Inviting Foreign Universities to Establish Universities in India

This topic – of inviting foreign universities to start operations in India – has been a recurrent theme for a couple of decades in discourses on HE in India. Recently, UGC has announced guidelines for foreign universities. There were some earlier attempts also to invite foreign universities, which did not pan out. Let us see how the current scheme will pan out.

In this note I want to share some thoughts on what can be role of a university set up in India by a foreign university, and what may be the key requirement for inviting such universities. Let us first be clear that what is being envisaged is establishing of universities in India (presumably by some act) – though the university will be “Owned” by a foreign university and will likely bear the name/brand of the foreign university. But the university established in India will have to be a full-fledged university in its own right – operating as per its act and rules and regulations (and laws of the land).

But why should we as a country invite foreign universities to start universities in India. The reason is essentially the same as for other sectors where we allow foreign companies with expertise to start operations – to satisfy some local demand and to provide some long term benefit (e.g. by improving the overall functioning of the sector, developing talent, bring in new practices, etc.) At a concept level, when private entities are allowed to establish universities in India, there seems little reason to disallow a foreign university to start a university. In fact, it can be argued that as the foreign university is in the business of academics, it may be a better entity to start a university.

Let us start with what are our needs for which we would like to invite foreign universities. I see two main needs.

First is to help satisfy the demand for good quality higher education. While we have a huge HE system and pretty much anyone who wants to do higher education can get admission in some college (in Engineering – the supply of seats seems to be more than the demand), there is an acute shortage of good quality higher education. Of the 40000+ HEIs (including universities and colleges) that provide HE, maybe 10% can be considered as providing good quality education (many will argue that only about a 100 do so). In other words, while there is an ample supply for HE seats, seats for good quality education are in extreme short supply. This leads to people with means sending their children abroad for undergraduate studies. It also leads to extreme competition for qualifying for these few good quality seats (whether in government institutions like IITs/NITs/IIITs or in private institutions providing high quality education like BITS.) One clear expectation from foreign universities is that universities they establish will provide good quality education, thereby expanding the availability of such opportunities in India. (The current UGC guidelines discuss the quality of education at some length.)

The second need we have is to have more good quality researchers and scientists, i.e. good quality PhD graduates. PhD graduates are needed for our expanding HE system as well as for progress and growth in the emerging knowledge based economy. There is no doubt that in future lack of good quality researchers will hit the country in many ways – as expertise and capability to create and leverage knowledge is increasingly becoming critical in many sectors. And there is a huge shortage of PhDs of decent quality in our country. The result is that most of our HEIs have faculty without PhDs – something we are unlikely to see in universities in US, UK, Australia, Europe or even China, where most faculty for HE have PhDs. So, the second expectation from a foreign university should be that they will have a substantial PhD program. (The current UGC guidelines do not dwell upon this.)

Just combining these two key needs, I would suggest that the goal of having universities established by foreign universities is: provide high quality education at UG and Masters level to as many students as possible, and produce as many PhDs as possible.

An interesting observation is that these two needs are quite different from financial perspective for a university. While education (UG or Masters) generates revenue for universities, PhD programs are cost centers – PhD students are given stipends across the world. With these two goals with financially different implications, it is possible to simplify the criteria for allowing universities to be started by foreign universities. We need to simply require that the locally established university must have some percent of its students as full time PhD scholars (say 20% of its students must be PhD students).

The implications of this requirement are many – mostly desirable. First, a foreign university that agrees to this condition is likely to be a good research university in its own country (e.g. those who belong to R1 category in US or those who are ranked high in some of the global rankings). Such a university will never compromise on its brand and will ensure that the quality of education and PhD training. So detailed rules/guidelines for guarding quality of education may be redundant.

Second, having a substantial PhD program will mean that most of its faculty will have to have PhDs. This will ensure a good quality faculty as these universities are not likely to dilute their standards for research faculty. This will further ensure good quality education.

Third, a large PhD program will necessarily means more research output from India – this will help further improve the research standing of the country as well as have some local problems researched (most foreign research universities, if they do research in India, are likely to more interested in working on unique challenges provided by the context.)

And finally, supporting a PhD has many cost implications. PhD students have to be provided with stipend and other support for research. Faculty to guide these PhD students have to be compensated well (and university cannot operate by having most faculty as part-time.) This will ensure that the university cannot easily become a “profit making entity” as a good portion of the surplus that may be generated from education programs will necessarily go in supporting the PhD program. This can address a concern that some have in India that foreign universities will come here only to make money. And it also provides value for strengthening our overall HE system by developing future faculty, making us more “aatmanirbhar” in future.

So just by requiring a substantial PhD program, not only will we achieve both the goals of good quality education and development of research manpower, some of the other perceived risks are mitigated. And so, with this as the key requirement, other requirements / regulations / rules can be minimised and the university can be given a freer hand in developing. This is also a requirement that can be easily verified (unlike any requirement on quality of education / faculty, or even financial issues.) To my mind, any regulation / guideline for establishing universities by foreign universities should make this as the central objective, and then provide them maximal freedom in operating.

While in India we often debate whether to allow foreign universities or not, I believe the main challenge in having foreign universities set universities here is to actually attract good universities to come to India. Why should a good research university from US, UK, Australia, Europe, … come to India to start a university? Each university which wishes to start a university here will have to provide its own answer to this question, which is likely to be a combination of financial aspects, access to talent, making an impact in the world, global branding, etc.

