What National Education Policy (NEP-2020) says about HEI?

New Education Policy 2020 (NEP-2020) is announced after a gap of almost 35 years, replacing the previous policy in vogues since 1986. The Draft New Education Policy (DNEP) containing 484 pages, was released in 2019 that followed a number of public consultations, receiving over two lakh suggestions from across all parts of the country. The massive efforts enlisted above, have definitely resulted into new directions and new milestones that it sets for the nation. Such document, however, would normally be subjected to close scrutiny for its foresights and few possible omission.

Let us find out, key recommendations with regards to Indian Higher Education (IHE) system. It envisions a complete overhaul of the higher education system to deliver high-quality higher education, with equity and inclusion. The policy’s vision includes the following key changes

Problems with HEI	NEP Recommendations
Fragmented higher education ecosystem Limited autonomy Low emphasis on research Poor Governance Ineffective regulatory system	Towards multi-disciplinary higher education system Faculty & institutional autonomy National research Foundation Governance by independent boards Light but tight regulation

The recommendations include developing

• Research universities (about 100 research universities from among >800 existing ones)
• Large campuses with enhanced enrolment (a community of 25000 students and 2500 faculty)
• Multi-disciplinary universities, which are necessary for high quality innovation and research. India so far has been has taken the path of creating small and specialized institutions, which exhibit limited impact ie fulfilling the need of specialized professionals. IT industry has been greatly benefited by this strategy. However research outcome, so far, is found hardly any significance.
• A chosen few should be given special attention and allow them graduate into top league in the world

Research universities, stand out from teaching universities, as their entire energy is focused on nurturing a high quality research ecosystem with a strong Post Graduate and PhD programs. They remain engaged with government agencies and industry on strategic research projects. Old IITs, fall in this league. There is still long way to go for them to be impactful research university. Some clear actions are needed to scale up their operations and also expand the horizon beyond technology- to liberal arts, Business and Medical subjects to become full-fledged multi-disciplinary campuses as stipulated in NEP-2020.

This, however, would not be enough. The major hurdle in the emergence of Indian institutions in the world ranking is their lacking in ‘global focus’, which, is seen a very important feature of world class institutions. Global focus has never been an agenda of Indian higher education system and they have remained inward looking for a long time. Unfortunately, they are not yet ready for the same. Further, overall impact of Indian institutions/ universities is also abysmally low. The reasons are - low budget and severe restrictions under which they operate. High dependency on government grants is limiting them to grow as an impactful entity. Government grant is shrinking anyway.

Some unattended questions are:

1. Knowledge is the basis on which nations are built. A one-to-one mapping of NEP-2020 provisions with National Development Programs would have been very helpful. There are (>40 programs viz. Digital India, Make in India, Smart Cities, Swachh Bharat, Start-up India …etc. How NEP-2020 feeds into these programs and catalyse achievement of stipulated goals? 
2. Education is engine of economic growth, hence connecting NEP-2020 with economy is important. Prime Minister, recently, set a target for India reaching a 5 trillion economy by 2024.  Has enough thought gone to know how NEP-2020 is going to help achieving a 5 trillion economy or momentum of growth in future? For example, IT sector in 1990s was showing great promise of growth. Then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee appointed a National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development on 22nd May 98 to formulate the draft of a National Informatics Policy. The Task Force is chaired by Shri Jaswant Singh (Deputy Chairperson-Planning Commission) and co-chaired by Shri N. Chandrababu Naidu (Chief Minister-Andhra Pradesh) and Dr. M. G. K. Menon (Former Union Minister of State, Science & Technology). The committee submitted its first report on 6th July ’98. And just 20 days after the report came out, the president of India ordered that all the 108 recommendations of the IT Action Plan, submitted by the Task Force, be notified by all the Ministries and Departments of the Government and necessary instructions and amendments to the laws be issued expeditiously fully reflecting the spirit of the recommendations. This implementation of 108 recommendations led to establishment Ministry Information Technology, approval IT Act 2000, National E-gov Plan (2006) which is now rechristened under ‘Digital India’, Software Technology Parks, setting up several IIITs to support manpower requirement of IT industry while AICTE approved creation of additional batches of B.Tech programs in Computer Science and Information Technology across all engineering institutions in the country.  These recommendations broadly touch nearly all segments of the IT sector – leading to exponential growth in software export (today it is >190 Billion dollar) and >50% world share of outsourcing market. IT sector share of Indian economy is ≈8% with > 16000 firms employing >40 Lac professionals and maintaining >1200 global competency centres across >80 countries
3. Connecting NEP to industry is important. Curriculum of graduate programs is often said to be lacking the industry focus or need of practice world. Has NEP-2020 given any direction on this? For example, in 2013 when National Cyber Security Policy was announced, it estimated requirement of 500,000 cyber security professionals to build and protect cyber security infrastructure in the country. This manpower was to be created in the subsequent five years’ time by building cyber security training infrastructure through public-private participation. There is a need to involve academia like universities, impart training, set up labs and foster competition to deal with cyber security issues which is entirely missing in the country. There is hardly any dedicated UG or PG program in cyber security. IIT Delhi took years to recently approve an M Tech program on the subject. Are they enough? While threats are increasing every passing day- India is ranked ninth in 2021 Kaspersky’s list of countries with the highest percentage of computer attacks
4. India has so far no true world class institution (see all world ranking). Does NEP-2020 outline any strategy for this?
5. Does NEP-2020 contain any enabling provision to encourage educational institutes, at least those 130 ‘Institutions of National Importance’, strive to be self-sustainable (at par with MIT/Oxford/Harvard), run like Enterprise and build corpus for an unbound growth?
6. Affordability of education vs sustainability of educational institutions are two opposite pulls. Does NEP-2020 offer any clarity on this?
7. In some countries (in North American, UK and France), education is a profitable as universities are run like enterprise and build huge corpus (Harvard, MIT Stanford etc). On the contrary, some other countries (in Scandinavian countries, Germany and few others), entire education is public funded, and no fee is charged from the students - primary to higher. What would suit India most?
8. A majority of the top ranking universities in the world are Private universities, who outperform state funded universities on every benchmarks. In India, reverse is true as most of the private universities are seen being run more like a shop than with a mission of ‘excellence’. Does NEP-2020 provide any motivation for private run universities to set higher benchmark and aim rise on global standing?
9. Indian universities have never had any global focus, while ‘Internationalization’ is seen a very important feature of top ranking universities in the world. In recent time ‘Institute of Eminence’ is tagged to select few institutions with aim to allow them add international flavour. Is giving such a tag enough to make a mark in global place? Does NEP-2020 offer any concrete roadmap on this?
10. Does NEP-2020 outline potent directions ushering the culture of Entrepreneurship milieu?
11. Post-internet, world is fast shrinking in reach as small as a global village, where communication, collaboration and sharing are spontaneous and seamless. Does NEP-2020 entail thoughtful provisions for preparing Indian graduates ready to play a leading role in global market place?
12. India is known to be one of oldest civilization and spiritual guru whose influence go far beyond Indian boundaries. How far NEP-2020 provisions guide curriculum to draw upon the traditional treasure of knowledge into it? 
13. ‘Autonomy’ is the key to success where NEP-2020 was expected to be more open, although, it outlines an idea of ‘graded autonomy’.  Does it apply to institutes like IITs/IIMs? Is it sufficient to unleash potential mature institute, at least those 130 ‘Institutions of National Importance’
14. How Indian Institutions can become large and impactful multi-disciplinary university?

a.   Who among the Multi-disciplinary universities are mature enough and have potential to strive and become self-sustainable in foresee-able future

b.   India has so far no true world class institution. How among the chosen few Multi-disciplinary universities can be facilitated to become a world class institution