People's Democracy

SFI Says No To Foreign Universities

The following is the text of the statement issued by the central executive committee of the Student’s Federation of India on September 20, 2006. 

IN its consultation paper on ‘Higher Education in India and GATS: An Opportunity’, the union commerce ministry appears to be desperate to allow foreign participation in our education system. The consultation paper rightly identifies the problems ailing our education system. But the cure it suggests –allowing foreign participation in our education system – will aggravate the problems instead of curing them. It is really unfortunate that the ministry offered trade in higher education services in its revised offer in August 2005 negotiations ignoring the dissent of the people of our country. Consultations, which have to precede the offer, are following the offer giving raise to many apprehensions about the real intentions. It appears as if the commerce ministry is seeking justifications for the decisions it has already taken and its commitments in the WTO negotiations.

The commerce ministry exhibits its bias by stating that all the public education institutes in our country are ‘not growing’ while at the same time identifying the private institutes to be ‘growing rapidly’. It fails to blame the government policies that have led to this scenario. It also conveniently chooses to ignore the fact that it is the failure of the State to meet the growing demand for higher education that has led to the proliferation of private institutes, most of which are sub-standard.

The commerce ministry appears to be so eager to allow foreign participation in our education system as it argues the case for ‘adequate flexibility to such (foreign) universities in setting syllabus, hiring teachers, screening students and setting the fee levels’. Instead of addressing the concerns that foreign participation is an attack on our cultural and educational ethos, the ministry here seeks to legalise this very attack. 

The consultation paper also repeatedly talks for the increase in the fee that is collected from the students, internal resource mobilisation and advices the higher education institutes not to depend on the government for funds. As the consultation paper itself points out, the government it appears is eager to satisfy the requests that have come from foreign players for ‘removal of present market access limitations such as fees do not lead to charging capitation fees or profiteering etc’. The commerce ministry is unusually eager to help the huge educational corporations in US, UK, Australia and other nations to earn profits by marketing their education system in our country. This is highly objectionable as the ministry is clearly crossing its line of functions.

In the issues and questions it has identified for the purpose of formulating comments it questions the desirability of having an accreditation mechanism and asks if this can be privatised. It has been pointed out to the government that the present accreditation and assessment system carried out by public agencies themselves are not transparent and scientific and are manipulated easily. If this task is given to private players the results would be disastrous and the quality of manpower produced would be even worse.

The statistics given by the commerce ministry point to the fact that India spends little on education and that the growth of the student enrolment rate is on the decline. Unfortunately the department is blind to see the link between these two. Unless the government implements its commitment made in the NCMP of spending at least 6 per cent of the GDP on education we cannot ensure an increase in the number of students in our higher education (The paper states that at present only 3 per cent of our GDP is spent of education of which only 0.37 per cent is spent on higher education. The commerce ministry it appears does not want to increase this expenditure). As the report of one of the CABE sub-committees has pointed out, this can be achieved only through the initiative of the State and its active participation. The CABE report also pointed out that this was the worldwide experience too and expansion in higher education can never be achieved by the private and foreign participation.

The consultation paper states that only 21 countries have made commitments in higher education and that they have chosen to ‘impose considerably more limitations on trade in education services in modes 3 and 4 than in modes 1 and 2’. Mode 3 means to permit for the establishment of a branch or satellite campus, franchises and twinning arrangements’. It does not explain why we should be so eager to ignore all this and open our higher education and permit foreign universities and institutes and even think of being flexible towards them. This is precisely why doubts arise about a possible trade off of our education system to satisfy the commercial interests of the US and UK, the largest exporters of education.