Financial viability is clearly going to be a prime concern – a foreign university establishing the university is not likely to view it as a philanthropic activity, so it will want to ensure that the university, at a minimum, is completely self financed in the long run – both in capital expenditure and on recurring front. This itself is a huge challenge as just the initial cost of land and establishing a campus itself can be very high. And globally (including in India) most examples of high quality private universities are those where the initial capital was provided by philanthropists. Here maybe some local philanthropist(s) can partner with foreign university for establishing the university. Making the university self sustaining on the recurring front is challenging but is possible (most private universities achieve this.)

Then there is the issue of the parent university benefitting financially from their venture in India. This may not be feasible for a decade or more of establishing a university as generating a surplus after covering initial capital is going to be challenging in India. Eventually when the university can generate sufficient surplus, the parent university will want to benefit from it. To support this interest in a transparent manner, it can be useful if Indian rules permit some remittance of royalty (I am not clear on what is the current position of GoI on this). As and when surplus is generated, they can be used to benefit the parent university in other ways also e.g. sponsoring research projects and PhD students, supporting faculty movement between parent and Indian entities, etc. In the short run also, the parent university can stand to gain financially by becoming a bigger brand in India which can lead to attracting students to its parent campus, having some twinning programs, etc.

Even if the university is financially self supporting, and even if the parent university benefits somewhat financially, I feel financial incentives will not provide sufficient motive to establish a university. And indeed financial gains should not be touted as the main attraction for foreign universities to set universities here (as has been done in some oil rich countries.) The foreign university will need to have other compelling reasons to come to India. These can be access to talent, to contribute to global development, to have an academic research base in India to address the research challenges faced in countries like India which are often different than those faced in developed countries, become a global brand in HE, … etc. Finding the right purpose(s) of establishing a university locally is beyond the policy / regulations etc – and will involve deep discussions with universities who are willing to at least explore the possibility and some local stakeholders, including the government. But if some good universities start universities in India with the condition stated above, it will be a good thing for the Indian higher education.

Teaching in the Hybrid Mode – Initial Experience

As discussed in the previous post, when normalcy returns, it is likely that hybrid teaching will be the dominant method for teaching some types of courses. As explained in previous post, in hybrid teaching, the lecture is given to the in-class students, but is also simultaneously streamed to online students, and the taped version is made available to all students. So, students can attend a lecture in-class or online – i.e. some attend in-class and others attend online. There are many advantages of hybrid – for the students, for the faculty, and for the institution – the previous post discussed a few.

In this post we discuss how hybrid teaching is done, based on personal experience. I will also share some feedback regarding how online and in-class students view hybrid lectures.

Mechanics of Hybrid Teaching and Equipment Needed

How is hybrid teaching to be done? We assume that for teaching, the faculty member is ready to use a projection-based system for the class (and not a whiteboard with pens.) It should, however, be added that in a large class in a university or college, projection based methods for teaching are the norm (cannot really use a whiteboard for a large class). In advanced courses also, presentation based approaches are now standard. And during covid times, even for courses where white board style may be preferred (e.g. Maths), methods have been evolved to use projection-based approaches (e.g. using a tablet with a pen).

In the in-class mode of teaching, a faculty member projects the screen of her laptop/devise to the class. The screen may show some slides (e.g. powerpoint), an interactive terminal on which she may draw or write, videos, documents, website etc. For audio, for a large class the standard method is a collar-mike which was connected to an audio system to carry the voice to students in the class; for smaller classes, there may not be any audio system.

To teach in hybrid mode in such a class, one straightforward method is to share the laptop screen on the streaming platform (e.g. zoom) being used for online students, and also project the screen in-class through the projection system. I.e. in the class room, the zoom screen is being projected. In this approach, it is best that video from laptop camera is projected only at the start of the lecture, but otherwise is disabled – so when the faculty member moves around the class the online students don’t see a blank.

Audio needs more thought. For in-class, the regular collar-mike with audio system can remain. But how do you stream your lecture to online students.  I had tried using a Bluetooth earphone with a microphone – but the sound quality of that was not good (they are designed more for listening rather than speaking; also, with earphones listening to students in-class will get harder, besides looking funny going around in them in the class.) I finally just used the laptop’s microphone for steaming the audio, and laptop speaker for listening to online students.  It worked well – there was no feedback from in-class audio to the online students and online students were able to hear clearly. I was also able to listen to online students. It, however, restricted the physical movement to a couple of feet around the laptop. I have since learned that there are Lav microphones available for connecting to a laptop – they are just like the collar mike with a wireless transmitter (which can be kept in a pocket), and a receiver that can be connected to the laptop using USB. They tend to be somewhat expensive though.

Initial Experience in Hybrid Teaching

This semester (Jan-April, 2022) I was teaching a large class with about 300 students on “Introduction to Programming (Python)”. It is a core course meant for students of all programs. When the course started, it was entirely online. We used zoom as the platform for online lecturing. For presentation to students, I largely used powerpoint, but also some interactive websites to show execution of programs, as well as a Python editor to type and run programs. I.e. the presentation to students was a mix of slides, websites, and an interactive window of the editor running on my laptop.

