Expert Comment

Elusive middle class talisman

Since independence, millions of modernising middle class families have embraced higher education as though it was a talisman; a way out of the milieu of mediocrity that swamped India, reducing it from a dominant force in Asia to a basket case with a plethora of economic, political and social problems. Without wealth or connections, these families urged and even coerced, their children into doing well at school. It fitted in very well with the traditional cultural ethos in which children are expected to excel at academic work.

Millions of such young men and women graduated and found their way into universities and colleges, where again they sought to excel. Upon graduation, however, they found no place in the small plutocratic economy. The coveted jobs were reserved for those whose families had clout and connections. Consequently, vast numbers of youth from the modernising middle class made their way to the United States, where immigration policies encouraged them to enter graduate schools to pursue Master’s degrees and doctorates. Driven by the ethos of excellence, these young men and women excelled and went on to important positions in universities, research institutes, hospitals and corporations. Today, we know their names and admire their achievements.

Meanwhile, back in India, the higher education system has become all but inacces-sible. The meritocracy has become laughable as hundreds of thousands of youth compete for a few thousand seats in univer-sities. The country’s handful of IITs and IIMs are more difficult to access than the choicest Ivy League schools of America. To be admitted into an ordinary college in the major cities, a student is not even shortlisted unless she makes it into the 90th percentile of the graduating class in high school and then in the 98th percentile of college admission tests.

That’s just in the small private sector and independent centres of excellence run by a minority of educators. The main government sector, which comprises the bulk of the higher education system, fell into the hands of the bureaucracy and as such became a hotbed of ideological whims, negative unionism and influence peddling. Regulatory institutions that are supposed to function independently to promote learning and scholarship became compromised: the University Grants Commission, the Central Advisory Board of Education, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Council for Social Sciences Research among other bodies became virtual extensions of the civil service.

Under the dead hand of bureaucracy and corrupted by political patronage, the higher education system became — and continues to remain — a paradox, with islands of excellence in a vast sea of mediocrity. For the modernising middle class, higher education became and remains a nightmare. Just as the 1960s and 1970s saw a huge migration of youth to the West, especially to the United States in search of a secure future, today’s middle class youth are once again looking outward not only to the United States and Britain but also to Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Whereas the first wave outbound youth was older graduates and professionals, today’s youth are entering undergraduate schools abroad, availing scholarships and loans to cover fees and living expenses on a scale unthinkable in the past.

The modernising middle class of 1950-1970s is now established and has moved up the socio-economic ladder. In its place is an emergent middle class that has shaken off poverty and aspires to the same talisman of education for its children. The higher education system however has no room for them. A whole new system of commercial institutes has grown to meet their demands: to train their children in new vocations such as retail, civil aviation, entertainment, data entry etc. Impressed by the surge of applicants seeking vocational, technical and para-professional education, middling foreign universities and colleges are keen to set up campuses in India.

These institutions aspire to cast a wider net to attract qualified applicants who cannot afford to travel overseas, but can pay their way at home. Theirs is in many ways an egalitarian strategy: attract students from the emergent middle class, those who do not have the means and have been frozen out by the higher education system in their own country. While these foreign institutes will derive profit from the ventures they establish in India, they will serve the important function of satisfying the needs of the emergent middle class.

In response, the government has introduced The Foreign Educational Providers (Regulation of Entry and Operation, Maintenance of Quality and prevention of Commercialization) Bill, 2007. The Bill is actually an assertion of control over these middling foreign colleges and universities attempting to set up operations in India. The dead giveaway is that the Bill exempts elite foreign universities from its purview. Once again the controlling mindset of the bureaucracy and the elitist bent of its political masters triumphs. In the name of the poor and the dispossessed and in an unlettered assertion of nationalism, the corrupt, inept higher education regime is once again all set to thwart the aspirations of India’s resurgent new middle class.