No government funding, higher education cost set to go up
A long with its regulatory role, the University Grants Commission (UGC) disburses grants to support individual-oriented schemes, apart from supporting central and some deemed universities with both plan and non-plan grants, and state universities/colleges with plan grants. But with the setting up of Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) and Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) many of these functions will be history.
In 2013, the central government launched the holistic RUSA to channelise plan funds from Centre, states and other agencies such as the UGC to state universities/colleges through the State Higher Education Councils. As of now, states are expected to finance the initiatives launched under RUSA after 2016-17 from their own resources, indicating perhaps the resolve of the Centre to gradually withdraw from funding higher education in states. Squeezed of funds, the states may raise fee, etc. to meet their commitments.
LINK BETWEEN CREDIT LIMIT AND ‘INTERNAL ACCRUALS’
Then budget-2016 announced the formation of HEFA to provide loans to central universities and institutions for improving their infrastructure, a task performed with grants from the UGC earlier. The principal portion of the loans from HEFA will be repaid by the institutions through their ‘internal accruals’ like fee receipts and research earnings. The central government has promised to service the interest portion through regular plan assistance. And most importantly, each institution that signs the agreement with HEFA will be eligible for a credit limit in direct proportion to the annual inflow of its ‘internal accruals’.
Thus, the more the ‘internal accruals’, the greater will be the funding available from HEFA. The ensuing pressures on institutions to hike fee will be unavoidable. Not only will higher fee entitle institutions to higher funding but also enable them to repay the loans timely. But this approach has its pitfalls. It leaves the government vulnerable to the accusation that it has abdicated its responsibility of providing necessary grants for an equitable and affordable system of higher education, thereby harming the interests of the disadvantaged sections of students. Only the privileged will be able to access higher education, and the others will be forced to raise loans for funding their dreams of higher education and resultantly, begin their working lives with a debilitating handicap of repaying onerous instalments.
UPA, NDA ON SAME PAGE
The central government can breathe easy as this userpay-principle approach enjoys traction across a wide spectrum of our political classes. RUSA by the UPA government for state institutions, and HEFA by the NDA for central institutions signify the broad consensus in the political set-up towards funding of higher education. Investment in human capital is seen as akin to investments in roads and highways. In the same vein, budget-2017 declares, “In higher education, we will undertake reforms in the UGC. Good quality institutions would be enabled to have greater administrative and academic autonomy…”
Though none can fault the dire need for reforms in the working of the UGC, it is suspected that the proposed reforms entail reducing the role of the UGC to just an ‘academic regulatory body’ with most funding powers being vested with HEFA or RUSA as the case may be, with the underlying idea being to wean the higher educational system away from the existing ‘grant’ based structure, towards a market-linked ‘loan’ based one. Quite a few educationists who had initially welcomed the idea of HEFA, thinking that it would supplement the efforts of the UGC, now fear that it stands to supplant it. It is contended that the ‘G’ in UGC has been made redundant.
It also implies that even before the higher educational institutions and colleges begin to fathom their way through the proposed ‘administrative and academic autonomy’ quagmire, they have already been shoved closer to ‘financial autonomy’. The era of ‘greater transparency, freedom and autonomy’ in the education system may just come to mean providing an enabling environment to institutions to arbitrarily increase their ‘internal resources’ at will. This feeling needs to be dispelled to quell the disquiet on the campuses.
CENTRE’S CONTRIBUTION TO AWAITED PAY HIKE
Now is also that crucial time when teachers across universities and colleges are awaiting the MHRD nod to the UGC recommendations on their decadal pay hike. According to reports, the UGC has already forwarded to all central universities and autonomous institutions a finance ministry order suggesting that the government support be kept at the minimum and that in no case it will bear more than 70% of the additional expenses arising out of the revised pay. They will have to raise the balance 30% from their ‘internal resources’ if they wish to implement the new grades.
It needs to be pointed out that for the earlier 2006 revision, the government gave central universities and institutions 100% assistance; and, to all the states 80% grants for funding the revised grades for five years. This time around, a growing apprehension among teachers is that the states may have to fund the higher salaries of their institutions entirely from their own resources. Hence, implementation of new grades will indeed be a tall order for most central institutions and state governments.
As it is, Panjab University, Chandigarh, possibly for the first time, is engaged in an ugly battle in the courts over non-receipt of grants from the UGC for salaries, etc.; and, Punjabi University, Patiala, has seen an unprecedented and unpleasant clash between its regular employees and the re-employed teachers over their shares in state grants for salaries.