Quality and Excellence in Higher Education and Metamorphosis: Changing Notions in Educational Discourses in India

As seen through the recommendations of University Education Commission (1949) and Education Commission (1964), till about National Policy on Education, 1986, as markers of educational discourses, the concern was to resist expansion, to guard against dilution of quality and standards of higher education and excellence and reputation of higher education institutions. Through 1980s, especially, during the post-1991 reform phase, the benchmarks in educational discourses shifted to survival in sub-optimal resources/facilities conditions in the context of progressive state retreat in funding higher education (HE). The private sector engagement in HE was hotly debated for and against in the discourses through the 1990s and after 2000; the concern was not just about the desirability, in the national bid for expansion and massification of HE, but about its regulation with respect to quality and standards. The Narayanamurthy Committee (Planning Commission, 2012) recommendations regarding corporate sector participation in HE turned out to be both a culmination of earlier trend and a forerunner of private sector’s domination in HE, with the cost burden shifting on to students, despite some strong advocacy in defence of public HE system, by Yashpal Committee (Department of Higher Education, 2009). The reality in the discourses of HE in India has been the drastic shifts of concerns for aspects and parameters of quality and standards of HE and HEIs to many emerging compulsions through the decades.