Higher Education in India: Reforms, Challenges and Way Forward

Context

Indian universities lag behind global leaders despite India’s strong talent base in science, technology, medicine, entrepreneurship and research. While inadequate funding, regulation, infrastructure and policy are often cited, deeper weaknesses in intention, conceptual clarity and execution limit higher education outcomes.

Why have universities in China, Singapore and Hong Kong climbed to the top of global rankings even though only a few decades ago the gap with India was much smaller?

• Strategic resource concentration: China, Singapore and Hong Kong concentrated public funding and institutional autonomy in a small number of universities to create globally competitive flagship institutions, rather than distributing resources uniformly.
  • Example: China’s sustained support for Peking University created institutions with much greater research scale than most Indian universities.
• Integration of teaching, research and doctoral training: Leading universities combined mass education with advanced research and PhD ecosystems, whereas India historically separated much of elite research from universities through institutions such as CSIR laboratories, TIFR and other standalone centres.
• Alignment with industrial and technological strategy: Universities were embedded in state-led industrial policy, directing research capacity towards strategic sectors such as AI, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing.
  • Example: Tsinghua University’s engineering ecosystem contributes to China’s broader push for strategic self-reliance.
• Governance agility and global talent competition: Flagship institutions developed stronger capacity to recruit international faculty, reward research performance and build globally competitive teams, while many Indian public universities remained constrained by bureaucratic hiring and administrative structures.
• Deliberate strengthening of ranking metrics: These universities became highly effective at improving the indicators used by global rankings, including research volume, citations, international faculty, international collaboration and academic reputation.
• Weak institutional capacity: India possessed strong students, researchers and premier institutions, but fragmented research, rigid governance, limited academic careers and weak university–industry linkages limited the conversion of talent into globally competitive universities.
  • Example:IISc and the IITs show India’s talent base, but few Indian universities combine similar research intensity, funding, global faculty and institutional capacity.

What explains the persistence of favouritism in recruitment despite formal rules in higher education in India?

• Subjective Selection: Formal rules define who is eligible, but interviews and comparative ranking leave room for personal preference.
  • Example: Under the UGC 2018 framework for Assistant Professors, academic scores were used for shortlisting, while interview performance influenced final selection.
• Insider Networks: Academic inbreeding and personal networks allow known candidates to gain an advantage even when formal eligibility is equal.
  • Example: Repeated recruitment of a university’s own graduates can strengthen closed departmental networks.
• Discretion in Rule Application: Favouritism can operate through how rules are interpreted and applied, without formally breaking them.
  • Example: Decisions on vacancy classification, roster application or eligibility interpretation can affect which candidates compete for particular posts.
• Weak Implementation: Rules have little effect when institutions delay recruitment or leave sanctioned posts vacant, limiting actual access to positions.
• Low Transparency: Favouritism survives when candidates cannot verify how marks were awarded or why one candidate was ranked above another.
• Weak Accountability: Even when favouritism is suspected, complaints, reviews and appeals may not effectively overturn questionable decisions, reducing the deterrent effect of formal rules.

Why do higher education reforms often fail at the stage of implementation in India?

• Institutional Transition Gap: Replacing an old regulatory structure requires more than announcing a new one; legislation, rules, personnel, databases and institutional practices must all migrate.
  • Example: The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 proposes replacing the UGC, AICTE and NCTEwith a new regulatory framework and has raised concerns over institutional autonomy and federalism.
• Regulation–Funding Coordination Gap: Separating regulation from grant-making can improve institutional independence, but it also creates a problem if standards and funding operate without a mechanism linking them.
• Federal Implementation Fragmentation: Higher education reforms face uneven implementation because Central, State and private universities operate under different laws, funding arrangements and administrative systems, limiting uniform adoption.
• Scale and Affiliation Problem: Reform designed at the national level must eventually pass through a highly fragmented institutional base, making uniform implementation difficult.
  • Example: AISHE 2023-24 recorded 1,289 universities, 48,246 colleges and 15,221 standalone institutions, making implementation of reforms such as flexible curricula, credit mobility and the Academic Bank of Credits difficult across institutions with different capacities.
• Faculty Capacity Deficit: Reform fails when institutions lack enough faculty to redesign courses, teach across disciplines and supervise research, making implementation superficial or incomplete.
  • Example: A parliamentary committee found 56% of sanctioned teaching posts vacant across major centrally funded institutions and 56.18% of professor-level posts vacant as of January 2025.
• Delayed Feedback: Reform fails when implementation data arrive too late to identify problems, correct course and hold institutions accountable.
  • Example: AISHE 2023-24 collected institution-level data online, but the report was released about two years after the academic year, limiting timely corrective action.

Way Forward

• Multi-Year Performance Funding: Provide predictable multi-year funding to leading institutions, with later tranches linked to measurable research, faculty and innovation outcomes.
• Autonomy with Recruitment Safeguards: Give universities greater freedom to recruit and remunerate faculty, alongside transparent selection criteria, external members and auditable recruitment records.
• Merit-Based Final Selection: Make academic record and research potential significant in final selection instead of using them only for interview shortlisting.
• Separate Regulation from Funding: Keep regulatory oversight and funding decisions institutionally separate, but align them through common performance standards and outcome-based funding.
• Phased Federal Implementation: Sequence reforms according to institutional capacity and state readiness, with Centre–State coordination instead of uniform compliance deadlines.
• Global Talent and Research Networks: Build international faculty recruitment, doctoral training and cross-border research partnerships into core university strategy.
• Real-Time Implementation Monitoring: Convert AISHE into a granular, institution-level management system that tracks reform adoption, vacancies and outcomes and enables timely corrective action.

Read Also: UPSC Daily Current Affairs 2026

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