The economic boom being enjoyed by India is largely because of its outstanding records in higher education.
The idea of universities as economic engines is nowhere else more realised than it is in India.
India’s record of primary and secondary education is appalling. But, unlike South Africa, Indian universities do not bemoan the poor schooling and instead get on with the students they have and impart what skills they can.
Percentage wise, there are probably as many under-prepared school students of rural background in Indian universities as there are here, but academics there seem to take the transition from school to higher education and any remedial work that might be necessary as part of their task in a dedicated way.
Parents too ensure that their children do not struggle unduly. Financing does not seem to be a problem. It is being accepted gradually all over the world that universities, not even in the developed world, cannot rely on government funding alone.
Why then have we not persuaded wealthy entrepreneurs to care about scientific education in the way the Indians involved the Tatas as early as 1911 to form the Indian Institute of Science, which eventually led to the founding of other institutes of technology and the Institute of Management?
The recent merger of universities and technikons could have been an opportunity to create energetic institutions of the kind that would have a catalytic effect. Instead, it was perceived rather negatively: the former white universities felt that they were being asked to lower standards and the former black institutions felt that they were being asked to become poor relations of the white ones.
It is not too late to inject a degree of positive energy into these new universities, but we need the helping hand of entrepreneurs. There are examples of support from businesses, for instance, the Sol Kerzner School of Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Johannesburg.
We are not thinking in a big way like the Tatas did and continue to do in India. The Tatas’s initiatives did not amount to mere philanthropy, but came from enlightened self-interest and national pride, which saw beyond immediate profits.
We need to persuade South African millionaires to think along these lines.
Our fixation with the West results in many other incongruities. Marketing, for example, is the buzzword in academia today. What are we marketing and to whom? In a country where a young person feels privileged to get to a university, any university, marketing to get the best students for your university smacks of the proverbial bald men fighting over a comb.
As far as one can judge, the only marketing of academia done in India is by the third-rate British universities touting for business.
Could we not therefore spend the money we lavish on marketing on the much-needed pastoral care of our undergraduates, especially when the drop-out and incompletion rates are so high?
Fundraising is another one of those Western modes doomed to failure in our part of the world. Running a university is far from running a sports team. Its values are of a different order. Countries such as India and South Africa have always handled patronage in more dignified ways than the Americans do.
Can one not imagine the Tatas and the De Beers responding to the lofty ideals of a vice-chancellor than hearing them second-hand from a fund-raiser?
The modest lesson one learns from the Indian experience is that we must stand on our own feet. It involves the duality of knowing what is happening elsewhere, what others value, take from it what suits us while combining it with our own heritage.
PG Raman is a research professor at the University of the Free State