Political meddling, loss of control, brain drain: Prof Deepak Nayyar on 'quiet crisis' in India's higher education

The majority of those who seek higher education from India never return," declared Prof Nayyar.

 

"There is a deep silent crisis in Indian higher education. It is palpable," Deepak Nayyar, distinguished academician and Emeritus Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said on Wednesday while giving the BG Deshmukh Lecture 2025 on 'The Crisis of Higher Education in India: Alarming Present and Concerning Future'. 

 

The crisis is caused by underfunding, political interference, and lack of autonomy, Nayyar explains. "It is no accident our universities have not produced any Nobel laureates in the last 25 years. And I think they never will in the next 25 years, the way we are going," he said.

 

According to the professor, "The available educational opportunities for school-leavers are simply not enough, and those available are not good enough. The pockets of excellence are products of an enormous reservoir of talent and Darwinian selection processes. It does little for those with average ability or without social opportunities."

 

The researcher also pointed out how year after year, there has been a steady rise in the number of Indian students abroad pursuing higher studies, the figures growing from approximately 50,000 in the year 2000 to 350,000 in the year 2015, and 600,000 in the year 2019. It further grew to 900,000 in the year 2023, and Indian students abroad spent a staggering $27 billion in the year 2023, equal to India's foreign exchange earnings for tourism in the same year. Significantly: "A large proportion of those who continue education beyond school from India don't return," Prof Nayyar noted.

 

Here, it's interesting to mention that the "dispersion of education in society is the foundation of success of countries which are late starters to development," he stressed.

 

The professor strongly emphasized the impact of political interference on higher education, which, he insisted, was not fresh, since the 1975-77 Emergency was a turning point, but gained momentum after the BJP government came to power and Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. "The past five years, since 2019, have seen a fast-paced acceleration of the process. Now it has reached a stage when the fate of public universities in India is at stake."

 

It's happening in two ways: "First, there is an observable rise of institutionalized control mechanisms that shape what universities can or cannot do," Prof Nayyar said. And "second, appointments in the universities, which would be the sole preserve of the universities, are more and more being made, if not decided by the political motivation, and the unseen hands of the ruling governments. And now, even the admission procedures have been centralized by the National Testing Agency," he further stated, adding that the BJP and RSS ideology are now strongly influencing higher education in India.