Red Tape in Education: How Administrative Procedures Affect Teaching and Learning in India

Why Colleges are established and how does college education is different from School Education? These are important question that both student and teacher should asked themselves. Higher education is different from school education because it provides students with specialized knowledge, critical thinking, professional skills, personal, and social development, which school education lacks.

Benjamin Franklin said that "Time is money". People often spend their time to earn money, and people who possess sufficient financial resources may use money to earn time. In this context time is important. However when we talk about college education in India, one of the first experience that comes to our mind is admission procedure.

From Degree college to the top universities in India gaining admission can be lengthy and time consuming process. Students may have to stand in long queues, visit administrative blocks repeatedly and complete extensive documentation, this raise an important question why is time given so little importance in parts of Indian education system when it is such a valuable resources.

One possible explanation is complexity of Indian Higher education system. With a Very large student population few institutional capacity in many universities and colleges administrative process can become slow and highly formalized.

Inadequate planning, inefficient procedures, and a tendency to paperwork over outcome can easily contributed to the wastage of time. However many developed education system place greater focus on efficiency, time management, digitalization, and effective allocation of human resources. The important argument is therefore not simply a question whether people value money more than time, it is a question of whether institutions are organized in ways that recognize time as an important asset for productivity and educational quality. Due to this a negative perspective is developed among student related to universities and colleges.

Many students in India prefer getting a regular course degree without attending the classes. There are many colleges in India where Assistant professors are unofficial Babu/ Clerk who are getting Pay Level 10. Instead of concentrating primarily on teaching, research, curriculum development, and academic mentoring, faculty members may be required to complete files, reports, documentation, and other administrative tasks assigned by universities or other authorities. This situation can be connected with Plato's division of labour and theory of Justice. Plato mentioned that a just society is one in which individual perform the functions for which they are best suited. According to this principle academic staff should primarily perform academic work. while administrative responsibilities should be handled by skilled non-academic personnel.

Countries such as Switzerland, where the higher education system is more developed, have a perfect ratio of academic staff and administrative staff. Due to this, professors get the time to identify the best possible way of teaching and research.

The main problem with Indian universities and degree colleges is the availability of skilled persons and the availability of updated technology, due to which the productivity of administrative work gets worse. A work which can be completed in 1 hour took 5 hours in the absence of proper skilled persons and updated technology. For this reason, Indian universities and degree colleges need to learn effective institutional practices which can work in local circumstances with available resources.

Bozeman define Red Tape as Rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden for the organization but make no contribution to achieving the rules’ functional objectives. Due to this red tape in higher education, the productivity of teaching activities always affected. Professors focuses more time on files and documents rather than reading materials and other research-related work.

The consequences can be significant. Many teachers may not have sufficient time to prepare their lectures carefully. Poorly organised lectures can make complex concepts difficult for students to understand, resulting in repeated explanations, confusion, and further loss of time for both teachers and students. Organized lectures are necessary for saving time and making concepts clear. But due to this red tape in higher education, most of the time an assistant professor spends in non-academic work.

This concern can also be understood through John Dewey's conception of the teacher as a facilitator and guide. John Dewey argued that a teacher is a facilitator and guide who shapes a democratic learning environment rather than an authoritarian transmitter of facts. The primary responsibility of a professor is not to transform every student into a genius, but to deepen students' understanding, develop their capacity to think, and encourage them to engage critically with the subject. But red tape in colleges and universities makes assistant professors authoritarian transmitters of facts whose job is just giving orders to students.

There will always a debate between formaility vs reality, however administrative procedures are necessary because institutions require accountability, documentation, and standardisation. The problem arises when formalities become more important than educational objectives. In such situations, teaching quality, meaningful student learning, research, vocational training, and skill development may remain prominently documented while receiving insufficient attention in practice. The final outcome can be development of a student who possess a degree but lack the knowledge, skills, confidence, and intellectual development which is necessary for higher level of understading and development of society.

This may also contribute to a wider culture in which students primarily aspire to become job seekers rather than creators of employment or innovators. When educational institutions reward formalities more than curiosity, experimentation, and independent thinking, students may gradually learn that “playing safe” is more beneficial than taking intellectual risks.

India as a country need academically active teachers and academically engaged students because there is a well-known Chinese proverb Míngshī chū gāotú which means Great teachers produce great students. This red tape in higher education restricted teachers from becoming academically great, due to which a repetitive cycle formed where formalities prevailing teachers produced formalities prevailing students. Now time has come when administrative systems must be redesigned to support rather than obstruct teaching and research. If higher education is to contribute meaningfully to India's long-term development and the broader vision of Viksit Bharat 2047, institutions must ensure that academic goals prevail over unnecessary procedural formalities.

Naman Joshi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science.