When about 3 weeks were left in the course, the covid situation eased and campus was opened to students. We surveyed the students regarding whether they will like to continue online for the rest of the semester or prefer to come in-class. About 70% said that they will prefer in-class. Given that a large fraction wanted to continue online (many were living in places far away from campus, some even overseas), I  decided to try the hybrid mode. This became a “natural experiment” in which some students who till previous week were attending lectures online and are now in class for the same course with same instructor (something which will be hard to force in a designed experiment).

First learning from this experiment was about in-class attendance. While 70% of the students had voted for in-class, actually only about 30% of the students finally came physically to the class – the rest continued to attend online. (The actual numbers were – appx 70 students in-class and appx 150 students online). So, it was clear that while students wanted to be in-campus, they did not necessarily want to be in-class for lectures – the convenience of attending from their place of residence/hostel was strong. (The course was scheduled at 830 am, which may also be motivating some students to attend the class from their hostels.)

We took feedback of the two categories of students separately – those who were in-class and those attending on-line. (For taking the feedback, I used a mobile app called ALT (for active learning-teaching), which I had been using throughout the semester to take student feedback – so both in-class and online students were able to give the feedback.) I just took feedback on one question:

• Question to online students: Today’s online class in hybrid mode – how similar/different from fully online class (Green: Better, Yellow: Similar, Red: Worse).
• Question to in-class students: How will you compare your lecture understanding (incl all factors like attention, sitting, …) in the in-person class as compared to online. (Green: In-class is better; Yellow: About the same; Red: In-class worse)

The feedback from online students is shown in the first pie-chart below. As one would expect, most (about two-thirds) found the hybrid similar to the fully online. Very few (˜5%) found it as “worse” – perhaps my movement in class may have made audio a little worse. Surprisingly, about a fourth of students found the lecture “better” – this is counterintuitive, but there is a possible explanation: most faculty get energised with students in the class which can improve the quality of their exposition; maybe the presence of students in-class improved the lecture quality.

Feedback from on-line students

Feedback from in-class students  is shown in the pie chart below.  The vast majority (three-fourths) found in person better than online – this is to be expected as students who *chose* to attend the in-person class probably did so because they did not like the online ones. Quite a few found no difference – perhaps also to be expected as there are studies indicating that (for college students) learning online is comparable to learning in-class. There were quite a few students who found it “worse” – clearly these students will prefer online classes for their learning, if an opportunity is given.  

Feedback from in-class students

Though this is small experiment, it does suggest that for a course like this hybrid teaching may be suitable: some students seem to prefer online over in-class for their learning and many find online similar (so a good fraction of these students will, due to convenience, attend many classes online), and hybrid lecturing may have a beneficial effect on the quality of online lecturing as well. Besides these, there is a significant advantage of recorded lecture being available (in another feedback on what helped students learn well, “recorded lectures” was consistently mentioned as an important factor.) Hybrid teaching may also enhance attendance in classes – we know from experience that students miss lectures often, and towards the end of the semester the attendance often falls dramatically; online option may encourage many of these students to attend more lectures. Plus there are other advantages of hybrid teaching, as discussed in the previous note.

Overall, hybrid teaching seems to work smoothly. And this initial experience indicates that it may be a good method of teaching a large class, perhaps better than fully online or fully in-class.

Hybrid Teaching

Now that familiarity with online is widespread and accepted, given some of its benefits like convenience of attending remotely, having taped lectures available later, etc, it is unlikely that higher education will go back to fully in-person teaching and attending of courses. At the same time in-person has its own advantages, particularly in assessments, and is an approach that has been refined over centuries in higher education. So, that will not be given up. What seems to be emerging as a consensus is that hybrid teaching will be the predominant method going forward. In a few posts, starting from this one, I want to discuss what Hybrid Teaching is and its potential.

What is hybrid teaching? In hybrid teaching, the lecture (or tutorial) session is given to the in-class students, but is also simultaneously streamed to online students. So, students can attend the session in-class or online – some attend in-class and others attend online. Implied in hybrid is that there will be some in-class assessments – maybe the major exams – where all students will be required to come in-person for proctored assessment, with maybe exceptions made for special students. And that given the session is being streamed, they will be recorded made available to all students.

It should be pointed out that blended education – the other term that is often used – generally means something slightly different. It is about using different forms of teaching (in particular online and in-class) for different portions of a course/module. I.e. the same set of students experience both the in-class and online portions. So, some parts of the course may be delivered online, while some parts may be in-class. The blended model has been around for some time, particularly for degree/diploma programs for working professionals who cannot attend classes in-person (before Covid, the non-in-class portion took different forms like distance education approaches where material is sent to students to read, online MOOC content, etc.) In this note, we will focus on hybrid teaching.

Standard Hybrid Model

Hybrid teaching seems a natural extension of regular in-class teaching where computer-based projection methods (e.g. PowerPoint, writing on a tablet, …) are used to present to the class, except that lecture sessions are also being streamed and part of the class is joining online. It can also be viewed as an extension of regular synchronous online teaching where the faculty gave lectures from their office or home and students attended online, except that the lecture is being given by the faculty from the classroom.

So, hybrid teaching is a natural extension of the two forms of teaching with which faculty and students have become very familiar and comfortable – in-class teaching and fully online teaching (with scheduled classes and lectures being streamed to online students).  This makes it easy to adopt by students as well as faculty.

And given that it permits benefits of both online (e.g. students can attend classes from anywhere) and in-class (e.g. deeper connect of students with instructor, proctored assessments), there are compelling reasons to use hybrid teaching going forward, particularly in higher education. Let us discuss some.

