021).

Private universities can be established through a State/Central Act by a sponsoring body. Currently, all private universities have been established through State Acts and hence are counted as state-level institutions. Institutions under State legislature Act are those established or incorporated by State Legislature Acts, and though they may not be under the higher education departments of the state governments and instead under other departments, they enjoy status of state public universities. Deemed universities are high-performing HEIs declared by the Central Government on the advice of the University Grants Commission (UGC) as an institution ‘deemed-to-be-university’.

Institutions of national importance are a set of premier public HEIs set up by Acts of parliament and declared as Institute of National Importance, funded and supported by Central Government—for example, Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, Schools of Planning and Architecture, All-India Institutes of Medical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, National Institutes of Technology etc.

All universities—at state or central level—are regulated by national-level statutory regulatory authorities—like UGC, All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), Bar Council of India (BCI), Medical Council of India ((MCI), etc.

The second type of HEIs are colleges, which are not empowered to provide degrees in their own names and therefore are affiliated/recognised with universities, the latter acting more as a regulator. ¹ In 2020–2021, there were 43,796 Colleges belonging to 314 Universities of the 41600 colleges which responded to the AISHE Survey 2020–21, 21.4% Government Colleges. 13.3% were aided private colleges and 65% were unaided private colleges (GoI, 2021). Except for a few hundred colleges, all colleges are affiliated to state HEIs. The colonial legacy of the ‘federal university’ system survives and thrives in contemporary India—on an expanded scale that makes India stand out in South Asia.

The third type of HEIs are stand-alone institutions that are not affiliated with universities, not empowered to provide degrees and therefore run diploma-level programmes—such as polytechnics, teacher training, nursing, and management institutions. In 2020–2021, there were 11,296 stand-alone institutions; all of them, barring a few hundred, were state public or private institutions, aided or unaided.

In the first two decades of independent India, higher education expanded through public investment. The central government set up universities and, most importantly, institutions of national importance, the latter necessary to produce graduates of adequate quality for industrialisation and development of national economy. State governments set up public universities, converted private to public institutions, and increasingly began to extend financial support to private colleges and HEIs.

The de facto control over private HEIs without ownership allowed the state governments to expand higher education by keeping the cost of education low and meeting popular demand without incurring the capital cost of establishing public institutions. In the 1980s, this process of expansion of public HEIs slowed down. By 1980s, the private capitation fee-based HEIs began to emerge in Southern and Western Indian states. This gained pace, and rapid privatisation led the massification of higher education, visible since 2000. This in turn led to rising concerns about ‘quality’. The pressure on state governments to expand their public colleges and universities continued unabated but they were numerically still woefully inadequate, given the demand, and their qualities remained suspect. Even state universities set up during the colonial period or in the early decades after independence, suffered a decline in reputation, due to combined pressures of greater inclusion and lack of resources. Over time, serious concerns with quality of state public HEIs have further encouraged students and parents to choose private HEIs.

In response, the central government has arrogated more and more power through centralised governance of ‘quality’ through registration, recognition, grant of ‘eminence’, ‘national importance’, and ‘deemed’ status, and accreditation. To the extent central government assured generous funding for a small set of central institutions, which themselves became standard-setters, the Centre-level HEIs came to represent ‘quality’ and the state-level HEIs stood for ‘quantity’. The quantity-quality, elite-mass, and public–private divides were firmly telescoped to the centre–state divide. With rapid expansion of private universities in the last two decades and recent grant of status of eminence to private universities, privatisation of higher education is well-entrenched in India’s national system of education. At the same time, public HEIs too are encouraged to become self-financed, increasing the cost of household share of expenditure on higher education and student loans (Rani, 2013). The contemporary trends appear to move closer to the colonial principle of private supply and public regulation.

Rolls-Royces, BMWs, and Fords

Several aspects of the complex higher education system in India are noteworthy.

State public universities, including state open university and other institutions, account for more than 38% of total number of universities and approximately 48% of total enrolment in universities. Central public universities—consisting of central universities, central open universities, institutions of national importance, and government-deemed universities—account for more than 21% of the total number of universities and around 25% of total enrolment in universities.

The higher education sector in India consisted of 1,113 universities, 43,796 colleges and more than 11,296 stand-alone institutions in India, with 4,13,80,713 students enrolled in these institutions in 2020–2021, amounting to a GER of more than 27, which indicates that massification of higher education is well under way in India (Varghese, 2021). Universities and their constituent units had 90,84,095 enrolled students. Enrolment in colleges was 2,95,40,392 and in stand-alone institutions was 22,66,516.

