Designing Growth for Indian Universities

(Part-3 of the series: Leadership and Management of Institutions of Higher Education)

Moving on a trajectory of sustained high growth, India is going to encounter a complex and turbulent environment. If the universities wish to play the stellar role in leading the Indian transformation, they will have to proactively engage themselves in their own growth.

Having established the institutional priorities as discussed in the preceding Part-1 of the series: Leadership and Management of Institutions of Higher Education - captioned “Setting Priorities for Indian Universities,” a realistic and pragmatic assessment of institutional Capacities and Capabilities would be required (also discussed in the preceding Part-1).

Options for an Indian University:

At the very fundamental level, the options for growth available to a typical university are only four-

·         Build and operate additional capacity at the existing site or even expand geographically to multiple sites including franchising/licensing its name (Scale-up)

·         Move up the value-ladder of higher education by focusing more on post-graduate education and research (scope-up)

·         Innovate and/or expanding the diversity of disciplines and subjects (other services or activities – diversification) or around modes of delivery to reach out globally (Multi-service and multi-segment)

·         Adopt a Hybrid option (low-risk, low focus)

Any Indian University theoretically competes with other universities within the state for the moment. As the university in question grows in stature, taking into account its aspiration to be a leading university in the country or the world, it will in future compete with universities around the country or even in the world.

The options for growth can be evaluated against a 2x2 decision matrix, keeping in mind the internal capability of the University in terms of its ability to replicate/transfer its service know-how and the relative strength of the competing universities

 Making the Option Work

A university would typically combine a number of different faculties of knowledge (Science, Commerce, etc.) and schools/departments within a faculty (say faculty of social sciences may have schools of Economics, Sociology, Political science, Psychology, Anthropology, History and so on; while faculty of humanities may have departments of Ancient and Modern languages, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Musicology and so on). These faculties and schools will have similarities as well as variations in their approaches to the management and delivery of a range of academic programmes and projects. While this multiplicity of approaches and delivery systems embedded within the structural and functional arrangements reflect the richness of the university, in many ways it may produce a number of impediments.  

The university would need to become a complex adaptive system (CAS) focussing on the interplay between itself and its environment and the co-evolution of both. In such systems, the different faculties and schools would act as the agents of the university. It is the scale of analysis that indicates who the agent would be; an individual, a project team, a school, a faculty or the entire university. These agents would have varying degrees of connectivity with other agents through which information and resources can flow.

Agents would possess schema that are both interpretive and behavioural. Schema may be shared amongst the collective (e.g. shared norms, values, beliefs, and assumptions) that make up the university culture, or may be highly individualistic. Agents would behave so as to increase “fitness” of the system that they belong to either locally or globally. Fitness is typically a complex aggregate of both global and local states within the system. Such systems are network of sub-systems. Network systems don’t have a head or a tail. They don’t have a centre either.

Behaviour in a Complex Adaptive University will be induced not by a single entity but rather by the simultaneous and parallel actions of agents within the university itself. Thus, the university will be self-organizing if it undergoes a process . . . whereby new emergent structures, patterns, and properties arise without being externally imposed on the system. Not controlled by a central, hierarchical command-and-control centre, self-organisation is usually distributed throughout the system. In other words, the behaviour of the university will be emergent. Emergence is the arising of new, unexpected structures, patterns, properties, or processes in a self-organizing system. These emergent phenomena can be understood as existing on a higher level than the lower level components from which emergence took place. Emergent phenomena seem to have a life of their own with their own rules, laws and possibilities unlike the lower level components.

Simply stated, each of the faculty and schools would be autonomous in their actions yet all of them would be glued together by a common vision and values.

Actions for Growth

There are three very simple enablers for growth – universities need functional AUTONOMY to chart their destiny, they have to acquire MASTERY over what they do and intend to do and they need a PURPOSE for their existence and guidance of their actions. Interestingly, these enablers operate in both the sequences – without a PURPOSE there is no direction; without direction, the MASTERY is undefined; without Mastery the university cannot exhibit any expertise to chart its own course thereby not being able to seek AUTONOMY, worried about lack of Mastery, the government would hesitate to grant AUTONOMY.  This sequence is not a vicious circle but a double helix spiral.

Pursuit of Growth would call for resolute leadership for unflinching and sustained efforts focussing on:

·         Transformation – a profound and radical change of character and little resemblance with the past configuration or structure that orients the university in a new direction and takes it to an entirely different level of effectiveness. No 'turnaround' would work.

·         Engagement – with all the stakeholders - so as to create in them an emotional connection such that their dispositions and behaviours towards the university are positive. The employee feels mentally stimulated to see how their own work contributes to the overall university performance; the opportunity of growth within the university; and the level of pride an employee has about working or being associated with the university.

·         Enterprise - Entrepreneurial activity to carry out the transformation;   such activities must be accompanied by initiative and resourcefulness rather than demolition and dictates.

·         Performance - accomplishment of the task measured against preset known standards of accuracy, completeness, cost, and speed.

·         Infrastructure - basic and usually permanent framework which supports a superstructure and is supported by a substructure. It includes at the minimum, administrative, telecommunications, transportation, utilities, and waste removal and processing facilities. The coating of fresh paint on superstructure without reinforcing the sub-structure is an eyewash and futile.

The prospects for the Indian Universities over the next decade are bright to say the least, as the world in general and India in particular takes on an agenda of economic growth through innovation and enterprise. The enterprise part of this global quest for growth calls for skills in science and technology, social and economic management, and the enrichment of human happiness, the basic knowledge domains of any university.

The way around is the quality of leadership and management of the University. A clear distinction between the two terms is very important. Management is about survival and ensuring the status quo. Leadership is about growth.

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This is Part-3 of the series: Leadership and Management of Institutions of Higher Education

Part-4 of the series follows soon

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Already published-

Part-1: Setting Priorities for Indian Universities

Part-2: A Quick System Check for Indian Universities

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