Universities are facing an unprecedented challenge. While in India the challenge has been growing over the last three decades, in the United States, it has erupted since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. The challenge has been growing elsewhere too as society’s expectations from universities are changing.
The Trump administration is freezing $3.2 billion of Harvard University’s grants and contracts. There is a move to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status which will cost it a few hundred million dollars. Harvard’s President Alan M. Garber has said that political disagreements could pose an existential threat to educational institutions. Because a cut in funds is being used to coerce universities to change their policies regarding student admissions, protests on campus, faculty recruitment, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
In India, the control of institutions of higher learning has increasingly slipped out of the hands of academics to the bureaucracies in the Ministries of Education and the University Grants Commission over the last 40 years. Academics in India are facing growing challenges related to teaching and research. The institutions they work in do not come to their defence, as seen in a recent case of a prestigious private university. All this represents a shift in the fine balance in the societal role of institutions of higher learning. The U.S. system was a model to emulate and even that is being dismantled.
The inherent tension
There is an inherent tension in the social role of universities. On one side they are required to generate socially relevant knowledge to meet the evolving challenges society faces while on the other, they are expected to reproduce the existing societal structures.
To fulfil their creative role, academia requires autonomy. The heart and soul of creativity is what makes societies dynamic. Unfortunately, rulers while paying lip service to this are hollowing it out in practice.
Autonomy enables academics to take a long-term view of emerging social challenges, even anticipating them. Given the accelerating pace of change, by the time society becomes aware of the change, it becomes too late to tackle it. For instance, developments in Artificial Intelligence and social media are leading to challenges for employment, the issue of fake news and the nature of war.
Autonomy enables current orthodoxy to be challenged and facilitates the generation of new knowledge. Without Galileo challenging the Church our understanding of the universe would not have advanced. Further, dynamism comes when academics who are aware of their own assumptions question them.
Academics are a product of a time-consuming process. We do not know how to produce a Mahalanobis. He emerged out of an environment of freedom of thought that a university provides. In a shotgun approach, the system produces original thinkers who change the course of their discipline and give society new leads. The wider the catchment area, the higher the chance of producing excellence.
Autonomy is needed all the way down the line. Universities need autonomy from vested interests to shield individual academics who generate new knowledge. Autonomy is not just for a vice chancellor or a director of an institute but it must be embedded in the structure of the institutions to enable the autonomy of functioning to individual academics.
Autonomy enables academics to develop their own view of their discipline which guides their research and teaching and which helps them resist orthodoxy and imposition so that originality flowers. Challenging orthodoxy ought to be the second nature of academics which includes their own institutions. While that slows down decision making in institutions, it results in more robust decisions. Authorities running these institutions have to accept this and function democratically. Dissent is essential and not a malaise to be eliminated. A bureaucrat or a bureaucratised academic would not understand this and that is why such people are most often not suited to head a university.
Challenging orthodoxy produces the tension between ‘what universities ought to be’ and ‘what rulers expect’ of them. Heads of institutions of higher learning have to negotiate this tension and academics are better suited for it than those with bureaucratised mindset.
Cultivating dissent makes universities anti-establishment while the rulers expect them to promote their agenda and reproduce the existing social relations. A feudal system would not like the birthright of the rulers to be challenged and a capitalist system would want docile labour rather than aware workers who challenge the notion of ‘dollar vote’ that undermines democracy.
Autonomy as impediment?
The anti-establishment character is anathema to regimes with a narrow agenda and lacking in confidence. They limit autonomy to help push their agenda. They neither need new ideas nor value them, thereby downgrading the role of universities and their social status. This forces academics to become status quoist.
Both rapid technical change and marketisation create a mist of the future resulting in short termism and a stultified view of society’s future and the past. Complex ideas are neither understood nor valued and are turned into a caricature. An ahistorical view of society is propagated to fit the agenda of the rulers. Existing divides among people are exploited to further a narrow agenda and propagate conservatism by caricaturing an increasingly complex society. ‘Democratization’ via the Internet is helping the process by propagating instant ideas and opinions so that the imaginary is perceived to be the reality. This helps the rulers push their agenda.
The U.S. and China have operated with a long-term agenda which has enabled them to dominate the fast globalising world which is witnessing a rapid evolution of technology and ideas. For this, the U.S. created a huge system of independent universities and research institutes and attracted talent from all over the world. This is now being undermined by the attack on U.S. universities and their faculty.
Funding and autonomy
Columbia buckled under pressure but Harvard has stood firm and challenged the government in court. It has received support from academics and over 150 universities. But why are private universities with big endowments dependent on government funding?
Education and research are expensive. The faculty of universities need funds for projects across the board — in science and technology, social science and art and culture. Science and technology is crucial for development. But so is the social environment in which it flourishes. Creativity is multi-dimensional and requires a holistic view of research.
Funds for higher education ought to be free of strings to preserve autonomy. Private sector funding tends to be largely linked to the profit motive and affords limited autonomy. The burden then falls on public funding. This has been the case not only in India but also in the U.S. Only a liberal ruling regime can consider providing untied funds.
In India, since the private sector spends little on research, public funding is crucial. Post 1991, public funding in India declined in per capita terms and starved institutions of higher education. This has enabled the state to not only curb autonomy but also push its agenda by appointing people of its own proclivity as the heads of these institutions and also allowing them limited autonomy.
The key role of institutions of higher learning is to generate socially relevant knowledge. This requires autonomy to challenge orthodoxy, which makes them appear to be anti-establishment. This is the social tension in their role as reproducers of societal structures and generators of new knowledge. Creeping short termism has led to a simplistic understanding of society and growing conservatism. Often the imaginary masquerades as new knowledge. All this undermines the value of universities in society and they get hollowed out while retaining the façade and none is left to defend their autonomy. This is what Harvard’s Dr. Garber pointed to.
Arun Kumar is a retired Professor of Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a former President of the JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) and Founding President of the Coordination Committee of Teachers’ Associations of Delhi (CCTAD). He is also the author of ‘Indian Economy since Independence: Persisting Colonial Disruption’ (2023)
Published – June 02, 2025 12:16 am IST