DUTA slams MHRD for forcing universities to sign Tripartite MoU to further its design to dismantle public funded higher education
The DUTA condemns the MHRD’s persistent attempts to force Delhi University to sign the Tripartite MoU between DU, MHRD and UGC under Rule 229(xi) of the General Financial Rules 2017. Repeated threats, issued by the MHRD, that DU’s grants will be stopped unless the Tripartite MoU is signed, amounts to cheap arm-twisting and authoritarian suppression of DU’s academic independence.
The MoU is both devious and pernicious. While it pretends to seek “qualitative improvement in output” “along with commensurate input requirements”, it binds university to commercialise its activities and ensure structures that facilitate private players in higher education.
This Tripartite MoU does not involve any commitment on the part of the UGC and MHRD for making additional funds available to the universities. Instead, it makes universities commit to raise “user charges / fees” to ensure that “its various courses recover the maximum cost of providing services”, to fund infrastructural requirements through loans from HEFA to be paid back by the universities through greater resource generation / cost recovery and earning revenue though other forms of commercial activities. It pushes the task of expansion of student intake explicitly to the existing universities which would require more teachers, non-teaching staff and physical infrastructure for which MHRD and UGC do not commit any funds but the universities have to self-finance since student intake target is one of the components of outcome measurement system laid down in the MoU. It also asks the universities to raise revenue through “innovative academic and training programmes”. In short it is advocating a switch of academic activities toward what is in current demand and hence marketable and offer courses to those who are willing to pay. This is bound to have an adverse impact on social equity and access to the education that the university imparts.
The performance-assessment parameters in the MoU exclude any responsibility, on the part of the University or the UGC, to ensure adequate classrooms, well-equipped libraries and laboratories and adequate permanent faculty. Instead, there is overemphasis on the use of ICT and Digital modes of learning, Skill-training programmes and Vocational subjects to the detriment of the conventional academic disciplines in the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.
This Tripartite MoU as an instrument to enforce commercialisation of higher education complements the other steps simultaneously enforced by the Government such as Autonomous College scheme, Graded Autonomy for Central Universities and the demand that pay revision of employees be fully / partly funded by the universities through revenue generation.
The Tripartite MoU also puts severe restrictions on expenditure as it insists on full-compliance with the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) wherein all expenditure will be made subject to the scrutiny and approval of the Finance Ministry. This extreme degree of centralised surveillance on university-spending will invite an undesirably high amount of interference by the Government and create the scope for politically expedient and financially arbitrary decisions.
The imposition of HEFA for funding infrastructural expansion means that the University’s land, physical infrastructure and intellectual assets may be used as collaterals to secure loans sourced through money raised from capital markets in which the private sector and private financial institutions have a big stake. This will open the floodgates to wholesale privatisation and eventually result in the handover of publicly-owned educational resources to private hands.
The DUTA stands in categorical opposition to the Tripartite MoU and HEFA regime. It urges the MHRD and Government of India to withdraw the Tripartite MoU and restore assured Grant-based funding for all public-sector universities and higher educational institutions.
The MoU is both devious and pernicious. While it pretends to seek “qualitative improvement in output” “along with commensurate input requirements”, it binds university to commercialise its activities and ensure structures that facilitate private players in higher education.
This Tripartite MoU does not involve any commitment on the part of the UGC and MHRD for making additional funds available to the universities. Instead, it makes universities commit to raise “user charges / fees” to ensure that “its various courses recover the maximum cost of providing services”, to fund infrastructural requirements through loans from HEFA to be paid back by the universities through greater resource generation / cost recovery and earning revenue though other forms of commercial activities. It pushes the task of expansion of student intake explicitly to the existing universities which would require more teachers, non-teaching staff and physical infrastructure for which MHRD and UGC do not commit any funds but the universities have to self-finance since student intake target is one of the components of outcome measurement system laid down in the MoU. It also asks the universities to raise revenue through “innovative academic and training programmes”. In short it is advocating a switch of academic activities toward what is in current demand and hence marketable and offer courses to those who are willing to pay. This is bound to have an adverse impact on social equity and access to the education that the university imparts.
The performance-assessment parameters in the MoU exclude any responsibility, on the part of the University or the UGC, to ensure adequate classrooms, well-equipped libraries and laboratories and adequate permanent faculty. Instead, there is overemphasis on the use of ICT and Digital modes of learning, Skill-training programmes and Vocational subjects to the detriment of the conventional academic disciplines in the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.
This Tripartite MoU as an instrument to enforce commercialisation of higher education complements the other steps simultaneously enforced by the Government such as Autonomous College scheme, Graded Autonomy for Central Universities and the demand that pay revision of employees be fully / partly funded by the universities through revenue generation.
The Tripartite MoU also puts severe restrictions on expenditure as it insists on full-compliance with the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) wherein all expenditure will be made subject to the scrutiny and approval of the Finance Ministry. This extreme degree of centralised surveillance on university-spending will invite an undesirably high amount of interference by the Government and create the scope for politically expedient and financially arbitrary decisions.
The imposition of HEFA for funding infrastructural expansion means that the University’s land, physical infrastructure and intellectual assets may be used as collaterals to secure loans sourced through money raised from capital markets in which the private sector and private financial institutions have a big stake. This will open the floodgates to wholesale privatisation and eventually result in the handover of publicly-owned educational resources to private hands.
The DUTA stands in categorical opposition to the Tripartite MoU and HEFA regime. It urges the MHRD and Government of India to withdraw the Tripartite MoU and restore assured Grant-based funding for all public-sector universities and higher educational institutions.
| Rajib Ray President, DUTA |
Vivek Chaudhary Secretary, DUTA |
Get regular DUTA updates.
https://duta.live
Leave a Reply