First provide a definition of hybrid teaching. We will focus on teaching of a course (or module, subject, …) where a faculty member is responsible for teaching a class of students some subject, typically over a semester. Hybrid teaching of a course is where: (i) Most sessions (lectures, tutorials, …) during the term are delivered live to the students as per a declared schedule, (ii) Generally, these sessions will be delivered in-class in front of the in-class students, (iii) all lectures are streamed online allowing students to join the session online, (iv)  the live sessions will generally be recorded and made available to enrolled students as reference / study material for this course offering, and (v) some assessments are proctored and conducted in-class for almost all students.

This hybrid model has some clear advantages from students’ perspective and can facilitate learning. First, if a student lives far away from campus, and happens to have only one or two lectures in a day, the student can save time and effort (and money) for travelling to attend the lectures, by joining them online. This saving of commute time can provide the student with more time  for revision, other learning tasks. It should be added that in a large metro like Delhi, students living off-campus often spend 2 hours or more in commuting each day they come to campus.

Second, if a student misses a lecture for some reason, the recorded lecture is available for learning/studying. This is extremely beneficial as all academics know that students miss classes all the time for a host of reasons (including illness, getting up late, some student events going on, family event/function, etc.). Without recorded lectures, a student has to take notes from friends or other sources for missed lectures. While there are potential risks (primary among them that many students will choose to attend most classes remotely which can have adverse effects on students without them appreciating it), it is clear that hybrid teaching, due to its naturalness, low cost, and the benefits to the students will be demanded by students.

There are other advantages of this form of hybrid teaching. It will allow larger classes to be handled more efficiently. Often due to lack of class room of sufficient size, a large class is divided in sections – with each section having its own instructor who gives the lecture. While this may provide “smaller” classes, often even this size is quite large, and if the size of a section is more than about 100 or 150, the benefit of “smallness” is minimal. Furthermore, having multiple instructors for the same course throws up many challenges as different instructors may move at different pace, have focus on different topics, and may have different styles of teaching – making the learning experience for students of different sections somewhat different for the same course – which is not desirable. It may be mentioned that many universities in US have for long been scheduling large classes in smaller classrooms while making taped lectures available. The hybrid mode actually improves on it – besides having the recorded lecture, students can also attend the class in realtime online.

This hybrid model can also be leveraged to increase the reach and inclusiveness of higher education. It is easy to see that with hybrid teaching, it is easy to offer a course to people who are not enrolled as students in the institutions where they are being taught. This allows, for example, working professionals, including teachers in teaching-focused HEIs, to easily attend some courses from some high quality institutions being offered in hybrid mode.  

Many HEIs (e.g. IIT Delhi, IIIT Delhi, IIIT Hyderabad, …) actually have such provisions to allow working professionals to take some courses as “casual students” – where they are not working towards any degree and attend the courses to upgrade their knowledge. These casual students attend the course, just as regular students do, and they get a certificate on completion of the course. The provisions of casual students did not gain much traction with working professionals in the traditional in-class lecturing mode, due to travel overheads, necessity of missing some classes due to other professional reasons, etc. With hybrid not only there is no commute involved (so the casual student only has to plan in her schedule for the scheduled sessions of the course), as recorded lectures are available, missing some lectures, which are bound to happen for a working professional, can be easily made up.

Having professionals attend courses can be quite attractive both for the HEI and the working professionals, particularly for advanced topics – the working professional can upgrade her knowledge and skills under the guidance of expert faculty, and the institute offering the course can generate additional fee as well as increase its engagement with industry and other academic institutions. This potential of expanding reach to professionals is a compelling reason for most top institutions to teach most of their advanced courses in hybrid mode, and actively engage with industry and other educational institutions to take advantage of it.

Generalized Hybrid Model

We have been discussing what can be called as the “standard” model of hybrid – which is really defined from the perspective of students attending the course – i.e. students can join a session in-class or online. The model can be generalized, by also allowing “hybridness” from the perspective of faculty also. This can be done by relaxing the condition (ii) in the definition to: These sessions will be delivered in-class in front of the in-class students, or online, by the instructor. That is, instead of requiring “most” sessions to be delivered in-class by faculty, it allows sessions to be delivered online by the faculty (in which case, even though the lecture can be projected in-class, there will be little point for a student to come to class and it will become online for all.)

With this more general model of hybrid teaching, some new possibilities emerge for improving education.

One, when the instructor is not able to come physically to the class (is sick, some family exigency, attending a conference, …), instead of cancelling the lecture and arranging for a make-up, can give the scheduled lecture online (with suitable notice to students). This can minimize disruptions and provide an additional degree of freedom to the Instructor.

Two, having guest lectures in a class becomes very easy. In an in-class approach, an instructor had to invite the guest lecturer to come to the campus and deliver the lecture to the students. Now, these sessions can be given online by guest lecturers from anywhere. This is hugely empowering – instructors can get some top experts from anywhere in the country/world to deliver a lecture on a topic of the guest’s expertise in their course, they can invite industry experts to give lectures on topics relating to how the subject is used in industry, which can hugely enrich a course, etc.. Besides, enabling students to be able to listen to lectures from these top academic or industry experts, it can also facilitate collaboration between faculty, and guest lecturers, which can have other advantages.

