Strengthening higher education: SPUs, private universities both crucial for India’s future

By Furqan Qamar

Public-funded state universities, which NITI Aayog in a report last month referred to as state public universities (SPUs), play a pivotal role in providing higher education in India. Numbering 495, they constitute 42.38% of the country’s university-level institutions (ULIs).

Given their potential, the 11th Plan had allocated over Rs 16,000 crore for their revival and upgrade. Later, in the 12th Plan, the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) was launched to support them and affiliated colleges. In 2023-24, the actual expenditure on RUSA was Rs 186 crore, compared to the budgetary allocation of Rs 1,500 crore. This centrally-sponsored scheme was renewed as the Pradhan Mantri Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan in 2023, with new guidelines. The 2025 Budget provides Rs 1,815 crore for the scheme.

The NITI Aayog, in collaboration with the Association of Indian Universities, has published a comprehensive report titled “Expanding Quality Higher Education through States and State Public Universities”. It stresses the need to strengthen SPUs, which it believes is no longer an option but a critical necessity.

The NITI Aayog report recognises SPUs’ role in educating millions of students over the past seven decades. It points out that SPUs are “strategically positioned to nurture the next generation of professionals, researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs who will drive India’s growth story”. It also recognises that with targeted investment, financing, empowered governance, and focus on quality teaching and research, SPUs can become centres of excellence, helping transform higher education and fostering balanced regional development.

The report has many suggestions to improve the quality of education in SPUs. The most critical ones involve creating and maintaining quality infrastructure and augmenting teaching-learning, research resources, and facilities.

It argues that SPUs suffer from insufficient government financial support for maintenance, establishment, development, research and innovation. This leads to faculty shortages, deteriorating student-teacher ratios, and appointment of faculty on a contractual basis, which are the banes of SPUs. Deficiencies in leadership, management, and governance must also be addressed to improve curricula, pedagogy, industry interface, placement, and career progression.

Universities can learn a lot from one another, and this is where the NITI Aayog report is of immense value. It shares the experiences of many states with strategies, plans of action, and road maps for improving quality and promoting excellence in public universities. It assesses ground realities, takes a balanced view, and argues for enhancing public funding of higher education. It also candidly admits that allocation for education, including higher education, has failed to increase although the viability of funds with state governments has grown significantly.

In India, a wide variety of institutions deliver higher education. More than 74% students are enrolled in colleges. About 6% are enrolled in stand-alone institutions offering non-degree programmes, and 5% in open and distance learning.

Thus, university teaching departments account for about 14% of all higher education enrolment. Nearly 54% are enrolled in SPUs, and another 19% in centrally-funded higher, scientific, technical, and professional institutions.

It is good that SPUs are in focus. Accomplishing the triple objectives of expansion, equity, and excellence in higher education is impossible without strengthening SPUs. They have been at the forefront of producing human resources which have helped the Indian economy become the fifth-largest in the world.

They must be supported and strengthened to realise the National Education Policy target of raising the gross enrolment ratio in higher education to 50% by 2035, and help propel India’s economy to the third-largest position soon. Their role will become even more critical as India seeks to raise its per capita income to the levels of developed countries.

At the same time, we cannot undermine the importance of the self-financed private universities (SFPUs) established by Acts of state assemblies. These, along with self-financed private deemed universities (SFPDUs), constitute 40% of all ULIs in India, accounting for a fourth of higher education students enrolled in university teaching departments.

SFPUs are the fastest-growing among all higher education institutions. Their enrolment jumped from 2.17 lakh in 2011-12 to 16.2 lakh in 2021-22. Next to them are SFPDUs, which recorded 54.5% growth during this period.

These institutions receive no public funding as they were established on the condition that they would not claim public resources. Their sustenance depends on fees collected from students. They meet recurring expenses and service their development debts solely with internally generated revenue.

As the cost of providing higher education rises due to inflation, revision of pay scale, announcement of dearness allowance, and the costs associated with compliance of a plethora of regulatory requirements, the institutions find themselves in a catch-22 situation. If they raise fees, their programmes will be unaffordable to the population they cater to. And they cannot afford comparative pay packages if they keep their fees low. Consequently, they risk losing qualified and talented faculty and staff, which will adversely affect the quality of programmes and lead to an exodus of students.

Access to public funding by self-financed private higher education institutions is scoffed at because it could lead to private profit. However, this argument may not hold true because such institutions are not prohibited by law from making profit. Besides, they are as tightly regulated as public-funded state universities.

As NITI Aayog focuses on raising the quality of SPUs, it must not neglect supporting self-financed higher education institutions, at least for research, development, and quality improvement initiatives.

The writer is chief advisor to the chancellor at Integral University, Lucknow.

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