Relevance: GS-2: Issues relating to the development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources

Key Phrases: New Education Policy 2020 (NEP, 2020), Ministry of Education, University Grants Commission (UGC), Human Resource Management (HRM)

Why in News?

• To successfully implement the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP, 2020), the top priority for the Ministry of Education and the University Grants Commission (UGC) is to transform the higher education sector in India.
• The higher education sector in India is booming; however, the critical challenge is to manage its massive expansion.

Key Points:

• Indian higher education lacks quality and suffers from falling standards, inadequate human resources, and an absence of professional expert systems.
• The most challenging part for higher education is to cope with globalisation, financial challenges, demographic forces, and growing technological innovations such as robots, automation, artificial intelligence, big data and deep learning.
• The institutional support systems have remained static over the decades. As a result:
  • Indian higher education institutions (HEIs) cannot compete with the standards set by the international educational institutions and the ranking framework.
  • Further the digital divide and, more recently, Covid-19 have created huge challenges to the higher education system.
• The universities can achieve their goals only if they:
  • Successfully blend human resources, financial resources and physical infrastructure.
  • Among the three aspects, human resources play a crucial role in the university's overall development and sustainability.

Challenges in Human Resource Management (HRM) in Indian higher Education:

• The importance of Human Resource Management (HRM) is not given priority in most Indian universities.
  • There is no focus on key HRM instruments, including recruitment and succession processes, training and development, performance management, career development, talent retention, and grievance redressal systems.
  • HRM duties are fragmented and executed mainly by the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Registrar's office, the establishment department and other sections.
• The existing Establishment Department plays a very minimal role in human resource management.
  • It is less involved in assisting in issuing the job contracts/appointment letters, assisting in the recruitment and promotion processes, maintaining the attendance and personnel records etc.
  • There is no scope for the Establishment Department to play a strategic role, and in the absence of a professional Establishment Department workforce, universities cannot deal with poor quality challenges.
• Less focus on the training system.
  • Hardly any attention is being paid to the development, motivation and focused training system for the teaching staff members.
  • Only a few institutes of national importance and private universities are in the formative stage of developing training systems.
  • On the other hand, the universities in the West are practising cutting edge training systems.
• HRM systems are in poor sync with the organisational strategy and goals.
  • India needs a good HRM, which can help in integrating the strategies and systems to achieve the higher education institution's overall mission and success.
  • India also needs Professional HRM which can support the teaching and non-teaching staff to be more proactive, efficient and helps in maximising their overall productivity.
• Implementation of efficient HRM policies for teaching and non-teaching employees.
  1. It includes focused and targeted training programmes.
  2. Upgrade their organisational structures in the universities according to the globalisation demands.

Solutions Suggested:

• The approach adopted by the government, regulators and the universities in India needs to change and the focus needs to be on restructuring and modernisation of universities.
  • New HRM division should prioritise developing the university, its employees, including academic and non-teaching staff, and the students.
• Core responsibility of strategic HRM:
  • It should show progress in the transformation of universities strategy and proactive interventions, such as recruitment and selection of employees, retention of faculty and staff, performance management, training and development, managing flexible employment, institutional rules and regulations.
  • It could also assist in designing job responsibilities, incentive systems, university leadership training, social welfare schemes, The erstwhile establishment department in the universities needs to be replaced with a professional and empowered HRM unit.
  • Two-way communication, managing poor performance, succession planning, employee development planning etc.
  • The HRM could also help in designing good practices and policies, which will help to boost the employees' morale.
• Take initiatives in digitalising the Universities administrative systems:
  • It could boost the overall efficiency of the university.
  • The fundamental goal would be to build motivated, trained and committed human resources.

Conclusion:

• It is quite possible that most HEIs in India are likely to expand significantly in the wake of the recommendations of the NEP 2020 and Indian HEIs cannot afford to continue with the conventional systems.
• There is a strong need to develop a sound and proactive professional HRM team in Indian universities that could take initiatives toward developing high-performing institutions and shift from transactional to strategic and transformational HRM.
• Such a team could be instrumental in executing and implementing the recommendations of the National Education Policy, 2020.

Source: The Hindu BL

Mains Question:

Q. Indian universities are plagued with the virus of politicisation of posts and need vaccination of independent human resource management to work efficiently and effectively. Examine.( 10 marks)