Taking this general hybrid model further, some courses in the curriculum can be taught mostly online, e.g. all the lectures are online. (Other conditions of hybrid will still have to be satisfied, i.e. some in-class assessments.) This will allow an HEI to get some expert from anywhere in the world to teach a course to its students – something that is extremely challenging in the in-class model. Many institutes have distinguished alumni who are experts in academia or industry in organizations across the world. They may be able to tap this talent and have them offer some courses – an idea with huge potential. Of course, this may not be limited to alumni – HEIs can request faculty / experts from other organizations to offer courses in their institution.

This aspect of hybrid can really allow tapping of teaching talent and expertise globally. Many academics across the world will be happy to do for a fee, particularly during their Sabbaticals, during which they may be unwilling to come physically to the HEI but may be willing to teach remotely. It also opens the possibility of leveraging retired faculty from various countries, or retired experts from industry – who may design and offer a course after retirement  – they may even agree to offer to teach the course to many HEIs. There are clearly other possibilities that can be constructed. In this model of hybrid teaching, the in-class assessments to be done (e.g. exams) can be done. For example, the remote instructor can set the exam questions and the HEI where the students are taking the course can conduct these assessments in a proctored environment; the answer scripts can be shared with the remote instructor in a variety of ways, or graded locally under the guidance/supervision of the remote instructor.

Another possible advantage of general hybrid teaching can be in having courses jointly taught by faculty from multiple institutions. In this model, a course (e.g. an advanced course) is designed by some faculty from different institutions together. It is then offered to students of those institutions as regular elective course. In this model, in each institution where the course is being taught, some of the lectures will be taken by the local faculty member involved (probably in-class), but some lectures will be given online by faculty from other institutions. This requires the course to be scheduled at the same time in the different institutions. In-class assessment poses no issues. An example of this type of course offering done during the fully online times is the course offered by colleagues from IIIT-Delhi and IIIT Hyderabad on AI for Software Engineering.

Summing Up

Overall, one can say that going forward hybrid teaching is the natural course for most higher educational institutions. It has some clear advantages for students, and so HEIs can expect a demand from students also. It has also many advantages for institutions and faculty. In addition to the advantages, there are a host of possibilities that emerge that can help an HEI improve its education significantly by innovatively tapping the general hybrid teaching model. I expect hybrid teaching to become a norm in most forward looking institutions soon at least for some types of courses, and which other institutions will be forced to adopt later on.

Autonomy of Higher Education Institutions and NEP

The new education policy (NEP) was accepted last year. It has many desirable proposals for the higher education sector. In the next few posts I plan to explore a few different aspects of NEP for higher education (HE) and higher education institutions (HEIs). This one focuses on autonomy for self governance.

Universities are complex organisations trying to respond to the forces of globalisation, technology change, changing expectations from students and public, competition for global rankings and prestige, need for enhanced financial resources, and so forth. In such a scenario, the university must govern itself effectively to face multifaceted challenges of the twenty-first century and provide desired academic outcomes to students and society. For  strong professional governance, a higher degree of autonomy is essential, particularly to research universities.

In public universities that are supported through public funds, the state exercises a degree of control over these universities. In many developed countries, it is now broadly agreed that increasing the autonomy of public universities is essential for a modern higher education system. Experience and research indicate that autonomy helps a university in performing better and attract more funds.

The NEP recognises the importance of effective governance and leadership and that a common feature of all world-class institutions globally including India is the existence of strong self-governance and merit-based appointments of institutional leaders. It states that over a period of 15 years, all HEIs in India will become independent self-governing institutions. 

For autonomy of governance, the first issue relates to the Board of Governors (BoG), the apex body of an Institution. NEP states that the BoG will consists of a group of highly qualified, competent, and dedicated individuals having proven capabilities and a strong sense of commitment to the institution. It also proposes that the Board will be self-perpetuating, i.e. the BoG itself will find replacements for members whose terms finishes. It proposes that “new members of the Board shall be identified by an expert committee appointed by the Board; and the selection of new members shall be carried out by the BoG itself.” It is implied that the BoG will have none or very few government nominees (the NEP2019 document, which formed the basis for NEP had given a limit for government nominees.)

These recommendations regarding the BoG are indeed along the lines of the best practices being followed globally, and if implemented in letter and spirit, can truly transform the governance of Institutions. First, as the board appoints its members, it will help ensure that each member focuses on welfare of the institution and feels answerable / accountable to it. It also avoids having some government official / nominee in the Board – often such officials are on many boards and their aim is often to ensure that government’s interests are protected, not necessarily to promote the institution’s interests. Selection of members by BoG can also avoid the common situation where some Board positions remain vacant since the concerned ministry is not able to nominate people to the positions for which it has nomination authority. NEP also states that succession should be planned with care so leadership positions are not be kept vacant.

The NEP is silent on how the Chairperson of the BoG will be selected / appointed. (The NEP2019 had suggested that the Chairperson will be selected by the BoG itself from amongst its members.) If the government wants to have a say in this appointment, it is hoped that the selection of the Chairperson will be done through a committee comprising of the Government and the BoG nominees, and that the Board has some say in selection of the Chairperson. And that the Chairperson is appointed sometime before the term of the current Chairperson ends – it is not at all in the interest of the HEI that there be “acting Chairperson”. NEP clearly states that leadership changes should come with sufficient overlaps, and not remain vacant, in order to ensure smooth transitions.

