Even as a task force of the Union HRD ministry is preparing a paper on ‘National Framework of Ranking of Universities and Colleges Suited to Local Conditions, Circumstances and Requirements,’ an EY-FICCI (Ernst & Young-Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry) report on higher education has advised the ministry to identify 100 higher education institutions (HEIs) — both public and private — to improve their global standing with the objective of achieving the target of at least 20 in the world’s top 200 HEIs by 2030.

The EY-FICCI report titled Higher Education in India: Moving Towards Global Relevance and Competitiveness, released at FICCI’s annual higher education conference convened in New Delhi on November 13, says the poor brand image of India’s HEIs coupled with their reluctance to qualify for the World University Rankings of QS, THE and Shanghai Jiang Tong University, is hurting their image globally. “The rankings are not a priority for most institutions in India. Consequently, required attention is not paid to this as amply evident from the limited participation and partial information provided by India’s HEIs,” write the authors of the report.

Noting that the global economy is undergoing structural transformation, the EY-FICCI report says India, with its large workforce and growing pool of graduates, is strategically positioned to reap the benefits of this transformation. But it warns that the country’s “demographic dividend” will be squandered unless India is able to create a “globally relevant and competitive” higher education system which serves the requirements of both the domestic as well as global economy. “While we appreciate that for ‘foundation’ institutions focusing on local priorities, providing well- rounded education to India’s masses and imparting skills that are relevant to local industry and community must continue, ‘career focused’ and ‘research focused’ institutions must embrace internationalisation wholeheartedly,” says Nikhil Rajpal, partner and education sector leader of EY India.

The EY-FICCI paper lists a range of challenges confronting Indian HEIs. They include low employability of graduates because of outdated curricula, shortage of quality faculty, adverse student-teacher ratios, inadequate academia-industry connect, lack of academic autonomy, low impact research output, complex regulatory hurdles, and poor institutional governance standards. It also deplores the segregation of the country’s R&D institutions from HEIs. With the QS, THE and global university ranking agencies giving considerable weightage to research capability and output, Indian HEIs suffer loss of esteem and ranking.

“Research has been taken away from universities. Also, grant of university status to professional education institutions — engineering and medicine for example — is not advisable. Research needs multidisciplinary environments to produce goods and/or services which benefit societies and communities,” says Dr. Vasudeo Gade, vice chancellor, Pune University.

In this connection, the EY-FICCI report offers key learnings from globally competitive HEIs in South Korea, China, Singapore, the UK and USA. According to the report, over the past 20 years, Chinese HEIs have connected with universities in 154 countries and sent 339,000 students abroad to study, and also hosted 210,000 foreign students for curriculum exchanges and joint research, enabling them to increase their share of global research output from 5 percent in 2002 to 13 percent in 2011.

But although the latest EY-FICCI report makes several valuable suggestions for upgrading and contemporising India’s sliding higher education system, its recommendations have a familiar ring. Moreover, it’s silent on the critical issue of over-subsidisation of higher education and/or larger budget allocations for HEIs, a curious omission for a management consultancy firm and a representative organisation of business and commerce.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)