Higher Education in South Asia: Crisis and Challenges

Crisis in Higher Education

Higher education is in crisis. The nature of the crisis is not what Phillip Coombs (1968) identified in the 1960s, nor it is the ‘continuing crisis’ of the kind J.P. Naik (1982) described. The crisis is not in terms of numbers, not in terms of finances, not in terms of quality and relevance. These are also associated features of the crisis; but it is much more. More importantly, it is an unusual policy crisis. The policy crisis can be identified in the form of absence of policy and/or misguided policy. Governments adopted an approach of laissez fairyism – non-intervention in higher education. The system is run with executive orders, quick fix solutions, which suffer from lack of coherence and consistence in approach, and long term perspective on higher education. The myopic vision of the governments has resulted in utter confusion all over. Higher education in many South Asian countries suffers from this policy crisis, which can also be described as policy paralysis.