It is also important to ensure that the Chairperson of the BoG has a non-executive role – clearly stated in NEP2019 and is implied in the NEP. In other words, any executive (e.g. the Director or the Vice Chancellor) cannot be the Chairperson of the Board. This is based on sound governance principle, and is globally followed in universities. It will be interesting to see how this is implemented for Universities in India, as many of them follow the old practice which the British established (but which is not followed in UK) where the Vice Chancellor is not only the chief-executive but is also the Chairperson of the Board.

The second important issue of governance autonomy is whether the selection and appointment of the Head of the Institution (Vice Chancellor or Director) rests with BoG or outside the BoG. A person appointed to a post is answerable to the appointing authority. Therefore, if the appointing authority is not the board of the university but some external authority, then, the Head is actually not answerable to the university or the board, but to the external appointing authority. To resolve this fundamental anomaly, the Head of a university, like the CEO of business organisations, should be appointed by the university through its Board and should be answerable to the university.

NEP appreciates the need to have top quality leadership (states that all leadership positions and Heads of institutions will be offered to persons with high academic qualifications and demonstrated administrative and leadership capabilities along with abilities to manage complex situations.) It states that the selection of the Head of the Institution shall be carried out by the BoG through a rigorous, impartial, merit-based, and competency-based process led by an Eminent Expert Committee constituted by the BoG. In other words, the selection and appointment of the Head of the Institution is to be done by the Institution itself through its BoG.

This recommendation, if implemented in spirit as well as the letter, can change the mindset and culture of institution leaders. It makes the Head answerable to the Board, the appointing authority. In today’s scenario, as the appointing authority is outside the institution the appointed leader is really answerable, and perhaps beholden, to the external appointing authority.

When the institution, through its Board, becomes the appointing body, many institutions will find ways to involve the faculty in the selection process. For example, a common method employed in US (and even in some places in India) is to invite the final few shortlisted candidates for leadership to the Institute and meet with faculty and often make a presentation to the Institute body regarding the vision the person has, the values he/she upholds, and what might his/her focus be as a leader. And based on these interactions/presentations, the faculty may give their input/recommendations to the Board, which takes the final decision based on all inputs. This allows all stakeholders of the institute to be involved, and more importantly, the new leader to be answerable to them.

The last issue regarding governance autonomy is of selecting and appointing faculty. Institutional autonomy clearly implies that all appointments made by the institute should be decided and offered by the Institute itself. NEP clearly states that the most important factor in the success of higher education institutions is the quality and engagement of its faculty, and that the current level of faculty motivation is lower than desired. It further states that autonomous institutions empowered to drive excellence, should have clearly defined, independent, and transparent processes and criteria for faculty recruitment, and suggests that promotion, tenure, salary increases, recognition, etc be based on performance.

Autonomy in recruitment, besides requiring that the government officials should have no role in the selection and appointment of faculty, raises a rather touchy issue, particularly for research universities / institutions that aim for excellence and want to be globally competitive and reputed. As their mission includes research and teaching excellence, these institutions should have the freedom to recruit suitable people to these positions based completely on their needs (e.g. in which areas) and excellence-merit/quotient of the candidate, and should have freedom to evolve policies and processes for tenure, promotion, etc based on performance – as supported in the NEP. If the criteria of merit and excellence is diluted for any reason, it is likely to take the institution down a slippery slope where factors other than excellence or performance become significant. This implies, that while the institution should adhere to the academic value of being open to all, it must continue to value talent, and talent alone. Any restrictions (e.g. quotas) on this actually impinge on the autonomy of the institution regarding selecting and appointing the best and most talented faculty to meet its vision and mission.

The NEP has laid out the path for modernisation of governance in HEIs, and has excellent recommendations to bring governance of our institutions in line with the global best practices. It is to be seen how the changes recommended by the NEP are implemented, as some existing rules and practices can come in the way (e.g. of having the Vice Chancellor as the chief-executive and also the Chairperson of the Board.) Implementing the NEP recommendations may also require dismantling of some existing structures (e.g. council for IITs, NITs, IIITs, …) which violate the autonomy of the Institution. The NEP says that there will be some overarching regulation/act which will fix issues. It will be interesting to see how such legacy issues are resolved.

Overall, the NEP has provided for great deal of governance autonomy to Institutions. Though the past record of governments and bureaucracies is that they are loath to give up their power and control – one hopes that the recommendations of the NEP will be sincerely implemented and our HEIs, at least the top ones, will get full governance autonomy as envisaged in the NEP.

Building Research Universities in India – Advance Comments

The book is finally going to come out in Nov. The publisher has shared a flier announcing the book , given later in this post- which gives some information about the book.

I have been fortunate that many eminent people agreed to give advance comments for the book. I am giving these comments here. I hope the readers will find the book informative and useful, and that it will contribute towards building a stronger higher education system in India. (PS: As given in the Preface, all royalties from the book will be given to IIIT-Delhi, to which the book is dedicated.)

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A nation is as strong as its higher educational and research institutions. Prof. Jalote has created one such institution and nurtured it carefully for over a decade to make it a widely respected research institution in the world. This book is a winning recipe for how to create a globally-respected research institution in any country. A must-read for everyone interested in higher education and research.

N.R. Naryana Murthy, Founder, Infosys

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This book describes  in depth the  fundamental issues in Indian Universities and the  need to improve the research ecosystem to enable the potential of faculty and students to be fully realized. This insightful and well written  volume will benefit all those  involved with  the governance of  higher education, especially the administrators and policy makers.

