DIALOGUE Bala V. Balachandran EDU: Do you think the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill will lead to a marked improvement in the higher education scenario in India? B.V. Balachandran: I honestly have mixed feelings about this. I am happy that a start has been made. But, I have my doubts whether it would lead to the best American or European universities setting up campuses in India. I don’t see a Harvard or a Kellogg coming to India. The reasons are simple. In the US for example, we teach 24/7. You know what that means? We teach for 24 hours in a week and seven months in a year! Here teachers take twice as many classes, and therefore have little time left for fundamental research. Will good teachers from US varsities come here under these circumstances? They won’t.
But won’t foreign universities want to tap this huge market? Where will they get the real raw material—teachers? American institutions have a clear code. Teachers only teach for a particular number of hours. If they exhaust these hours in India, they won’t teach back home! The universities will surely not want such a situation. This would mean the best teachers will not come. So who will teach? It’s not the name of a university or the courses it teaches but ‘who’ teaches and how they teach—that acts as the key differentiator.
Do you see any positives at all in allowing foreign universities into India then? Of course, I am glad that things are moving in the direction they are. The Bill will bring in at least the second-tier universities from developed nations such as the US. These are decent universities without being the best. What they will do is ensure that the second and third-rung Indian universities, some of whom purport to provide quality education, but don’t, pull up their socks. So in the long run, I see the overall quality of higher education in India improving.
The USA is today is looked upon as the ‘Mecca’ of higher education. Why do you feel opening the doors for them won’t help either our students or our system?
THERE IS HOPE. CHANGE IS TAKING PLACE. THERE ARE WORLD-CLASS INSTITUTIONS IN INDIA TODAY 40
EDUTECH January 2011
I do feel it will help some students. It will definitely help some Indian institutions pull up their socks. However, I find it disconcerting that we are looking at America as our saviour. We were the original hub of higher education, years before the US was even born, and a millennium before Oxford and Cambridge rose to prominence. Students thronged to Nalanda, Ujjain and Taxila to study arts and sciences. Even a century ago, our universities were by far the best in Asia. Today, it pains us to look at the sorry condition of many of these former jewels. What we should try and do is raise our own standards by following ‘best practices’ that others have embraced. Some of the best faculty in varsities in the US and UK are from this part of the world. Let’s have institutes with systems and processes in place that will lure them back and prevent future academic stars from leaving our shores.
What are the key issues that the higher education ministry should look at, considering what you have just said? The important and immediate steps to be taken should be in the sphere of correcting pay packets, rationalising teaching hours and enhancing focus on research. For instance, in the US, teachers are paid at par with doctors, engineers and managers. Here, in comparison, they receive very little even though things have improved in the past decade. It’s not about giving them more money, it’s about paying these people what they deserve. If teachers are burdened with 20 lectures every week, when will they focus on research? No wonder many of the talented lot finally go abroad, disillusioned.
The picture you paint is rather grim. Not at all. There is hope. Change is taking place. There are world-class institutions in India today. Institutes, such as ISB, give us hope. It’s the job of people like us to come together, help the government—join hands with private initiatives to develop centres of excellence in the field of higher education. We must be wealth creators not wealth consumers. However, my fear is the rider that foreign universities that come to India should clearly state that they are ‘not-for-profit’ institutes, will act as a dampener. Universities are not profit centres in the sense they should not be there only to make money. However, to a reasonable extent, every successful university needs to make money, in order to support expansion and hire better faculty. How can universities run as charity organisations when the idea is to promote excellence. If you run it the way some Indian universities are run, you may end up producing mediocrity.
Earlier you spoke about making India the education hub by creating ‘Indian’ institutions that matched the best. One of India’s problems has been marketing even it’s best institutions. How can we do it better? Yes, some of our B-schools are world-class. I think business education in India has some really superior values. The price is right, the quality is right. But, the marketing is wrong. We have to showcase our curriculum and our experience. We need to participate in MBA fairs and conventions across the world and market our strengths.