The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marks a watershed moment for India’s education sector. As it completes one year, the policy has already set the pace for transformative reforms in higher education in the country.
NEP 2020 has a laudable goal of taking the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education, which is the ratio of enrolment in higher education to the population in the eligible age group (18-23 years), from about 26 per cent today to 50 per cent by 2030. This would mean expanding the base of higher education institutions in India. In terms of size, we are the third largest in the world. There are more than 900 universities, around 39,000 colleges and about 11,600 standalone institutions in the country. To achieve a 50 per cent GER, India needs to create over 800 new universities and 40,000 colleges. As the government is committed to increase its spending on education to over six per cent of the GDP—from about 3 per cent at present, the expansion is well within reach.
NEP tries to set things right in many areas such as research funding. The policy envisages setting up of a National Research Foundation, as a nodal agency in granting funds for research projects of higher education institutions. The Foundation is expected to have a budget of Rs 20,000 crore per year for research funding. It will make funding decisions based purely on the strength of the research proposal of an institution—irrespective of whether the proposal has come from a public sector or a private sector institution.
Another area of reform concerns the affiliation of colleges. NEP is clearly not in favour of the current ‘affiliated university structure’, a legacy of the colonial era. This arrangement has created an administrative nightmare for universities, some of which have to manage 800-1,000 affiliated institutions each. Going forward, the emphasis will be on creating more autonomous colleges with degree granting power.
But the key aspiration of NEP 2020 lies in creating world-class Indian institutions in higher education. The policy encourages universities to become multidisciplinary institutions in scope and offerings, instead of focusing on acquiring expertise in any one field, following in the footsteps of the higher education institutions of global repute.
We may have over 150 ‘Institutes of National Importance’ and about a dozen are ‘Institutes of National Eminence’. But there are only three Indian institutions in the top 200 list of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. Recognising the need to prepare the institutions to participate in international ranking, the Union education ministry has evolved a National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF). About 2,000 institutions are currently participating in this most prestigious ranking framework.
Accreditation and rankings are benchmarking tools for education institutions to understand their strengths and weaknesses in their core functions: teaching, research and innovation, and societal impact. And to know what they should do to improve their performance in these areas in the future. Besides, accreditations and rankings help students make informed decisions while selecting institutions. Between 2000-2012, over 4.5 million Indian students have gone overseas for higher education. Within India, during the same period, about 3.7 million students have moved into different states for the same purpose. In the wake of increasing student mobility for higher education, it is important that they be served with authentic information—rather than generic marketing messages on the strengths of institutions.
The Indian higher education institutions are generally good in teaching and creating a positive social impact,but they are not reputed for their research and innovation. We produce about 5.3 per cent of the global quantum of research by publishing about 6.5 lakh papers and garner nearly 30 lakh citations. But our current citations per research paper is just 3.2. And the international and academic collaborations in these research works account for just about 17 per cent and 0.8 per cent respectively, the lowest in global records.
Getting world rankings has a defined path. Our institutions must actively conduct Academic Administrative Audit, which is a systematic method of reviewing the quality of academic process, and evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative procedure in an institution. The next milestone could be taking part in NIRF and doing a gap analysis, following which they should aim to get accreditations from National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), and National Board of Accreditation (NBA).
Currently, only less than 10 per cent of higher education institutions in India have obtained accreditation from NAAC and NBA. In the future, when a higher education institution fails to get NAAC accreditation, it could be asked to close down. To speed up the process of accreditation, NAAC will license and monitor private accreditation agencies.
Then comes the World University Rankings. There are three famous rankings: Academic Ranking of World Universities, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and QS World University Rankings. While ranking an institution, they take into account many facets of performances, including teaching, citations per faculty, and international outlook. The weightage each system gives to these factors differ. For instance, QS ranking places 40 per cent weightage to academic reputation, and 20 per cent each to faculty-student ratio and citation per faculty. The reputation an institution enjoys among employers, the number of international faculty and students are other key factors that together account for 20 per cent weightage.
If there is one item a higher education institution can bet on to make steady progress in its goal of securing a place in world university rankings, it is “paper productivity”—how productive an institution is in getting research papers published in reputed journals. This factor can have a multiplier effect. The more the papers, the more the citations. The more the citations, the more research collaborations. The more research collaborations, the better the funding. The better the funding, the greater the participation of international faculties. The greater the presence of international faculties, the better the student experience. The better the student experience, the higher their employability. The higher the employability, the greater the reputation. The greater the reputation, the bigger the chances of the institution getting a world ranking.
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Though the process may sound a little daunting or exhaustive, the advantages and the potential Indian institutions have are more. It is just a matter of having the focus on these three factors: knowledge, data, and action. Everyone in the institution—from the doorman to the chairman—must have ‘knowledge’ of all the parameters, sub-parameters, and indicators of the assessments, accreditations and rankings the institution aims for. This knowledge could be dispersed through various means, including sensitisation workshops. Then there must be quality ‘data’ on the metrics of the institution pertaining to all these factors. Proactive collation of authentic and quality data, and its anytime availability is important for the timely submission of data. To facilitate this, institutions can think of having a data cell and appointing an officer or a committee in this regard.
And when it comes to ‘action’, it is about doing the gap analysis report to identify areas and design strategies for improvement. A key action item is to create a roadmap towards world university ranking. When there is will and academic leadership to champion these exercises consistently, the day of Indian institutions of higher learning gaining global reputation is not far away.
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Methodology
In the decades since Independence, India has been preoccupied largely with issues of access and equity and, unfortunately, dropped the baton with regards to quality. This can be seen in the constant poor performance of Indian institutions in the global league tables. With quality becoming one of the cornerstones of the New Education Policy released recently by the Union government, it is expected that some of India’s eminent institutions may soon occupy coveted positions in the global league tables.
Institutions from across the country were invited to fill in a detailed questionnaire that went through a rigorous process of data validation and verification. A comprehensive desk-based research ensured all the data was vetted before taking into consideration for the next round of scoring. Wherever required, data was sourced from independent data bases such as Scopus, Clarivate, Patent Offices, AISHE etc. The task was not complete before thousands of data points were analysed, hundreds of emails exchanged and several hundred man-hours were invested in contacting institutions and requesting them to upload all relevant data onto their web portal to ensure transparency, accuracy and data integrity, the three main pillars on which rests the Outlook-ICARE India University Rankings 2021.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Wire In To The World")
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(Sridhar is Vice Chairman, Indian Centre for Academic Rankings & Excellence (ICARE)