The university system at the state level—consisting of state public universities, institutions under state legislature acts, state private universities, and private deemed universities accounted for 73% of ‘university’ enrolment in 2020–2021. Since only a few hundred colleges and stand-alone institutions are affiliated to central universities or under central government, almost the entirety of enrolled students in these two categories of HEIs belong to state-level higher education system.

States and Union Territories accounted for more than 65% of total expenditure on higher education in India in 2020–2021, as per Budget estimates (GoI, 2022), but enrol more than 90% of students in HEIs in India. While education is on the concurrent list, the massification of higher education has been driven at the state level, while central institutions have remained elite preserves. Thus, in India, parallel trajectories have emerged—massification at the state level and elitisation at the national level. While state HEIs have expanded, they have fallen far short the demand—which has mostly been met by private HEIs. This coexistence of elements of ‘elite’ and ‘mass’ higher education systems is not unique to India and can be found in several other countries, but in different forms. In such systems, ‘some are getting a Rolls-Royce higher education, others a BMW higher education and others a Ford higher education’ (Tight, 2019, p. 32). In India, it has increasingly taken the form where mass higher education has increasingly acquired a private character while elite higher education has largely retained its exclusive public character. Paradoxically, students in HEIs pay more for lower quality higher education in private HEIs thus,—Rolls Royces are free, BMWs are expensive and for the rich, and Fords are what the aspirational middle class can afford. As Tight (2019, p. 32) observes, ‘[t]here is nothing wrong with any of these cars or higher education experiences, but we all—policy-makers and employers especially—know the difference’. Given the private-sector-led massification, the HEIs churn out graduates and even post-graduates, including large number of engineers and managers, numbering in tens of thousands every year, whose unemployability gives rise to a steady stream of laments and concerns on media. ²

The other notable effect of this mode of expansion of higher education at the state level is the inefficient use of resources. Private HEIs tend to supply only those degrees with ‘good job prospects’, which justify the fees. On the other hand, state governments, who do not have the authority to raise taxes and are solely dependent on devolution of central tax pool and earmarked financial assistance from the centre, have responded to popular aspirations at local constituency level by supplying HEIs at suboptimal scale. The federal university system derived from the colonial era led to, after independence, proliferation of ‘small’ institutions with suboptimal student and faculty sizes, leading to resource underuse. NEP, 2020 correctly notes that one of the biggest challenges that Indian higher education is facing is a severely fragmented higher educational system, with more than 50,000 higher education institutions (HEIs), a large proportion of which offer only a single programme and have few students and a large percentage of which are private HEIs, run often on commercial principles, with little emphasis on quality. The imperatives of nation-building, prompting the central government to set up specialised Institutions of national importance and unitary central universities offering only postgraduate and higher degrees as centres of excellence, have further contributed to this phenomenon. Thus, paradoxically, democratisation and elitisation have both contributed to the extremely fragmented and inefficient higher education system.

The average enrolment in government, unaided private, and aided private colleges was 1,097, 465, and 1,057, respectively, in 2020–2021 (GoI, 2021). As Table 2 shows almost 82% of colleges had total enrolment of less than or equal to 1,000. In addition, there were 11,296 Stand-Alone Institutions in India, which enrolled 21,24,443 students in 2020–2021, averaging at 188 students per institution (GoI, 2021).

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Table 2.

Cumulative Number of Colleges in Different Range of Enrolment (Including Colleges Pooled).

College Enrolment	Number of Colleges	Cumulative Percentage
0–50	3,215	7.9
50–100	3,551	16.6
100–200	7,709	35.5
200–500	12,054	65.1
500–1000	6,729	81.6
1,000–2,000	4,180	91.9
2,000–3,000	1,546	95.7
>3,000	17,49	100

Source: GoI (2021, p. 11).

At the top of the hierarchy sit the 403 state public universities, which are perennially short of funds, the 51 well-funded central public universities, which are preferred by students from all over India to their state public universities, the 149 elite, generously funded (central) institutions of national importance and the 34 deemed universities (central government). Average enrolment in these four categories of ‘universities’ in India is 6,893, 13,800, 2,057, and 1,174, respectively. The elite character of institutions of national importance is clear from the fact that they enrol around 2000 students on average. This aspect of Indian higher education is one of the central concerns of NEP 2020 and was clearly expressed in Draft National Policy on Education, 2019, submitted by the Committee headed by K. Kasturirangan (GoI, 2019).