Prof. Sudhir Sopory, Former VC, JNU

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Higher education in India has grown tremendously. However, much remains to be done on quality of research and its application for practical problems. The author has gone into the fact sheet and challenges that lie ahead for building world-class research universities. This book comes at an appropriate time when the new National Education Policy is on the anvil, and will open new vistas for policymakers, educationists, administrators, and students of higher education.

Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE

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The book presents a very comprehensive view of the current standing of research ambience of the university system in India and the way forward to building world-class universities through a conscious promotion of the research culture in the universities. This is a must read for all academics and leaders of Higher Education who are seriously interested in promoting high-end academic research in universities, especially in India. 

Prof. Surendra Prasad, Former Director, IIT Delhi

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India urgently needs world class research universities. This book by Pankaj Jalote,  who is one of a rare breed of “Thinker Doers” in our country, shares the roadmap for building strong research universities in India. Anyone involved in higher education can benefit from this book!

Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Infosys

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This book, based on  the insights from Pankaj Jalote’s success in developing a India-based Research University in IIIT-Delhi, offers many lessons for building a research based HE system, which is innovative and cutting edge as new India grows into a knowledge based economy.

T.V.Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education Services 

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Knowledge without action is meaningless. Pankaj embodies this value principle at its best. He built a first rate institution and has now put down his insights into a book through a larger perspective.  This is a much needed book that should be mandatory reading for educators, policy makers and anyone interested in learning about the right way to take higher education forward across the globe. 

Prof. Dinesh Singh, Former VC, Delhi University

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Higher Education in India is huge and complex. Prof. Jalote, an educator, researcher and an institution builder who is admired for the way he brought up IIIT-Delhi, makes an effort to unravel it and presents a vision for building the future universities and how our institutions can stay relevant.

Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi

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IIIT-Delhi has become a world class institution in a short time due to the vision, passion and commitment of Pankaj Jalote. Building Research Universities in India , will help readers learn what it takes to build an institution while remaining focused on the vision and borrowing best-practices globally.

Prof. Bijendra Jain, Former Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani  and Deputy Director, IIT Delhi

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The analysis presented in this book thoughtfully reveals the origins, forms and effects of the underperformance of Indian higher education system, together with many signposts for turning things around.

Professor Fazal Rizvi, The University of Melbourne Australia

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This is a comprehensive book and provides a foundation for understanding research universities and suggests ways to make them internationally competitive. A must read for everyone interested in Indian research universities and their future.

Prof. Satish K. Tripathi, President, State University of New York at Buffalo

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Jalote’s argument for improving the research culture & ethics in Indian institutions is compelling. He makes a strong case for encouraging them to become research universities through scale, funding by both government and industry, and impact. He calls for a higher expectation from and deeper support of universities. Listen to him

Prof. Pankaj Chandra, Vice Chancellor, Ahmedabad University, Former Director, IIM Bangalore

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For thriving in the knowledge based global economy, India needs to enhance its quality, relevance and diversity of research.  This book, written by someone who has built a fine research university himself, can help all the stakeholders of our HE system in understanding and implementing the structures and processes required to develop world class universities.

Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST

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In this powerfully argued book, Pankaj Jalote provides a primer for policymakers, university leaders, and their governing bodies on fostering high-quality research culture  – a necessary prerequisite for Indian universities to take their place among their global peers.  Essential reading from someone who has spent the past decade successfully building a research-intensive institution from scratch.

Arun Sharma AM, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice President, QUT

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“India needs many more research universities which can reach the global standard of excellence in innovation, invention and academic research. Pankaj Jalote’s new book offers comprehensive guidance to build successful research institutions. This is a welcome book on an important topic which will be useful for all universities and thinkers”.  

Prof. K. VijayRaghavan

Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India

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Jayant V Narlikar once stated “Just as a teacher who does not add to his knowledge through research becomes stale, so can a researcher devoid of teaching experience become sterile”. A potent system of higher education must, therefore, lay equal emphasis on teaching and research.  Pankaj Jalote’s book serves as a practical guide and roadmap for translating this idea into action.

Furqan Qamar, Professor of Management, Jamia Millia Islamia,  Formerly: Secretary General of Association of Indian Universities, Vice Chancellor University of Rajasthan and Central University of Himachal Pradesh.

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Building Research Universities in India – Preface of the Book

After finishing my decade long term as Founding Director of IIIT-Delhi, I took a leave of absence to work on a book based on my experience, and do some serious travelling. In 2019, was able to do a good amount of travelling (spent more than 4 months outside Delhi), and also made decent progress on the book. In 2020, of course no travelling – used the lockdown to wrap up the book (and maintain sanity and structure in life).

The book is being published by SAGE and is due for release in Nov, 2020 in all territories where SAGE operates. Here is the link to the book announcement . I am giving below the preface of the book – which gives its motivation and background.

Preface

In July 2008, I was informed that I had been selected as the Founding Director of Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi), an Institute for which the State of Delhi had passed a Legislative Act, but which did not exist as yet. As I thought about the possibilities, it soon became clear that despite many challenges, this was a unique opportunity to develop a fine institution from scratch – an opportunity that very few get. So, I took it up with enthusiasm.

Very early on, we established that the Institute would focus strongly on research, besides fulfilling its role in education, that is, it would be what we call a research university in this book. We convinced the government and other stakeholders that the need of the times in the country was to establish a university that could conduct research at an international level while providing education of the highest quality. We set the vision of the Institute as follows: Be a world-class R&D-led institute that is globally respected for research and education; has thriving undergraduate and postgraduate programs; and is socially relevant, industry facing, and globally connected.

