'A Quiet Crisis': Deepak Nayyar on the State of Higher Education in India

The Wire

22-07-2025

Professor Deepak Nayyar speaks on pressing questions, challenges and concerns over higher education in India.
Deepak Nayyar speaking at the B.G. Deshmukh Lecture 2025 at IIC, Delhi. Photo: YouTube
New Delhi: At the 2025 BG Deshmukh Memorial Lecture at the India International Centre in New Delhi on July 9, Deepak Nayyar, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and former vice-chancellor of Delhi University, reflected on the challenges facing India's higher education system. He cautioned that a combination of structural neglect, political intervention and institutional decline has brought public universities to a point of serious concern.
Placing higher education within the broader developmental trajectory of nations, Nayyar said that while foundational schooling is critical, it is universities that enable the skills and ideas necessary for long-term economic and social progress. He described India's limited investment in higher education as one of the country's most significant post-independence shortcomings.
Describing the issue as a 'quiet crisis', Nayyar traced its evolution over several decades. He highlighted the growing gap between demand and supply for quality higher education, the decline of academic standards, and the erosion of previously well-regarded institutions.
"The challenges confronting higher education in India are clear. It needs a massive expansion to educate much larger numbers without diluting academic standards," he said.
While expressing caution over global university rankings, he acknowledged that India's poor performance on these indices pointed to wider structural issues. He also raised concerns about the rapid expansion of elite institutions such as the IITs and IIMs, noting that it had created challenges around quality control and institutional coherence.
"Alas, the comparative advantage that India had, at least in a few of its universities, has been slowly yet surely squandered over time. And sadly, even that little that remains is being progressively undermined by the growing intrusion of politics in universities," he argued. By contrast, countries like China and others in Asia, he said, had managed more effective reforms.
Nayyar also discussed the trend of Indian students seeking higher education abroad. In 2023, over 900,000 students reportedly studied overseas, spending close to USD 27 billion – roughly equivalent to India's foreign exchange earnings from tourism, Nayyar noted, adding that such a significant outflow of resources could have been channelled into building and improving domestic institutions.
A major portion of the lecture focused on political and bureaucratic interference in public universities. Nayyar described how, since the 1970s, central and state governments have increasingly influenced key academic appointments and policy decisions, often prioritising political alignment over academic merit. He noted that the period after 2014 had seen this trend accelerate, adding that "The past five years since 2019 have witnessed a rapid acceleration in this process. It has now reached a stage where the future of public universities in India is at grave risk, if not already over the edge of the precipice."
Nayyar also expressed concern about the functioning of the University Grants Commission (UGC), calling it an institution with significant power but limited accountability. He argued that its emphasis on standardisation has often come at the cost of institutional diversity and academic excellence. In several cases, he said, leadership roles were filled based on loyalty rather than expertise and mechanisms for academic dissent were steadily weakening. Even the IITs and IIMs, which traditionally had more institutional autonomy, were now increasingly subject to central oversight, he explained.
On the subject of academic freedom, Nayyar underlined the importance of open inquiry, critical thinking, and independent research. He described a growing culture of self-censorship and administrative scrutiny, sharing instances where faculty were required to sign undertakings to not criticise the government in order to attend international conferences. He also noted that private universities were not immune, often adopting restrictive internal policies in response to external pressures. For Indian universities to flourish, he argued, academic spaces must be protected from both political and commercial influence.
Stressing that the health of the education sector is connected to India's long-term development goals, he said, "I'd like to examine the implications and consequences of the crisis in higher education...and what this might mean for realising the aspiration of a Viksit Bharat, a developed high income country, in 2047."
"Indeed, selections are shaped by political preferences and political networks. The quality of those appointed to leadership positions in higher education, even if for limited tenures, is critical, because they willingly cede the autonomy of their institutional space for their political commitment, or simply their career paths. The quality of those appointed to faculty positions is perhaps even more critical, because it will shape the future of higher education," he noted.
Without serious investment in knowledge systems and the protection of institutional autonomy, he argued, the country's vision of becoming a developed economy by 2047 would remain difficult to achieve. He said that innovation, productivity and technological advancement are all linked to a strong higher education framework.
Ending on a note of cautious hope, Nayyar urged academic communities to actively reclaim their role in shaping institutions.
'Autonomy,' he said, 'is not given – it is taken.'
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