Any sensible regulatory regime must acknowledge that the pressure to create quality has to come from many sources. As our experience shows, single centralised agencies, like the UGC and the AICTE, are colossal failures in terms of determining quality. This is so for a number of reasons: they do not have the requisite capacity, they are too formulaic in their approach, and the quality of staffing is poor. The UGC dare not, apart from exceptionally rare cases, sanction state universities, which is where the bulk of our students and the bulk of our problems reside. But in the process of designing regulatory regimes we have placed inordinate weight on the powers and procedures of these institutions.

An institution, public or private, is pressured to create quality by a number of factors. One clear source is the market, in the wide sense of the term. Unfortunately most institutions, particularly state institutions, are shielded from market discipline: if their graduates are unemployable we simply add more cheap degrees to absorb them. Degree inflation by itself suggests that the state has distorted the market. In very select areas, the market is all you need: if students are opting for an institution as a matter of choice, and potential employers or other institutions are willing to recruit these students, then you need little else. This simplest model works best for Management. The risks borne are largely private. It is not an accident that this area of professional study has most successfully rendered our regulatory regime irrelevant. Some well known institutions do not have AICTE approval, and it is not clear that in Management, it should even be necessary.

Other professional degrees, like law, medicine and engineering are different. The risks posed by unqualified professionals are graver, so they require regulation. But even in these spheres, we do not regulate at the right points. The public has an interest that a lawyer or a doctor be minimally qualified. Does a creaky accreditation process for institutions better ensure this quality? Or does really rigorous testing of the product better ensure it? We have concentrated all our energies on regulating institutions, by interfering in everything from their admissions policies to the amount of land they can possess, but not done the obvious thing, which is to have stringent licensing requirements in these professions, by testing individuals on the output side.

It will be far easier to devise and monitor very high quality tests for professionals before licenses are granted. Such a process will be fairer as well. It will test individuals, which, given the wide variations within institutions, is really important. It will enable professionals to set better standards for their own professions. And it ensures that the entire burden of quality control does not fall on an accreditation process. Obviously strict tests for licensing individual professionals will not do away with all imperatives to monitor institutions. But it will tackle the core objective of regulation better, by shifting focus from the number of rooms an institution has to the quality of their output.

We systematically abridge the power of all those forces that can help create genuine quality. For instance, we should rightly be worried about the fraud perpetrated by some institutions. But again, we have refused to enforce simpler solutions. For one thing, outright fraud, as say misrepresenting whether an institution is recognised or not, can probably be easily dealt with under various Consumer Protection Acts. The irony is that the authorities have become prisoners of the courts’ rhetoric, that education is not a ‘‘service’’ in the commercial sense. Therefore, some high courts and consumer fora have excluded education from the ambit of consumer protection, while a few have included it. Surely this is an area where the law can be clarified.

The second key in enforcing accountability is transparency. Again, our regulatory efforts have not concentrated on procuring for students the basic information they need. Instead of enforcing arcane regulations, why not have detailed audited statements of each institution made available to every student? And why not empower students by making the relevant information available to them: data like the educational profile of students entering the institution, etc? The thrust of regulation so far has been to give the statewide latitude in configuring institutions. It should instead shift to empowering students and parents to make informed choices. Rather than distrusting their capacities, it would be better to help them.

Two other sources help build quality. The first is professional self-regulation. Unfortunately, the political economy of all our professions — teaching, law, medicine — has taken effective power out of the hands of the best professionals. Reforming the internal architecture and incentives of these professions is important.

The second source is ensuring that the bulk of institutions are in the hands of people who are motivated by a pedagogic mission. It is fair to say that across the world, the best institutions are run by not-for-profit trusts, where the assumption is that extraneous considerations like profit do not determine the objective of the institutions. These institutions are shielded both from pressures of the state, and the short-term imperatives of commercialisation. India too has a proliferation of trust-run institutions, and outside the state system, these are some of our best-run institutions.

Again, the regulatory restrictions on trusts, such as investment and saving requirements, are such that they favour trusts that are governed by short-term goals over trusts that can strategise for the long haul. Is our regulatory structure favoring institutions that will not come to the field of education with the right kinds of incentives? We need to acknowledge this simple point: producing quality education requires work on a lot of different fronts. Simply clamoring for more UGC or AICTE intervention will not solve our problems. It may exacerbate them.

(Concluded)

The writer is President, Centre for Policy Research. The views expressed are personal. Email:

pratapbmehta@yahoo.co.in

PART I

PART II