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Azra Razzack, Padma M. Sarangapani, and Manish Jain (Eds.), Education, Teaching, and Learning: Discourses, Cultures, and Conversations—Essays in Honour of Professor Krishna Kumar, Orient BlackSwan, 2023, 379 pp., ₹795, ISBN 9789354425615 (Paperback).

Gerard Postiglione, Christopher J. Johnstone, and Wesley R. Teter (Eds.), Handbook of Education Policy. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023, xiv + 375 pp. £85.50, ISBN: 9781800375055 (Hardback).

This article makes a critical commentary on a few popular opinions on education, which are indeed based on distorted understanding of the nature and functions of education and myopic short-term perspectives and desires. Further, it stresses the need to correct them, so that education serves the broader social purposes.

Arup Maharatna, Higher Education in Intellectual Retrogression: The Neoliberal Reign. Routledge, 2023, £120, xx + 193 pp., ISBN: 9781032158679 (Hardback).

Recognising that the concept of ‘social responsibility of higher education’ can be interpreted in two intricately related ways, viz., responsibility of higher education institutions to society and responsibility of society to higher education, which mutually reinforce each other, this article largely focuses on the former. While social responsibility is an important function of universities, this remained implicit for a long period. As universities tend to increasingly ignore this function and concentrate on teaching and research, the need to explicitly recognise and take up social responsibility as a major function of universities is highlighted. The article highlights how the social responsibility role is intricately related to the other two functions of higher education—teaching and research. Reviewing the efforts of the Government of India in this regard, the article underscores the need to send a message to the entire academic community and society that society values the contribution of higher education to social progress. This also needs to be given proper weightage in the assessment of performance of universities and students.

A crucial review of a book on political economy of education in South Asia.

Krishna Kumar, Smaller Citizens: Writings on the Making of Indian Citizens. Orient BlackSwan, 2021,₹395, xvii + 149 pp. ISBN: 9789354420901 (Paperback).

Pankaj Jalote (Ed.), Building Research Universities in India(SAGE Studies in Higher Education). SAGE Publications, 2021, 415 pp., ₹1495, ISBN: 9789353885021 (Hardback).

This article briefly reviews the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the education sector in India. Focussing on school education, it also critically examines how effective online learning, the only major way adopted during the pandemic, has been in the delivery of education and whether it is a reliable alternative method of teaching and learning in India. It also briefly outlines a few important strategies required for the recovery of loss incurred and to face emerging challenges in education in India.

Xu Liu, 2023. The Development and Governance of Private Universities in China. Springer, xx+ 160 pp., EUR 119.99/₹10,172. ISBN: 9789811960628 (hardback).

Higher education system in India facing daunting challenges from within—forces from within the institutions, and from outside within the country, and from global forces. The system needs major and somewhat pressing, if not emergency reforms. At the same time, we are confronted with a variety of dilemmas in reforming higher education. It is argued here that some dilemmas are redundant, a few valid and genuine, and some need a little bold re-thinking—drawing from traditional wisdom and contemporary world experience. The paper deliberates on these different types of education dilemmas.

This article presents a short critical appraisal of some major recommendations of the K. Kasturirangan’s Committee on the Draft National Education Policy 2019. The committee underlines that the system requires a major overhaul; comprehensive reforms need to be attempted, and piecemeal/quick-fix solutions will not work. Some recommendations in the nearly 500-page report are path-breaking, many deserve applause, some are unacceptable and quite a few require rethinking. Since education is a long-term activity with far-reaching implications for the future of the nation, a long-term vision and not short-term compulsions should guide the formulation of a National Education Policy.

Reflecting on the nature and pattern of development of universities in India and abroad and drawing lessons from the past and also contemporary scene, the paper highlights a few major fallacies in planning university development, contrasting them with available evidence. It has been found that the whole approach to planning university systems seems to be guided more by immediate, short term, narrow and pecuniary considerations and compulsions and by questionable presumptions and fallacious arguments rather than by long term, broad national and global considerations and theoretically sound and empirically valid research. It also emphasises the need to resurrect the idea of the ‘ideal’ university.

