Academic autonomy is fundamental to having high-quality institutions

Britain and the United States have a long history and tradition of building lasting educational institutions. The universities of Oxford and Harvard have over 1,000 and 400 years of history behind them, respectively. Then there are several "younger institutions," over 150 years old, in both the countries that have stood the test of time. Some of them are privately managed, but all are publicly funded directly or indirectly, as is the case in India.

One common feature to most of these centres of learning is the adherence to a strong process of institution building. There is a shared vision and commitment to excellence among the key stakeholders, including the government. The political leadership has always respected such institutions. This seems to be a reflection of the maturity of the political parties. Their pre-eminence as symbols of national repute has also made them unreachable for any political and government entities.

Indeed, there are rare instances of some in the government attempting to use their power to question academic freedom, but they are strongly pushed back by a collective mechanism of other stakeholders. A classic instance of this was the "civil investigative demand", initiated in 2010 by the Attorney General in the state of Virginia, asking for a wide range of records from M.E. Mann, a reputed scientist working on climate change at the University of Virginia. The demand was issued under the Virginia Fraud Against Tax Payers Act. He alleged that Mann had violated certain research grant conditions by manipulating data and wanted access to the raw research data. The University of Virginia, founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, is a state-funded public university of global repute. The faculty, several scientists and science organisations expressed serious concern about the implications of such state interference on academic freedom. The university strongly resisted the move by approaching the judiciary. A court upheld Mann's right to protect the data. This is considered a victory for academic freedom in recent years.

There are well laid down policies and controls for funds utilisation and manpower management, leaving all academic matters to be decided by the faculty and management. For instance, Oxford University - whose governance mechanism was formalised through a legislation in 1924 - has a Congregation and a Council, both represented by academics, with complete powers on all academic matters. The government believes that autonomy is a responsibility given to the universities. Representatives on the board of governors are carefully chosen to achieve this goal. Except for isolated instances such as the one at Virginia, governments have defined and stuck to their roles unambiguously. The leadership of these institutions has taken responsibility for academic-related activities. Academic freedom is not considered as a freedom to do anything.

In essence, management of public educational institutions is a doubles game played by the government with the institution as a partner. There has to be perfect understanding between the players to make it not only collision-free but also form a winning combination. For this to happen, government as the captain and super steward should create legislation and policies, unambiguously defining the limits to freedom for each player; it also has to create transparent mechanisms for adherence to them. Academic freedom is not something that governments should tamper with. However, we need to define academic accountability for our institutions of "excellence", and create transparent evaluative mechanisms for their performance. Also, it is important to leave academics with adequate freedom to encourage and pursue intellectual matters without fear of interference. This requires keeping autonomy and accountability closely linked.

It is high time that we learnt from the experiences of advanced economies with globally reputed educational institutions. Academic autonomy is fundamental to having high-quality institutions. What is required is not to impose more controls and take away autonomy but give greater freedom hand in hand with greater accountability.