NEP, 2020 recommends development of muti-department, multi-disciplinary large HEIs. Strangely, the central government itself is guilty of proliferation of institutions of national importance as stand-alone institutions. In 2000, there were six Indian Institutions of Technology (IITs) and six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Currently, there are 23 IITs and 21 IIMs. Institutions of these types were created by the central government in a different context to fill the holes in scientific, technical, and professional education in the colonial higher education system and to serve the project of nation-building after independence. Over time, each category of such HEI has emerged as flag-bearers and symbols of perceived excellence in their respective field of education. This, in turn, has created pressure to multiply and allocate such institutions to different states. It would appear that the central government is as susceptible to regional pressures as the state governments are to local pressures in expanding HEIs, thus replicating suboptimality at all levels. On the other hand, the private sector, facing a restricted market due to low spending power of the so-called middle class, must settle for sub-optimally sized HEIs offering only those degrees for which the aspirational middle class will be willing to pay a significant sum. Even more perplexing is the creation of entirely newer categories of institutions—for example, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), mostly in this century.

It is in this context that the recommendations of NEP, 2020 for overcoming fragmentation are welcome, and yet, the implementation of such a radical course correction requires more than mere intentions expressed in NEP, 2020.

A university has only one definition worldwide, namely, a multidisciplinary institution of higher learning that offers undergraduate, graduate, and PhD programmes, and engages in high-quality teaching and research. The present complex nomenclature of HEIs in the country as ‘deemed to be university’, ‘affiliating university’, ‘affiliating technical university’, ‘unitary university’ shall be replaced by ‘university’. (GoI, 2020, p. 33)

Who will do it, and who will fund it? The answers are sadly missing in the document itself and in subsequent government actions. The NEP, 2020 commits to raising the total expenditure by states and centres on education to 6% of GDP without specifying how much of that additional expenditure is to be borne by the Central government. This is particularly critical in the current Indian context, with inter-state economic disparities rapidly increasing in the last few decades with consequent divergence in states’ financial and administrative capacities to follow particular models and standards of education set by the centre. In recent years, the Central government has resorted to cesses and surcharges to raise the revenue—such revenues are outside the divisible pool to be shared with the states. This also includes education cess at 4%. ³ In any case, the States’ share of gross tax revenue has declined much below the recommended level of the 14th Finance Commission. There is an apparent contradiction in the manner in which the NEP, 2020 expects states to collaboratively implement the radical restructuring proposed in the NEP while being under constant pressure to keep expanding higher education, even with highly restricted ability to finance the expansion. Already, states spent close to 21% of their total budgeted expenditure on revenue accounts on education and training in 2019–2020, as per revised estimates; the corresponding figure for central government was less than 8%. The private sector mostly operates at even lower levels of suboptimality. The state private universities have an average enrolment of 4,043 students, less than three-fifth the average enrolment of state public universities. Even deemed-to-be private universities, on average, enrolled 11,122 students, which is more than that of state public universities but less than that of central public universities. The NEP, 2020 is silent on what could incentivise the private sector in overcoming the fragmentation, narrow specialisation, and suboptimal use of critical physical and human capital.

By connecting such fragmentation to low quality of higher education taking place in such private HEIs, the NEP, 2020 places the former at the heart of the debate on quality. NEP expects individual self-governing HEIs to be the agents of radical change in the existing structure, with empowered Board of Governors of HEIs driving innovation and pursuit of excellence.

Autonomy, Accountability, and Change

NEP, 2020 proposes to grant ‘graded autonomy’ to the HEIs through the setting up of a Board of Governors (BoG) for each autonomous institution, consisting of highly competent and qualified people. The BoG will be empowered ‘to govern the institution free of any external interference, make all appointments including that of head of the institution, and take all decisions regarding governance’ (GoI, 2020, p. 46). All affiliated colleges will be converted to accredited, autonomous degree-granting colleges.

