The awareness that higher education is the essential requirement for improving the quality of life has increasingly spread over all sections of society irrespective of geographical, social or economic backgrounds. As a result, the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education in our country has been increasing rapidly in recent years. However, the current GER of nearly 18 per cent is clearly inadequate and is less than the global average of about 24 per cent. The Twelfth Plan period proposes to increase the GER to 25 per cent by 2016-17 and to about 30 per cent by 2020. We, therefore, require a holistic expansion of the higher education sector that maintains a balance between quality and equity.
Huge investments are required to achieve the objectives and government spending of about 0.7 per cent of the GDP on higher education today is inadequate. The government proposes to increase this figure to 1 per cent of the GDP during the Twelfth Plan. While the government has its own limitations in allocating more funds to higher education, promoting private participation is unavoidable to meet the growing demand. In fact, private higher education in our country accounts for about 80 per cent of enrolment in professional courses and about one-third overall. Currently, the growth is restricted to some specific areas like engineering, medical and management education.
Unfortunately, most of the private institutions have become ‘for-profit type’, commercialising the higher education sector. There are concerns about quality and unfair practices by them. In countries like the USA, there are several higher education institutions that are labelled ‘for-profit’ along with ‘not-for-profit’ institutions. But the situation here is different, profiteering in higher education is clearly prohibited and the private higher education providers are expected to have a social responsibility to provide inclusive and quality education.
They may have to realise that no one expects them to run their institutions incurring losses, but they are not expected to make profits out of them. One will appreciate if private higher education providers enter this field with a service motto, not making the education sector a ‘regular’ business.
Since the number of private providers these days are becoming increasingly large, it is a great challenge for the regulatory authorities to formulate policies to effectively monitor them so that they do not involve in exploitation. Society expects attitudinal changes in them and they should strive to supplement their legitimate financial requirements for quality improvement through endowments from alumni, philanthropists and others.
Prof. Jayaprakash Rao is chairman, AP State Council of Higher Education