The government feels spending more money can solve the problem, but even that flow seems to be in trouble.

Vinod Raina, Member, Central Advisory Board on Education

If education spend is hiked to 6 per cent of GDP, seats can easily be multiplied. But the problem is that allocations are also falling.

The feasibility of expansion in higher education depends on whether the government fulfils its commitment under the Common Minimum Programme to allocate 6 per cent GDP to education. At present, we spend 3.52 per cent on education, that is, Rs 99,937 crore (Rs 999.37 billion).

Of this, general higher education gets Rs 9,563 crore (Rs 95.63 billion) and technical education gets Rs 820 crore (Rs 8.2 billion). Six per cent expenditure would mean that education would get Rs 1,94,960 crore (Rs 1949.6 billion). If we keep the same inter-sectoral expenditure as of today between elementary, and higher education, then higher education will get Rs 32,168 crore (Rs 321.68 billion) and technical education would get Rs 16,572 crore (Rs 165.72 billion).

So, general higher education would get three times more money. Technical education funds would leap from Rs 820 crore (Rs 8.2 billion) to Rs 16,572 crore (Rs 165.72 billion). Theoretically, this means that medical institutions can go from the 769 at present, to 2,500 colleges and universities could go from the 304 at present to, say, 500.

Part of the money could also be used for improving infrastructure. In terms of student capacity, we have less than one crore students in higher education. Out of these, a bare three lakh students are in medical education.

With expansion in educational capacity, the number of students we can get in will be four times the current number - at least four crore. Hence, there could even be a deficit in terms of students. But the 6 per cent allocation would mean expansion of schools, too. The present question of reserving seats for OBCs will not matter any more.

In fact, the question is not really about reservations. We need reservation like it is in southern India, where it has been successfully in operation without any dilution in merit. Our problem is under-spending. The total capacity is so low that diverting a few seats for reservations causes an uproar.

The reservation issue: Complete Coverage

Why are only medical students at the forefront against reservation? That's because the number of seats in post-graduation in medicine are the lowest and these students would be the most affected. But what has happened within the CMP promises does not inspire optimism. Instead of an increase in allocation to 6 per cent of GDP, what has happened is a decrease in allocation to 3.5 per cent from 3.81 per cent, in 2003-2004.

Again the government has almost dumped the Right to Education Bill which seeks intersectoral allocation in the ratio of 3:2:1 for elementary, secondary and higher education. This would have meant a lasting and complete solution. But here the focus is skewed.

While the elimination of 10 crore children from schools at secondary level is not a national issue, a few medical seats is. Ten crore children who are the victims of educational infanticide in this country will never demonstrate on Delhi streets.

Andre Beteille, Former Member, Knowledge Commission

The university is not a concertina that it can be expanded or contracted at the will and pleasure of funding agencies.

University education has grown continuously in the past hundred years. However, the growth has not followed the same path nor been driven by the same impetus everywhere. Old universities have been expanded and new ones created. But sometimes it is better to create a new university than to simply expand the size of an existing one.

The growth of universities in the past hundred years has led to a great diversity, which has been beneficial for science and scholarship. The attempt to fit all universities into the same mould leads to academic stagnation.

Universities generally undertake both teaching and research, but in many universities in our country, very little research of reasonable quality is done. Ideally, a university should be based on the unity of teaching and research, but sometimes the urge to increase the size of a university tends to lead to the neglect of research, which has long-term consequences for its programmes of teaching as well.

The growth of universities has been, first of all, the result of a tremendous expansion of knowledge in the modern world. New branches of knowledge have come into being and their accommodation in the universities has provided an important impetus for the growth of universities.

However, the balance of teaching and research is a delicate one and it can be easily upset when the growth is a result of political and other extra academic pressures. The idea that research universities that are small and selective should be discouraged because they are undemocratic and elitist, is both narrow-minded and short-sighted.

What is the desirable size for a university? No general answer can be given to this question, given the great diversity of types. Much depends on the nature of the university, its traditions and its objectives. Where the university is responsible mainly for teaching rather than research, it can accommodate pressures for increase in size without too much strain.

Where it is a research university, it cannot be made to expand rapidly and substantially without damage to the quality of the academic work done in it.

The problem in India has often been that universities have been expanded to accommodate political pressures rather than academic demands. In such universities, degrees are awarded to thousands or even hundreds of thousands of students without serious questions being asked about the quality of the education that leads to such degrees.

The university is not a concertina that it can be expanded or contracted at the will and pleasure of the funding agencies.