Single-stream HEIs will move towards becoming vibrant multidisciplinary institutions and HEI clusters. All HEIs will gradually move towards full autonomy—academic and administrative—to enable this vibrant culture. (GoI, 2020, p. 33)

There is little elaboration in NEP, 2020 on what is meant by effective leadership of HEIs, except that the BoG shall consist of a ‘group of highly qualified, competent, and dedicated individuals having proven capabilities and a strong sense of commitment to the institution’. Moreover, the BoGs will be freed of all ‘political and external interference’ and ‘bureaucratic rigidities’ associated with the system of ‘affiliation’. It would appear that NEP seeks to make HEIs free from both political imperatives that elected governments in a democracy might be prone to and antiquated, stifling rules of the ‘federal university system’. By granting autonomy to the BoGs of accredited HEIs and by advocating a ‘light but tight regulation’, NEP, 2020 promotes entrepreneurialism in the HEIs, driven by their respective BoGs.

Implicit in this proposal is a conceptualisation of BoG itself on the hierarchical corporate model of governance. There is hardly much in the way of accountability of such empowered BoGs. For example, BoGs are only meet ‘all regulatory guidelines mandated by HECI through the National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC)’, and they ‘shall be responsible and accountable to the stakeholders through transparent self-disclosures of all relevant records’. (jbid:46). The internal democracy of such autonomous HEIs does not find any mention in NEP, 2020. The minimalist criterion of public accountability is in sharp contrast to the one that can be found in draft (GoI, 2019).

Institutions will have clear mechanisms for public accountability within their governance structure. This can be through one of two approaches:

The (under)specified idea of BoG in the final policy leaves open scope for unprecedented concentration of power in the BoG and a dismantling of what is widely known as the structure of ‘shared governance’. It is not difficult to realise that such a structure of BoG does not guarantee autonomy of the Institute or protection against political intervention. Contemporary and even past experiences of HEIs of very different types in India provide enough evidence that, where deficit in substantive democracy persists in the broader society, no formal institute structure, irrespective of degree of internal democracy, is immune to political imperatives.

In the absence of checks and balances, well-specified responsibilities, and clear accountability, there is no mechanism to prevent the BoG encouraging the head a HEI (say, the Director) to imagine herself as a CEO, accountable to the BoG, which itself will enjoy full authority over the HEIs, subject only to regulatory compliance. The IIM Act of 2017, in fact explicitly describes the Director as the CEO. The autonomy of IIMs, given through the IIM Act, 2017, passed by the parliament, illustrates the dangers of the model of governance proposed in NEP, 2020. It can be argued that the specific understanding of autonomy found in the IIM Act, 2017 informs the vision of autonomy for HEIs in general in NEP, 2020.

An empowered BoG, as the principle executive authority, selects its own Chairperson, its own members, and appoints Director, as the CEO of the IIM. The IIM Act writes that the BoG is accountable to Central Government but does not stipulate how that accountability will be operationalised. The IIM Act does mention review of performance of the Institute every three years. But the BoG itself will conduct the review, through an independent agency or group of experts, selected and formed in a manner laid down in the regulations of the respective IIMs. The regulations themselves are to be made by the BoG itself, though the First regulations have to be placed before the Parliament for a stipulated period of time, and both Houses have to agree to modifications or deletions of any regulation; otherwise, the regulations will stand. The report of the independent agency or group of experts has to be placed in the public domain, and the Board will submit the report and the action taken report based on the review to the Central Government. It is clear that since BoG is the principal executive authority, such review of the Institute, in essence, constitutes a review of the BoG. However, if the conduct of such review is left at the discretion of the BoG under the IIM Act, it can hardly be called a review of the BoG.

It is not a pedantic exercise. Soon after the IIM Act was passed, problems between Ministry of Education and BoGs of IIMs emerged. Complaints against BoGs by internal and external stakeholders of IIMs multiplied, and the lack of accountability of BoGs gained visibility. Through an amendment to the IIM Act, 2017 in 2023, some of the autonomy of BoG was curtailed, and the government assumed greater oversight.

What was at stake in the case of IIM Act, 2017 was the idea of an academic institution itself.

Academic organisations are complex organisations to manage and govern (Bradshaw & Fredette, 2009). Some scholars think that the complexity is increasing—due to developments outside the academic world (e.g., changing relationships between academic institutions, government, ranking and accreditation agencies, and private sector) as well as within the academic world (e.g., competition between academic institutions, tension between governance models, pursuit of academic excellence in the face of increasing specialisation and proliferation of academic and research programmes, etc.) (Ackroyd & Ackroyd, 1999; Kreysing, 2002). This complexity has necessitated a nuanced understanding of what should be the appropriate governance structure of an academic organisation.

