Editorial: Our varsity wasteland

Three recent events conspire to capture the pitiful state of higher education in India. The first is the revocation of visas to thousands of Indian students studying in pricey American universities, something they would not have had to do if Indian campuses gave them a decent shot at a future they aspire for. The second is the 2025 update of the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) by the V-Dem Institute, which ranks India 156th out of 179 countries, down from 120th in 2024. The third, which supplies an apt metaphor for this state of affairs, is the bold initiative taken by the principal of a Delhi college to daub cow dung on classroom walls to beat the summer heat.

Even a cursory look at the figures since 2015 shows the inverse correlation between the exodus of India’s youth to campuses abroad and the fall in the academic indices of our universities. In 2015, the first full year of the Age of Narendra Modi, some 3 lakh Indian students went to study in foreign universities, with the US attracting about 30,000 new enrolments. That year, India’s AFI score was 0.58. On a scale of 0 to 1, zero being lousy and one being perfect, we were doing OK in the top 50% of the heap. Cut to 2025, and the exodus has jumped to 1.3 million, with the US alone accounting for 1.3 lakh fresh enrolments. While the outbound numbers have soared, our AFI rank has gone south, falling to 98th in 2019, 111th in 2022, and 156th this year.

V-Dem’s analysis points to a comprehensive decline in all parameters considered. Compared to the year 2020, there has been a 37% fall in India’s score on Institutional Autonomy, 40% on Freedom to Research, 39% on Campus Integrity, and 28% on Academic Exchange.

Several recent findings mirror what V-Dem is reporting. Not only do 1.3 million Indians flee the country for graduate and undergrad studies abroad, one in three Indian PhD scholars now emigrate, up from 1 in 5 in 2020. To foreign collaborators, Indian universities no longer appeal as potential research partners. We now have 22% fewer EU-India collaborations compared to 2020 and there has been a 42% decline in international grants to Indian universities, according to the World Bank.

There’s good reason to pin the responsibility for this on the three ethnonationalist regimes we have elected since 2014. The Union government has torn university autonomy to shreds by taking control of appointments, curricula, and research agendas. Some 80% of central university vice-chancellors now have RSS/BJP affiliations. In 2023, UGC effectively muzzled freedom of research by prohibiting PhD scholarships for students researching "politically sensitive" topics such as Kashmir, caste, and Hindutva; instead, it encouraged scholars to concentrate on "Indian knowledge systems".

The decline in AFI ranking also correlates with scholar persecution on Indian campuses. According to NCRB reports, there has been a 45% increase in police complaints against students. Some 28 academics are currently facing sedition/UAPA charges. As per a TISS survey done last year, 67% of social science academics report self-censorship on caste/religion topics.

So, one can only sympathise with the Indian students who are currently living in dread of being served a ‘get out’ notice anytime. The dread comes from the prospect of having to go back to the wasteland of India’s higher education.