AMAANAT not JAAGIR

Ashoka University is an intergenerational quest of idealism without illusions

Educational institutions are endeavours of profound optimism; they believe human capital is the only renewable national resource, nations must be their own light (आत्म दीपो भव), and systematic study offers children the most powerful path to overcome or leverage their opening balance. Ashoka University aims higher than optimism: Idealism without Illusions.

History suggests that adding success to idealism requires “campaigning in poetry but governing in prose”. Ashoka has inspiring poetry; creating a global top-100, non-profit, non-government, board-governed, multidisciplinary university in India. This poetry is backed by impressive prose: the university offers Rs 100 crores in scholarships annually, despite incurring an operating deficit every year since its birth and receives no government funding or subsidies. The annual operating loss results from Ashoka’s commitment to ensuring that 20% of our students receive a free education, 50% receive some scholarship, and most professors' salaries rank among the top 1% of Indian Universities. The entire Rs 4500 crores raised by Ashoka since its inception for operating losses and capital expenditure has come from donors. The university needs another Rs 4500 crores to fund our plans of 8,000 students and 500 faculty across multiple schools, operating from 5 million square feet of buildings across 100+ acres.

The addition of “without illusions" to idealism is often labelled as compromise, betrayal or fear by people who don’t run institutions, don’t have to raise money, or govern them for institutional longevity. Poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar said, क्षमा शोभती उस भुजंग को जिसके पास गरल हो; only the strong can be kind, benevolent or generous. Ashoka's strength - the hearts and minds of our faculty, students and alumni - is nested in six idealisms:

The first idealism is that Ashoka is a multi-stakeholder environment with many equal stakeholders: faculty, students, parents, administrators, governing body, founders, donors, and government. Ignoring the perspectives of parents (keeping children safe and providing them with an education that prepares them for the world), regulators (ensuring a regime of rules, not deals), public policy (ensuring equality and excellence), governing body (with legal accountability) and founders and donors (participating in a project of national importance) over students and faculty alone is unfair and ideological. The most common bias - the belief that I am not biased - is not a medical condition but a human condition that self-aware stakeholders blunt by valuing all stakeholders. 

The second idealism is defying the ‘one idea of Ashoka’, or believing any change is a violation of “the original idea of Ashoka”. First, the long-term evolution of any human institution is best understood as a movement towards goals that are only fleshed out in the course of the movement itself. Institutions are seldom the product of predetermined or fixed goals; purposes and objectives reveal themselves in the course of building the institution and are often evident only looking back. The owl of Minerva, as Hegel put it, flies only at dusk. Second, just as it is unfair to impose ‘an idea of India’ on a large democracy, notions of “originalism” at Ashoka declare war on change and cognitive diversity. Great Indian universities - Shantiniketan, Allahabad, and Kolkata - that have declined, ignored historian APJ Taylor’s reflection that “many institutions confront a turning point - but didn’t turn”. Oxford started as a part of the Church in 1096, and Harvard began as a seminary in 1636; they survive because they evolve. The global shift in funding, demand, and expectations from universities is not a passing shower, but climate change. This requires evolution, not the amnesia of nostalgia.

The third idealism is that great universities are not small or monoclonal. The average university in the top 100 globally has 25,000 students, ten schools, and is 125+ years old. Our ancient civilisation with 1.4 billion people has only one university - IISC Bangalore - consistently appearing in top global rankings. Ashoka aims to join it while defying chemist CP Snow’s 1950s musings about science and the humanities as separate cultures through the cognitive diversity of large student and faculty body across multiple schools (humanities, sciences, advanced computing, management, and potentially others like law, design, medicine, government to come), and programmes (undergraduate, graduate, and PhD). A university that is universal improves the odds of institutional longevity and success. 

The fourth idealism is attempting to overcome economist Bill Baumol’s “cost disease”. Baumol’s theory suggests that the costs of healthcare and educational organisations rise faster than their fees or productivity. While public institutions often absorb this divergence until it becomes fiscally unsustainable, non-profit institutions have to make complex trade-offs between equality (keeping fees low) and excellence (paying their faculty and staff better). We are sure that the solution proposed by a student in recent protests around staff pay, “we should reduce faculty pay or get rid of overpaid RAs and TAs” is undesirable. 

The fifth idealism is that institutions must not defy the law of the land. Many Indian laws must change, and Ashoka equips many of our students to do this democratically in the future. But several of India’s laws prescribe age thresholds for alcohol and harshly punish addictive substance possession. Most parents, faculty, founders, and donors feel strongly that Ashoka has an institutional responsibility to prevent students from breaking the law. More importantly, state and central legislation clearly articulate the University's Governing Board's responsibility, accountability and authority for all decisions. Ashoka students are mature enough to vote, drive, and marry, but some of them sometimes don’t recognise that constraints aren’t chains.

The sixth idealism is that it is every stakeholder's job to find resources for Ashoka. As Sanjeev Bikhchandani pointed out in this newspaper, Ashoka not receiving any government money (Harvard got $90,000 per student per year from the government last year), means any reduction in donor funding will result in hiking fees, reducing salaries, canceling capex, slowing expansion, increasing class size, raising faculty teaching load, deprioritising research, allowing in day scholars, shutting down some departments, reducing elective courses, rationing placement support, and simplifying the admissions process to use CUET. Ashoka is far from financially self-sustainable, and any reduction in donor funding would close the doors for talented but underprivileged students. So every Ashoka stakeholder must be mindful that their behaviour does not make a difficult task - resource raising from donors who get no financial return - impossible. 

A recent anonymous Edict article titled ‘Who does Ashoka belong to?’ unfairly implies that Ashoka is run like a Jaagir (property), not Amaanat (trustees who hand over in better condition to the next generation). Ashoka does not belong to anybody. The article suggests that 230+ founder donors are homogeneous in their aspirations, “tormented by the ghost of their own vision,” and care more about “money and reputation” than students. This assumes that vocal activists, passionate protestors, or anonymous writers with simplistic or ideological narratives are representative of all Ashoka stakeholders. 

A new book, Moral Ambition, by Rutger Bregman, faces criticism that moral people aren’t ambitious and ambitious people aren’t moral. This criticism echoes recent Ashoka student social media posts asserting, “some of us will never be rich, but we will never be for sale either”, and “existence is resistance”. Most Ashoka students are simply too talented and ambitious to be so cynical. Over the next fifty years, Ashoka University and its alumni will demonstrate being moral AND ambitious.

Ashoka makes India stronger by ensuring the best Indian and global faculty have a home in India, and students don’t have to head overseas for a globally benchmarked education. Every Ashoka student has mighty causes beckoning them: finding a cure for cancer, doubling farmers’ income, improving learning outcomes in government schools, and strengthening our infrastructure of opportunity. Use your privilege well. The gap between India’s aspirations and reality - our missed tryst with destiny - is not a lie but a disappointment that Ashoka helps erase. Let's be good ancestors and treat Ashoka like an Amaanat so that many generations after us also have that privilege. 

(The writers are educators, entrepreneurs, past and present Ashoka parents, founders, board members, and volunteer their time at Ashoka)

The views, opinions, thoughts, or perspectives expressed in this article belong solely to the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of The Edict.