On March 28, thousands of teachers and students from an array of universities and colleges marched together in the capital from Mandi House to Parliament Street, protesting against recent policy announcements which will lead to the commercialisation of public-funded institutions.

The march, called by the Federation of Central Universities Teachers’ Associations (FEDCUTA) and the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), will be remembered for the placards which students waved at the government.

The placards said it all: “We are not customers”, “Right to Learn, Right to Teach”, “Education is a Right”, “Education is Not for Sale”, “NAAC ki Grading Dhoka Tha, University bechne ka mouka tha”, “Autonomy Education ki Sale Hae, yeh Sarkar Fail hae”, “Education is Freedom, Our Freedom Is Not Your Business”.

The protesters raised these slogans against the grant of autonomy to public-funded educational institutions.

Can anyone protest greater freedom?

The answer of “yes” will seem more natural if we first ask a few questions.

Is the government – which took away from universities their primary task and right of drafting syllabi and course work within six months of coming to power and imposed the uniform curriculum framework called Choice-Based Credit System and syllabi designed by unknown people – now ready to scrap the “one size fits all” system?

Is the government – which took away the administrative autonomy of universities in March 2016 – now ready to withdraw the notification and allow them to have functional autonomy as granted by the Acts of Parliament?

Is the government – which gets irked by the word “aazadi” – ready to acknowledge universities as places where ideas should be debated freely? Is the human resource development ministry, which keeps seeking clarifications from universities regarding seminars and formation of students’ groups on the basis of representations submitted by the ABVP, ready to give up its attempts to polarise university spaces?

Is the government, which is using heads of institutions to crush democratic structures and subvert statutory bodies, now ready to allow democratisation of policymaking?

The grant of autonomy is contrary to the conduct of this government!

It is, therefore, imperative to investigate the nature of the freedom which the Modi government is so eager to grant to universities and which students and teachers are rejecting.

Three major recently announced policies which are going to drastically redefine the way public-funded higher education exists are (i) Replacing grants with loans to institutions for infrastructure development through Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA), (ii) Categorisation of universities on the basis of rating and ranking and an increased thrust towards making colleges of repute autonomous, and (iii) shifting the burden of increased salaries of teachers and non-teaching staff under the 7^th pay revision onto the students.

These fundamental and systemic changes in education are being smuggled in through regulations, without giving Parliament, and through it the stakeholders, a chance to debate the changes in higher education.

Placard: Autonomy ≠ Affordable Higher Education

Even as the Draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 drew criticism and the NDA had to shelve the document, it is implementing the recommendations without review or wider debate.

One of the important recommendation of the Draft NEP 2016 was (Clause 7.3.11) “The accreditation/evaluation systems need to be revamped, as suggested elsewhere – for institutions adjudged as ‘quality’, much greater freedom has to be given in terms of fixation of student fees, or faculty salaries. A new management paradigm should encourage quality by offering autonomy; should discourage poor managements with appropriate checks and controls, leading to closure where required.” 

The Three Year Action Agenda 2017-18 & 2019-20 formulated by Niti Aayog provided substance to these recommendations of the Draft NEP 2016.

The Niti Aayog recommended: (i) Identification of 20 universities (10 public and 10 private) to be moved out of the ambit of regulations and classified as world class, (ii) Autonomy for top colleges, and (iii) Tiered system of universities – graded autonomy.

The Niti Aayog further recommends that these changes can be brought by using the existing legal framework. Accordingly, the University Grants Commission [Categorisation of Universities (Only) For Grant of Graded Autonomy] Regulations, 2018, were gazetted on February 12, 2018, despite opposition from teachers’ associations.

The regulations stipulate that National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) rating, National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking or some world ranking be used to create three categories of universities. Category I and II will mean that the universities are doing well and will have certain freedom.  The regulation grants category I universities freedom from taking UGC approval before starting new courses, departments, research parks, incubation centres and university society linkage centres, provided they are able to generate non-recurring and recurring expenses for these projects on their own.

These universities have been granted freedom to hire foreign faculty up to 20 per cent over and above their sanctioned strength on tenure/contract basis, provided these universities are able to generate money for these salaries on their own.

Tier 1 universities can enroll 20 per cent foreign students over and above the strength of domestic students. These universities can create incentive salary structures “with the condition that the incentive structure shall have to be paid from their own revenue sources and not from commission or government funds”. For Tier-II institutions, much of the same freedoms are given but with the requirement of periodic peer-review and assessment through an assessing agency approved by the UGC.

The “autonomy” granted is financial autonomy to institutions. State and central universities are engaged in mass education and for them the main and steady source of revenue generation is students’ fees. The schemes of graded autonomy and autonomous colleges is a handle to convert universities and colleges of repute into teaching shops.

The autonomy so granted will force these universities to expand without government spending towards this expansion. For the government, quality of proposals is not a concern as long as it can be marketed and revenue can be generated. Grading and ranking systems will be used as a stick to force universities to use their “freedom” for revenue generation.

On March 20, 2018, 52 universities, including five central universities, 21 state universities, 24 deemed universities and two private universities, were categorised and granted graded autonomy. Further, eight colleges were declared autonomous.

The minister of human resource development, Prakash Javadekar, proudly described the decision as “historic” and claimed “the government is striving to introduce a liberalised regime in the education sector”. The argument implicit in this claim is that the education sector be best treated as a market for tradable services and that less regulation and freedom from government funding will allow this market to flourish.

Placard: Do Not Reconstruct Gurukul

The People’s March saw an exceptionally large number of women students. Students marched with placards reading “Do Not Reconstruct Gurukul”. Public-funded higher education and inclusion policy has helped students from disadvantageous backgrounds to pursue their dreams and has opened universities to those who were denied any upward mobility by social constructs.

Any change in the funding formula resulting in dismantling of public-funded higher education will be a U-turn and strengthen old structures of exclusion and further stratify society on the basis of affordability.

Today the policy thrust is on pushing the burden of maintaining state and central universities on students and parents. The policies will have a cascading effect on expenditure of parents and students towards education. Withdrawal of public funding and exorbitant fee hike in public-funded educational institutions will allow private institutions to hike their fees further.

The market is driven by the logic of reducing expenditure in maintenance of systems and increasing profit margins. In case of educational institutions, this translates into badly maintained infrastructure and low salaries to teachers and regressive working conditions, adversely affecting the quality of education.

Closure of a large number of private professional colleges in recent times show privatisation does not ensure quality nor help us to increase the gross enrollment ratio. Yet another well studied impact of commercialisation of education is marginalisation of basic humanities, social sciences and science disciplines.

Placard: Education is a Right

In response to the demand for employment, the Prime Minister glorifies self-employment and in response to demand for expansion of public-funded higher education, the government pushes existing public-funded institutions towards self-reliance under the cover of “autonomy”. With over 60 per cent of population below the age of 25, this systematic destruction of public-funded education is one of the greatest disservices a government can do.

The Preamble to our Constitution guarantees to all citizens “fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual…” And education is an important means of achieving this, for the upward mobility of an individual, for the much needed social transformation and strengthening of democracy.

The placard “They tried to bury us but they don’t realise that we are seeds” summarises the mood of the youth, which is ready to build a movement in defence of their fundamental right.