7 months ago
1
As Bihar emerges from a decisive governmental mandate, attraction is turning to governance, growth, and opportunity. Yet 1 of the astir captious levers of the State’s aboriginal remains mostly extracurricular the headlines: the information of its higher acquisition system.
Despite being location to astir 10% of India’s population,Bihar has lone astir 30 recognised universities, astir 2–2.5% of the country’s total. This indicates a striking mismatch betwixt colonisation and organization capacity. This mismatch has produced a quiescent but consequential crisis: overcrowded colleges, debased enrolment ratios (Bihar’s GER is 17.1% compared to India’s 28.4%), anemic probe ecosystems, and 1 of the highest students out-migration rates successful the country. Every year, thousands of young Biharis permission to survey elsewhere, taking with them their talent, spending, and semipermanent economical contribution, portion of a wider migration inclination that has seen astir 3 crore Biharis moving extracurricular the State by 2025, astir 1 successful 4 adults.
A strategy strained from within
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has described a “crisis successful organization capacity” crossed Bihar’s universities, citing chronic module shortages, anemic fiscal management, and delayed administrative processes. Even erstwhile universities are established, they often deficiency the systems and staffing to relation effectively. A CAG study tabled successful the Bihar Assembly successful March this twelvemonth said that betwixt 2017 and 2022, 18% of the ₹22,576 crore fund was not used, pointing to “unrealistic fund proposals and inadequate fiscal power mechanisms”. It besides recovered that 57% of teaching posts successful 11 test-checked universities were vacant.
An empirical study, Issues & Challenges Before Higher Education In Bihar,echoes this, highlighting debased Gross Enrolment Ratios, mediocre pupil–teacher ratios, inadequate laboratories, and anemic accreditation status. For instance, Bihar has a student-teacher ratio of 39:1, importantly higher than the 16:1 nationalist average. Most institutions conflict to conscionable adjacent minimum prime norms, trapping them successful a rhythm of underperformance.
Meanwhile, the UGC’s declaration of 3 backstage universities successful Bihar arsenic defaulters for non-compliance has exposed different weakness: governance fragility. Several newer State universities besides stay without UGC Section 12-B recognition, a presumption granted by the University Grants Commission to universities and colleges that are deemed acceptable to person cardinal assistance from the Government of India.
Together, these failures amusement that Bihar’s situation is not ambition but organization fragility. Building caller universities without besides gathering the administrative, financial, and regulatory scaffolding to prolong them lone recreates the aforesaid dysfunction successful caller forms.
What mightiness a antithetic attack look like?
If Bihar is to determination forward, the betterment lens indispensable displacement from counting campuses to gathering institutions that really work. Political stableness offers a uncommon infinitesimal to redesign capacity, not conscionable infrastructure.
The archetypal measurement is organization readiness. New universities should not beryllium announced until they conscionable a clear, mandatory checklist: functional governing bodies, minimum module appointments, integer concern and procurement systems, and a time-bound pathway to Section 12-B recognition. States similar Odisha and Karnataka already usage phased operationalisation plans; Bihar could follow akin standards and enforce them.
The module situation requires adjacent urgency. With astir 60% of teaching posts lying vacant, incremental hiring volition not repair the system. Bihar could motorboat a five-year module recruitment ngo with predictable hiring cycles and competitory salaries benchmarked to neighbouring States. Early-career teaching fellowships, created with IIT Patna, NIT Patna, and Central universities, could stem the outflow of young academics. A dedicated Research & Faculty Development Fund, supporting doctoral completion, probe leave, and work grants, would physique semipermanent world depth.
A refreshed exemplary for backstage and philanthropic information is besides essential. Instead of focusing connected onshore oregon superior subsidies, Bihar could connection incentives tied to measurable outcomes: NAAC accreditation wrong fixed timelines, transparent interest structures, probe collaboration with State universities, and a minimum stock of enrolment from section districts. Outcome-linked frameworks utilized successful Telangana and PPP accomplishment models successful Gujarat connection workable precedents.
Digitisation, excessively often a rhetorical goal, could beryllium a quiescent game-changer. Bihar could present a centralised integer admissions and introspection portal, e-procurement and e-finance systems, and a nationalist higher-education information dashboard tracking module strength, accreditation, enrolment, and fund utilisation. Tamil Nadu’s nationalist HEI dashboard shows however transparent information tin displacement behaviour.
Finally, backing betterment tin propulsion institutions toward continuous improvement. A information of State and cardinal grants could beryllium linked to NAAC/NIRF performance, teacher recruitment progress, pupil progression and employability, and timely fiscal audits. Cluster-based funding—where neighbouring colleges stock faculty, laboratories, and training—has improved prime successful Himachal Pradesh and Kerala and could beryllium piloted successful Bihar.
Jobs, skills, and younker accidental dominated the predetermination discourse, and rightly so. But without a beardown assemblage strategy to nutrient the skilled graduates those jobs require, these promises hazard remaining rhetorical. Bihar erstwhile gave the satellite Nalanda, a awesome of intelligence leadership. Rebuilding that bequest successful the 21st period requires much than nostalgia; it demands organization courage, design, and discipline.
Rebuilding Bihar’s higher acquisition is not an enactment of charity; it is nation-building by design. As Bihar steps into a caller governmental chapter, it has the uncommon accidental to rebuild not conscionable its image, but its institutions. The accidental is historic. The clip is now.
(Pramath Raj Sinha & Shreyasi Singh are founding partners of Jetri, an acquisition consulting and strategical implementation firm.)
(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s play education newsletter.)
