Bankruptcy of Ideas in Generating Funds for College?

Is tuition fee the only way of funding a college? In India, charging exorbitant fees from students seems to be the only source of revenue generation.

I mean, private providers of higher education can get as creative as this and no more! How capable is that? Concepts of innovativeness, creativity, enterprise and thinking out- of- the-box, are all theories that are read and left dead, in classrooms. The entrepreneurship programmes that have been taught for eons in MBA classrooms sit pretty in text-books only. Had that not been the case, the providers as well as the learners would have gone practical and made an alternative framework for revenue generation by now. One that would be functional and effective, lowering fee pressure on students.

 The students. Scores of students who are meritorious, capable, talented yet financially weak. I mean, how long do we want to forage talent from amongst a rich lot of students? Rich students have different dreams, different destinations and different goals. They don’t work in BPOs here, they don’t work in hospitals, they don’t work in retail showrooms of India, and they don’t work as teachers in our schools…    So how does one fathom that a talent pool will be created in our country to bridge the much touted gap of quality workforce here.  Our policy makers suffer from acute myopia, in intent and in vision, due to which higher education is in such a mess (and then they blame democracy!). There is no regulation in place, there is no clear strategy leading to all sorts of malpractices (read creativity) to breed, survive and thrive in the cracks of lax policies.

But coming back to the topic of an absent robust revenue generation in India, let me give a little peep on how some universities plan it out in America. The President of Indiana University, Michael McRobbie, says his university generates revenue from endowments, reviews, alumini networks and  research outputs . And they are pretty active on these channels. The University has come as far as India to open alumini chapters here! (they have two now) Why? So that they open more and more streams of revenue generation! Their revenue target by 2020 is USD 5 billion. And no, the money is not pocketed by vested interests. It is duly invested in quality faculty, scholarships for meritorious students and in overall well being of the university. They believe in building up reputation brick by brick. Just by hard work.

Students feel very indebted to any institution that makes them economically and socially worthy, gives them returns on every single penny that they have paid as tuition fee.  And then see what happens!.. money wends its way to the institution, in the form of pay-backs by alumini.

In Indiana University, a 17% of their total fund comes from the home-state(Indiana), a 50 % from tuition fee (very soon the twin sources of tuition and research will exceed the home-state fund). Their fee structure is differential, it is split into two. The fee for home state students is less. For all others, whether they are from east or west coast of America or China, or India or anywhere else, the fee is different and same for all. The logic and vision behind giving subsidy to home-state students seem to be- retaining students within the state as opposed to forcing them to migrate, developing local resource and boosting local talent.

The University sets the revenue targets and work around it. (vision, intent). The Deans of the schools of the University play the role of an entrepreneur as well. While the president of the university sets a broad agenda of budget/ revenue model- which is nimble, innovative and mutually beneficial- the dean fleshes out the model, operates and executes it. They are out in the global market generating funds from the current sources, adding more names in donors’ list and opening other avenues. They are sweating it out, out from classrooms for a while to match their target. Here’s how I draw an analogy. They work much like a man of a family- out slugging- to provide for his family, food, comfort, warm clothing and enough capital. In other words, enough cover so as to insulate the family well from economic recessions- single or double dip!

In contrast, institutions in India are creative in a totally different way. They get creative in paying bribes (money that is student’s fee) to get recognitions, accreditations, affiliations. They get imaginative with media to obtain top rankings- flash it in the papers and increase the fee even more. They are super creative when it comes to offering fat cheques to temples as against cash-strapped credible institutions. And the resourcefulness is no less when there is an opportunity to evade taxes…. I mean creativity in these forms abound. Where they part of MBA syllabus? How about showing some original imagination that is positive and sustainable, packing in economic and social benefits. Straight from textbooks to terra firma.