DUTA PRESS STATEMENT on UNION BUDGET 2020: February 1, 2020

The DUTA is disappointed by the Union Government’s  refusal to heed the deepening crisis in Public-funded Higher Education. It unwisely continues on the beaten path of Privatisation by reducing grants, promoting more loan funding through greater allocations to HEFA, inviting FDI and encouraging more  commercialisation through the provision of full online degree programmes in universities. The highlights of the Expenditure Budget 2020 reveal a telling lack of introspection on the part of the Government, and its failure to engage with the growing unrest among students, teachers and karamcharis across the nation’s campuses.

The aggregate increase in budgetary allocation for higher education from 38317 crores to 39466 crores presents a marginal increase of 2.79%. Even this figure is misleading as a large part of the money is earmarked for expenditure that does not benefit students and teachers directly. Specifically, the share of grants allocation for central universities has been reduced from 2593 crores to 2298 crores. On the other hand, the allocation for HEFA (central loan-funding agency) has been increased by 100 crores. Much of the allocation is earmarked for expensive bureaucratic schemes (like World Class Universities) that are yet to take off, and will fuel valid fears of creating greater disparity and institutional hierarchy in the sector.

The unwillingness to increase direct public spending is ironical, as the Economic Survey has pointedly shown the students from economically middling and poor families are being pushed out of higher education due to a sharp increase in tuition fees and other costs. Widespread protests in JNU, UoH, DU and other universities over fee hikes, increases in hostel and mess charges etc. should have alerted the Government towards this crisis. But for all its rhetorical promises of reaping a demographic dividend, the tightfisted Education Budget shows that the Government’s will remains slavishly anchored to corporate greed and the interests of financial institutions.

The DUTA fears that the slashing of grants in higher education will affect permanent recruitments and promotions of teachers across central universities. These universities are already being pushed to fill a large number of vacancies with short-term contractual appointments.  Instead of attracting and retaining academic talent, this scenario will eventually lead to a sharper decline in the quality and academic standards of these institutions.

The Budget pushes teachers to the margin of priorities as it allocates greater funds to start virtual classrooms and mass online degree courses. This clearly shows that the need for upgrading physical infrastructure in terms of classrooms, libraries and laboratories will remain ignored. As recent experience across the world should tell us, the move to promote MOOCs at the expense of traditional classroom education is fraught with risk; instead of improving the quality of education and critical aptitude, it can only help inflate virtual figures of enrollment in the short term.

The budgetary provision of access to commercial loans for students who will find it hard to afford rising fees is also a shortsighted measure. The lessons of the US debt crisis, in which the share of unrecovered student loans was extremely large, does not seem to have gone home. The substitution of direct subsidy by loans may assist private financiers in the short term, but it is a recipe for a disaster waiting to happen.

The Budget functions as a handmaiden of a larger privatisation-oriented policy framework that is unacceptable to students and teachers. While the Government makes a great deal of noise about promoting technical education and creating an ecosystem of supporting resources through digital networks, the  allocations fall far short of realising this aim. It hopes to encourage private sector investment to cover the deficit. This will further weaken the common citizen’s access to higher education.