BASED ON OUR ARTICLE (CO-AUTHORED WITH PROF. S. P. MOULIK) “ACADEMIC RESEARCH” IN “THE NEW OXFORD COMPANION TO ECONOMICS IN INDIA” (2011) EDITED BY PROF KAUSHIK BASU AND ANNEMIE MAERTENS Recent Changes and Some Policy Recommendations Since the first version of this article was published in 2007, there have been some positive developments. The Honourable Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has announced that foreigners can work in Indian educational institutions. The government is granting funds to many researchers. A panel headed by Professor N. R. Madhava Menon has explored ways of granting more autonomy to higher-education institutions and recommended to the Ministry of Human Resource Development that the vice-chancellor, who is a university’s executive head, should be ‘a person of academic excellence’ (see report in the Telegraph, Kolkata, dated 10 May 2011). However, deep problems, as documented in this article, remain. For a start, we provide the following recommendations: • Indian universities have a tremendous shortage of talented researchers—the nation needs to nurture existing researchers and attract researchers from elsewhere. • Faculty members should be hired on the basis of academic merit and no other criteria. • In particular, institutions should not be breeding grounds and resting places for political supporters. Whenever that happens, costs and benefits get misaligned—a political party reaps small benefits but damage to the society is enormous. • The power in superior universities rests with faculty members who have distinguished themselves in research—this needs to be instituted in India. • India needs to rethink how the boards and governance structures of Indian universities and institutes need to be optimally structured. As the world’s best universities have shown, alumni members, if properly engaged, can do an excellent job taking their alma mater forward. Most of the education bureaucrats that serve on Indian boards need to go. So should businessmen and industrialists who serve on boards but have no real ties to the institution. • Academic leaders such as vice chancellors and directors need to be selected from ranks of proven scholars who would dedicate themselves to taking the institutions forward in terms of academic research. Their task is simple: ‘Hire scholars who would raise the average quality.’ But, it is not easy to implement this in practice. • Creation of great universities takes much more than salary increases. For example, ISB Hyderabad’s resident faculty members enjoy some of the world’s highest salaries among business school professors on a purchasing power adjusted basis—but, their research output trails far behind that of professors in the world’s top 20 business schools. Currently, Indian professors are paid good salaries, but where is the research and academic output? • Accountability is needed for money that is currently given by the government to support research. It is difficult to ensure that the research is of excellent quality and wastages and slippages are minimized. • India has over 50 billionaires and many more wealthy people. The government can play a broker’s role and help engage them with academic institutions where they would provide patronage. What would it take to change the Indian academic waste land? Our tables and text illustrate that the existing model has failed to deliver and complete rethinking is needed. There are people who have good understanding of Indian higher education but do not know how to build great multiproduct research universities. There are people who know how great universities function but do not know the Indian situation. There is an urgent need for leadership that would combine both to build superb research universities and create a culture of academic excellence as Sir Asutosh Mookerjee managed to do a century back.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 10:37:44 +0000
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