The Nurturing of Talent

C Raj Kumar, Founding Vice-Chancellor, O P Jindal Global University, on why inculcating passion, curiosity and empathy in students is important

From Mahatma Gandhi to BR Ambedkar our greatest leaders have been trained lawyers. Globalisation has also opened up new possibilities for lawyers with expansion of the private sector. C Raj Kumar, who was a Rhodes scholar and trained as a lawyer from Delhi University, Oxford and Harvard, is perhaps the perfect person to head the O P Jindal Global University in Sonepat in Haryana, which began in 2009 with 100 students and now has 3,600 students, creating alongside other universities, a hub of learning in Haryana. The founding Vice-Chancellor of the university and Dean of the Jindal Global Law School speaks on what makes a great university.

What is the role private universities such as

O P Jindal Global University are playing in India?

Increasingly Indian students are not convinced by the history and pedigree of public universities, some of which are plagued by governance issues, whether it is faculty positions lying vacant or indiscipline on campus. The government’s institutions of eminence proposal has given enormous legitimacy to global rankings such as Times Higher Education, QS World University Ranking and the ARWU Shanghai ranking and will give 10 private universities who achieve this recognition freedom from regulation. We have 800 universities, 1,500 law schools, 40,000 plus colleges including some that are as big as universities, and over 5,000 business colleges in India. But the quality of education has little or no relation to the jobs available. More than that, 70 per cent of higher education institutions are in the private sector and 70 per cent students are studying in the private sector. The state at some level has abdicated its responsibility to its citizens. So we tried to create a new type of private university with public service mission as a philanthropic initiative with good physical infrastructure, good minds, and scholarship programmes for their future national and international engagement. The larger goal is public service, access to high quality education and promotion of excellence and research.

So what drew you, a Rhodes scholar, with two postgraduate degrees in law from Oxford and Harvard, back to India to start a university?

In 1998, I dreamt of creating such a university in India while I was a student at Oxford. I had done an undergraduate degree at Loyola College, Chennai, and then my law degree from Faculty of Law, Delhi. But when I went to Oxford, I began to experience education in such an inspiring fashion. It was transformative learning from professors who are authors of the books we were reading. In India, we make a mistake by measuring the institute by focusing only on the quality of students. We somehow

miss the role of faculty in the institution. We should actually measure the quality of academics, scientists and researchers. In India, we haven’t been able to identify the diasporas like the Chinese did. I know middle class parents in India who are willing to send their children to second-rate and third-rate universities abroad. They could very well study in good universities in India. Opportunities exist and I believe for that we need to strengthen undergraduate studies in India. So our young people can understand India better and pursue postgraduate studies abroad and consider returning back to India. I met with a large number of people at Harvard, Yale and New York University and discussed the idea of a private, philanthropic university on the American not-for-profit model. I began to read a lot and a stint in Japan also got me fascinated with the idea of the Humboldtian research university. Unlike India, research in Japanese Universities was not outside the university system. I got to meet Naveen Jindal in 2006 and he made three commitments—a financial contribution, that it would be not-for-profit, and that there would be academic freedom. He kept his promise in letter and spirit. We started our first course in 2009 and we now have 11 undergraduate programmes, eight different interdisciplinary schools, and six postgraduate degree programmes besides a doctoral programme.

What is the vision of the university?

Our vision is that we have an interdisciplinary global university space for all kinds of political thought. It’s a free space where freedom is exercised with responsibility. In the first three years of our existence, the students who came to us did so perhaps because they may have not got admission elsewhere, or they wanted a unique programme we were offering or because of our international engagement. There has been a tectonic shift now. We are a fully residential university and 50 per cent of our faculty are graduates of the top 100 universities of the world with 80 per cent having worked overseas. Over 20 per cent of our faculty members are non-Indian nationals from 20 different countries of the world. From 100 students in 2009 we now have 3,600, from 10 faculty members we have 300, in a nearly 100 acre space with 1.4 million square feet of built up space.

What about the students?

We have seen the opening up of the Indian mind. There is no longer a guarantee of jobs so people are not looking at education in terms of return on the investment. The student we want has to be passionate about his or her future, have a deeper curiosity about and empathy for their surroundings, and the ability to work hard. There is no shortcut to academic rigour.

“70 per cent of higher education institutions in india are in the private sector”