Greater financial autonomy for Indian universities? I can almost hear an audible gasp. Nevertheless, that's what Santosh Mehrotra, a senior adviser of India's Planning Commission, has recommended in a recent article in International Higher Education:
...The pace of expansion in the new few years may well turn out to be frenetic. The most serious problem that this sudden expansion will entail is finding faculty of appropriate quality in the public higher education system. Therefore, an initiative to be seriously considered involves giving greater financial autonomy to universities, to enable them to mobilize resources from sources other than the government—partly to attract Indian academics teaching abroad back to India. Salaries have risen sharply recently, thanks to the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations to make returning home attractive for nonresident Indians. However, the requisite autonomy of universities is also needed to encourage them to attract faculty back to India.
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