Global university rankings and world-class universities have become buzzwords almost in every country. Both exercise positive and not-so-positive impact on higher education systems. Universities everywhere are trying hard to improve their status and global rankings. The article reviews some of the important issues related to these two strongly emerging phenomena, and their influence on development of higher education in developing countries. A positive development is the increasing concern of the educational policymakers to improve the standards and quality in higher education institutions, and accordingly their launching of quite a few important ‘excellence initiatives’. But the exclusive pursuit of status and ranks can have disastrous implications for the development of universities. Besides reviewing these two phenomena, the article critically reviews the approach of the Government of India in this regard.

The paper describes the salient features of the emerging knowledge society, its relationship with education, the role of the international organisations in knowledge development and knowledge management, and specifically the need for knowledge-based aid policies. The paper argues that development of strong education systems, including specifically higher education and research systems, is a necessary prerequisite for development of a knowledge society. International aid organisations have been active in the development of education directly, and thereby in knowledge development indirectly in developing countries. Some organisations have also initiated efforts that aim at knowledge development and management directly. But the approaches of international organisations for knowledge development and management need to be modified to suit the divergent dynamic socio-economic conditions and national policies. Also based on the principle of comparative advantage, it can be suggested that knowledge development should be the main responsibility of governments in developing countries, while knowledge management could be the task of the international aid organisations.

Higher education systems are increasingly starved of financial resources. India is not an exception. The recent trends in financing of higher education in India are indeed disturbing. Quite a few important proposals are being made in this context by national governments and international organizations. International experience will be of considerable importance in formulating new policies. In this paper a select few proposals are described, the national and international experience on the same is contrasted with each proposal, and the necessary lessons are drawn. It is shown that the suggestions that are being made for developing countries do not have empirical validity, if the practices of developed countries are taken to provide any guidance.

Confronted with declining public budgets for education on the one hand, and the need for more resources on the other, many developing countries such as India, have been examining alternative methods of financing higher education. One such mechanism is student loans. A student loan programme is not a new phenomenon in India. The National Loans Scholarship Scheme has been in operation since 1963. This article critically reviews the experience of implementation of the National Loan Scholarship scheme. It examines strengths and weaknesses and problems specific to this programme in India, with a view to identifying measures for marginal improvement in the programme. The conclusion is that at present student loans make little contribution to either the efficiency or equity of higher education in India.

This paper is an attempt to analyse the present pattern of funding higher education in India and to discuss the desirability and feasibility of various alternative methods of funding the same. Higher education in India is basically a state funded sector. But as higher education benefits not only society at large, but also individuals specifically, and as it attracts relatively more privileged sections of the society, there is a rationale for shifting the financial burden to the individual domain from the social domain.

Higher Education and Employment: an International Comparative Analysis,Bikas C Sanyal, London, New York and Philadelphia: The Falmer Press, 1987, 237pp.

Education has only recently received development finances from the international donor community. This change has been more or less concurrent with the ‘human investment revolution in economic thought’ initiated by Theodore Schultz. This paper surveys the shifting trends in educational aid, its problems and prospects. It discusses three divergent views held in developing countries: (a) that aid is beneficial to their educational development, (b) that it helps only the donor country, and (c) that despite negative experiences it has the potential of helping the recipient. The article begins by describing the complex international donor community, attempts in section 2 to answer the question why aid should be given to education in preference to other sectors, in section 3 considers trends in the growth of educational aid, and in section 4 the overall impact of aid on educational development, and concludes with some general observations on improving the effects of foreign aid on education.

There are about 130 universities and 5 thousand colleges in India. About 1/5 of the plan expenditure and 1/3 of total government recurring expenditure on education goes to this sector. While this is not adequate to provide meaningful higher education to the 3.5 million students enrolled, this is also not trivial. The resources that are being poured into the university system have been increasing at a fast rate, faster than the general economic indicators, but the requirements of the universities have been increasing at a much faster rate, widening the gap between the two continuously. This situation of ‘increased cost and diminished income’, leading to a crisis or a near-crisis has been a basic characteristic of the Indian universities. The present paper presents a critical review some of the crucial aspects of university finances in India, including the pattern of flow of resources into the university system and the pattern of allocation of resources by the university between its different functions and faculties. In sum, the paper, based on a quick review of the macro scene of the university system in India as a whole, and a critical survey of the few case studies that were conducted earlier on individual universities, presents an analysis of growth of university finances in India during the post-independence period, an overall short appraisal of the case studies, and analyses of income and expenditure patterns of the universities and the problems involved therein, including managerial aspects of finances.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Learning unleashed" in the August 1, 2015, issue.