After independence, the government of India took an initiative to establish a liberal democratic education system in general and higher education in particular to build a strong human resource base for the country.

The first report on National Education Policy was released in 1968, which was based on two landmark reports, namely the University Education Commission Report of 1948-49, popularly known as Radhakrishna Commission Report, and the Education Commission Report of 1964-66 known as Kothari Commission Report. The National Education Policy identified five main goals of Higher Education: i) access, ii) equity, iii) excellence, iv) relevance and value based education and v) quality.

PRESENT SITUATION

The higher educational institutions in the country are categorised into three classes:  university, college and stand-alone institutions. There are 799 universities, 39,071 colleges and 11,923 stand alone institutions listed on AISHE web portal in 2015-16, of which, 277 universities are privately managed, 307 universities are located in rural areas and 14 universities are exclusively for women. In addition, there is one central open university, 13 state open universities and one state private open university. Besides, there are 118 dual mode universities, which offer education through distance learning mode. Two simple indicators, namely college density and enrolment ratio can explain the present situation in a relevant manner.      

College density, ie, the number of colleges per lakh eligible population (population in the age group of 18-23 years) varies from seven in Bihar to 60 in Telangana as compared to all India average of 28. The top eight states in terms of highest number of colleges in India are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh, which have more than 25 colleges per lakh population. Out of total number of colleges, 60 per colleges are located in rural area, and 11.1 per cent of total colleges are exclusively for girls. This shows regional imbalance in the growth of higher educational institutions in India.

Total enrolment in higher education has been estimated to be 34.6 million with 18.6 million boys and 16 million girls. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education in India is 24.5 per cent, which is calculated for 18-23 year age group. GER for male population is 25.4 per cent and female 23.5 per cent for Scheduled Castes it is 19.9 per cent, for Schedule Tribes it is 14.2 per cent as compared to the national GER of 24.5 per cent. Distance enrolment constitutes about 11.05 per cent of the total enrolment in higher education of which 46.3 per cent are female. In terms of total number of institutions, the ranking of these states are as follows:

Uttar Pradesh (7,495) at the top followed by Maharashtra (7,115), Karnataka (5,284), Rajasthan (3,705), Tamil Nadu (3,439) and Andhra Pradesh (3,375). It is interesting to note that these six states with highest student enrolment constitute nearly 54 per cent of the total student enrolment in India. Rest of the 30 states (including UTs) have only 46 per cent of the total student enrolment.

Based on enrolment data, further analysis is carried to show the imbalances in gender, social categories and minority communities.

Looking at the male-female ratio at each level, the trend is higher in males than females in almost every level, except M.Phil, post graduate and certificate courses, where the female enrolment is slightly higher than male enrolment. This trend of relatively higher male enrolment than female enrolment is also seen across the states.

The total estimated student enrolment is 3,45,84,781, out of which, SC students constitute 19.9 per cent of the total. On the other hand, students belonging to ST category constitute only 14.2 per cent and OBC category constitutes 33.75 per cent of the total student enrolment. These are socially marginalised class, lagging behind in the enrolment, than the general upper caste students.

Among the minorities, 4.67 per cent students belong to Muslim minority and 1.97 per cent is from other minority communities. Muslim minority has more male students than females, where as other minorities have more females than males. Discrimination between male and female is very prevalent in the social fabric. Considering literacy, this distinction can further be highlighted. Among the Hindus, 19.17 per cent are illiterate, while among the Muslims 22.45 per cent are illiterate and other minorities only 8.8 per cent are illiterate.

PARADIGM SHIFT IN THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY

The original policy of higher education in India introduced in 1968, gradually transformed in 1986, but a paradigm shift occurred in 1991-92. This has happened because India took loan from IMF and World Bank in 1990. The condition of the loan is withdrawal of the subsidy from social service sector including education. This condition cannot be introduced without reform in the existing system in education, health and other sectors. Government accepted the reform and introduced it. The World Bank (1995) stated that young students form high-income families frequently received the benefits of higher education. Therefore, the World Bank put forward a reform package.  Subsequently, the then finance minister Manmohan Singh clearly stated that reforms should be implemented in higher education sector to make our higher education internationally competitive.

The reform agenda covered areas like governance, academic reform, reform in the examination system etc. It encouraged tendencies of centralisation, had external agency for quality assurance, used distance education as an instrument of commercialisation, opened up higher education for international market, imposed its conditions in the matters of faculty development, research innovation and new knowledge and financing education.

Reform in the higher education system means reform in the governance. Existing system of governance through UGC, AICTE and other agencies is a long tested system. They are independently functioning and assisting the central government. These autonomous bodies like UGC or AICTE are having democratic representations of different stakeholders like educationists, teachers, management, students and government. Without giving any proper reason and clarification, the government is abolishing one after another agency and replacing it with a new structure.

It is already mentioned that government is creating an apex body for governing the higher education in the state. This can be explained with the example of Maharashtra, where Maharashtra State Commission of Higher Education and Development (MAHED) has already been created to govern the universities. This is followed by New University Act for each state of India.

The government is also changing the academic course structure. There is the proposal to integrate the UG and PG courses and Ph.Ds. It is observed that PG section associated with college, suffers from infrastructural and teaching faculty.

Moreover, there is tremendous pressure for changing the existing syllabi and make it more market oriented, as a result, many of the fundamental subjects like pure sciences and social sciences are dying. The academic reform is associated with the examination reform.

The credit system is already introduced. Now they are in favour of establishing Choice Based Credit System (CBCS). The implementation of CBCS is difficult because of the high student-teacher ratio and lack of infrastructural facilities. Both academic and administrative reform shows a tendency of centralisation. There are many external agencies, which have been brought by the government to monitor the functioning of higher education in India like NAAC, NBA, AICTE, QCI, etc which will favour the market.  

To fulfill the conditions of the reform, the government is introducing many new regulations to provide easy access to the market in the sphere of higher education. One example is to allow foreign universities to establish their campuses in India. This will degrade the status of existing universities and will exclude large sections of economically weaker and socially marginalised classes out of the purview of higher education. There are several other agendas, which are gradually being introduced into the higher education system under the umbrella of the new education policy.

It reveals from the above analysis that the government policy is not people centric, thoroughly unfocussed and lopsided. It is necessary for the academic community to contribute for the preparation of an alternative education policy for the nation.