Education minister Smriti Irani has yet to take a call on the recommendations of the TSR Subramanian panel, but getting in foreign universities as well as allowing more autonomy to government institutions will be a sea change, if allowed, given how various governments of the day have been loath to do so, regardless of which political party was in power. The Subramanian panel recommendations on doing away with the no-fail policy after Class VIII will likely be accepted given the across-the-board support for it among most state governments.
While getting more private universities, especially from overseas, may be easy, it is unlikely a Harvard or a Cambridge will come in; or even that, despite some private universities in India being both well-funded or well-staffed, they will be able to quickly come up to the academic level of some of India’s top public sector universities like the original IITs and the IIMs. But, in order to ensure that the scores of private universities, as well as the public sector ones, strive to do better, the presence of a top-class regulatory system is critical. While the education ministry is reportedly reluctant to outsource this task, the presence of an independent non-government certifying agency is always a plus even if it is addition to a government-run one—as a parallel, the government puts out data on economic growth, but private economists/institutions and credit-rating firms are also relied upon to give a different perspective or to certify it as kosher. This certifying has to include the quality of research done by faculty, quality of the alumni and how up-to-date or relevant the syllabus/course material is. Indeed, once there is enough third-party attention on the quality of an institution, the government will find, even the need for the government-run bodies to fix teaching curriculum will eventually fade away—several private universities in India offer reputed degrees even today, but their courses are not those suggested by the UGC or other such government-bodies. Indeed, as universities, both government and private, start looking to improve their ranking as well as build up a sizeable corpus—so critical to pay teachers good salaries and offer teaching assistance to students—making their teaching more relevant to industry needs will also happen over a period of time.