In most of the top academic institutions across the world, one typically finds a bicameral (or shared) governance structure. In this structure, decision-making is formally divided between the faculty, which is in charge of all academic aspects of governance (including faculty evaluation, hiring, and promotion), and the board, which mainly focuses on oversight—both financial and non-financial—as well as long-term goal setting in consultation with the faculty body. This collegial model of governance is widely known as ‘shared governance’ and it remains a basic tenet of governance of HEIs (AGB, 2017). Examples of unicameral governance structure in academic institutions are rare.

Sometimes, ideas of turnaround, change, and revolutions in the business world are imported into the academic world, and shared governance is criticised for enabling faculty obstructionism. A corporate governance model is proposed instead, which can enable single-minded pursuit of the maximisation of the ‘value’ of the organisation—reflected in endowment, ranking, impact, etc. Such a governance model, freed from shared governance, it is argued, can adapt to a changing environment much more rapidly and flexibly, thus preventing the erosion of institutional ‘value’.

Such a view misses the key point about academic institutions. In the pursuit of knowledge, academic institutions do not attempt to resolve differences but actively nurture and promote differences in order to enable multiple and plural paths to production of knowledge. It does not have a ‘collective mind’, which can be mobilised in pursuit of a top-down strategy. Leading management theorists have described academic institutions as ‘loosely coupled systems’ that work differently from what theories of corporations or bureaucracy prescribe (Weick, 1976). In such a context, any ‘strategic planning with its focus on planning and analysis, the chief executives as “architect” of strategy, and the management of change as driven from the “top,” becomes questionable’ (Mintzberg & Rose, 2003, p. 316).

Given that HEIs, at least those who strive for academic excellence, do not function like hierarchical corporate organisations, it is unclear how empowered BoGs, driving the HEIs, could contribute to the objectives of NEP, 2020—which include, among others, dismantling of the colonial legacy of the federal university structure, reversing the fragmentation due to populist impulses in a democratic system with an aspirational middle class, making higher education holistic, locally relevant, and flexible for the students, etc. It would appear that NEP, 2020 believes that Board-driven entrepreneurial HEIs would automatically correct the distortions introduced over one and half century of colonial, and then, post-colonial State interventions in the Indian higher education system.

Conclusion

NEP, 2020 correctly identifies much that is wrong in India’s higher education system today. In this essay, I have sought to contribute to the ongoing debates on this matter from a political economy perspective while remaining sensitive to its complex history. What is clear is that, like in many other aspects, India in particular and, to an extent, many developing countries do not chart the paths distilled from the stylised history of Western developed nations. The context in which higher education systems evolved in countries that are now developed is vastly different from the context facing developing countries. The vastness and diversity of India lend additional degrees of complexity to any process of change.

The solutions to the problems of higher education, proposed in NEP, 2020 are important to study not for what they say, but for what they leave unsaid. NEP, 2020 is a document on change and presents a vision of change in which a lot is at stake. Given what laissez-faire approach to higher education, NEP, 2020 forces a rethinking of the very role of the State in higher education. In this essay, I have not touched on the issue of social justice because much has been written on it. Higher education and its massification, and eventually, universalisation, are intrinsic to the notion of social justice as it has come to be understood in contemporary times. Millions of young people—and India has history’s largest number of young people in the labour force today—look at higher education as the privileged pathway to economic mobility and social recognition. Higher education might well be driven by perceived rates of return in the job market, but it is no less a channel for aspirations of the poor and marginalised.

Social justice issues revolve more around state governments, to which people feel more intimately connected, in their everyday lives. Hence, centre–state relations are central to the issue of how higher education is imagined in India—not only because of the concurrent responsibilities of the two levels of the government, as laid down in the Constitution, but also because of the de facto differentiated nature of responsibilities that has consolidated over time. I have tried to foreground this point in this essay. The privileging of the BoGs as autonomous agents of change in higher education appears to bypass the dynamics of centre–state relations altogether. In a sense, NEP, 2020 seeks to depoliticise the discourse on higher education altogether by making it a matter of governance reform rather than what it really ought to be—a matter of political choice by a democratic society. Much in the manner of the classical liberal stance, the Indian State—read, the central government—appears to refashion itself in the role of a market regulator, with higher education itself re-established as a market, or at least as a decentralised, market-mimicking institution, animated by frenzied innovation by autonomous market agents (read BoGs). In short, NEP seeks not just to correct the historical inefficiencies of the higher education system in India but also the idea of the university itself, as it has historically evolved in public imagination and public policy across the world.