We were also clear that the Institute would not be a replica of any existing institute and would innovate and emerge as a model system. Many innovative policies and systems were put in place in the first few years for achieving the Vision. As a result, within a decade, the Institute was ranked in BRICS top 200 universities by QS (out of the 9000+ they assessed), and is widely respected in academic circles in India for the standards it has set in research, education, and governance.

Given that I was the first and only employee in the beginning and there was no other senior faculty for many years, I gained hands-on experience in all aspects of a research university – education and curriculum design, research management, PhD program, faculty recruitment and management, finance, governance and administration, and so on. When my term as Founding Director ended after serving for a decade, I decided to use this unique experience of successfully building a research university from scratch to write a book on research universities in India. I felt that covering all the major aspects in one book and providing an overall view of a research university would be very useful to administrators, academics, policy makers, and so on, who are involved in higher education but often are not scholars of higher education and would like to get a view of the different aspects in one volume.

The aim of this book is to provide an overall view of a research university, with different chapters covering key aspects of a research university. The rationale of the topics covered in different chapters in the book emerges naturally from the aim of the book. The first two chapters set the context – Chapter 1 discusses the Indian higher education system briefly with special emphasis on research universities. Chapter 2 discusses research, research universities, and their relevance and importance. Chapters 3–5 discuss the three missions of a research university – education, research, and contribution to society. A strong PhD program distinguishes research universities from others, and faculty is at the heart of a research university; Chapters 6 and 7 discuss these aspects. A research university needs strong governance that understands the needs of such a university and good finances – Chapters 8 and 9 discuss these topics. Finally, Chapter 10 discusses the road ahead from an Indian perspective – what research universities may do and what is needed in the higher education ecosystem to support these universities.

To provide a broad perspective covering the major aspects of a research university in one book, I have discussed each aspect briefly covering only the key issues involved. Where appropriate, relationship with the recommendations of the new National Education Policy of India (2019) is also mentioned. The discussions are based largely on my experience and understanding, but also contain ideas and concepts from the rich literature that exists. It is not the aim of the book to provide an in-depth study of any of the topics – indeed it cannot be done, as each topic is in itself complex and with considerable literature. It is hoped that this approach will provide a decent understanding of the different aspects of a research university, and a reader can delve into the rich literature available for any topic for a deeper understanding.

No book is currently available on Indian higher education that discusses research universities – an area of growing interest in India. This book fills this gap in the higher education literature about India. I believe the book also contributes to the global higher education literature by providing an overall view of a research university with a chapter on the key aspects – most existing books tend to focus on some specific aspects.

The book should be of value to all those interested in higher education in India, as all aspects of a research university are also present in any higher education institution with perhaps a different emphasis. The book should be of interest to academicians in India, academic leaders, policy makers, and education thinkers, and those who are involved in developing a university. 

Many other developing countries have evolving higher education systems; these countries aspire to strengthen or build research universities. The book should also be of interest to academicians and policy makers in such countries. Globally, the book can be useful to those interested in Indian higher education system, and to any academician or thinker who may not be a scholar of higher education but is interested in getting an overall understanding of research universities.

In some ways, for me the book is like taking a path taken earlier – a sense of déjà vu. In 1996, I went on a 2-year sabbatical to Infosys as Vice President of Quality, during which I successfully led the transition of the quality system to high levels of maturity of the Capability Maturity Model framework. On returning back to academics, I wrote two books to share the experience: CMM in Practice and Project Management in Practice (both published by Addison Wesley). These books had a substantial influence on the software industry across the world and were translated in many languages such as Chinese, Japanese, French, and so on. This journey followed the same paradigm – do first and then write about it. The only difference was that the doing was a 10-year journey and just laid the foundations from an institutional perspective. I hope that, like my previous endeavour, this sharing of experience and understanding will be useful to others who may be interested in either creating or nurturing universities.

I would like to thank a number of people who provided invaluable help during this project. During the course of this work, I visited some universities and higher education research centers – in particular QUT in Brisbane, CSHE in University of Melbourne, and Department of Education Leadership in University at Buffalo. My heartful thanks to my hosts in these universities – Professors Arun Sharma at QUT, Fazal Rizvi at Melbourne, and Satish Tripathi at Buffalo – and the various administrators and scholars who took time out to meet with me and give their inputs.

I would like to thank Prof. Philip G. Altbach, one of the most respected researchers in the field of higher education and research universities and an author of many books, who not only consistently encouraged me for this project but also kindly agreed to write the introduction for the book. A special thanks to Mr. Kiran Karnik, who kindly agreed to write the foreword of the book. Mr. Karnik is a well-known intellectual in India, and was the Chairman, Board of Governors of IIIT-Delhi – his support and guidance greatly helped in conceptualizing and implementing various initiatives.

I would also like to thank IIIT-Delhi for the experience it provided me, which formed the basis of this book, and also for granting me the sabbatical for writing. I would like to thank all my faculty and staff colleagues, who helped create a world-class institution in a short time under rather challenging circumstances. (As a token of my appreciation, the royalties from the book will be donated to IIIT-Delhi.) Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Shikha, for supporting me in the years while I was the Director, despite the cost it incurred on family time, and my daughters Sumedha and Sunanda for their understanding and support.