Bengal’s higher-education story points to unmet challenge

The drift in West Bengal’s higher education system exposes a stark disconnect between promise and performance. An investigation by this newspaper has revealed that of the 11 “dream” universities announced across north and south Bengal during the second term of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in 2017-18, seven have no permanent campuses; many have no permanent faculty; most have received statutory recognition as recently as January. What was framed as a project to decentralise quality higher education beyond Kolkata has instead morphed into a troubling case of promise without credibility.

This dismal story may be inseparable from the broader governance crisis surrounding education in the state. The 2022 teacher-recruitment scam in which several senior TMC leaders were embroiled eroded trust in the integrity of the system. At the same time, despite Raj Bhavan’s assurance that “education must be treated as a no-conflict zone”, during his tenure between November 2022 and March 2026, the prolonged tussle between Governor C V Ananda Bose, the ex-officio chancellor of all state universities, and the CM stalled key administrative decisions, paralysing institutional functioning. These disruptions have compounded a steady erosion of West Bengal’s once-formidable educational standing. While institutions such as Jadavpur University (JU) continue to rank among the country’s finest in the National Institutional Ranking Framework, others such as the University of Calcutta have slipped. According to the All India Survey on Higher Education 2021-2022, West Bengal’s Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education during the period stood at 26.3 per cent as compared to the national average GER of 28.4 per cent for the same period. The 14.8 per cent share for education in the state Budget 2025-26 marks a decline from previous years.

In a state with a storied intellectual legacy, the neglect of education and employment is especially dispiriting. For a government bidding for a fourth term, these failures could be a heavy burden to carry. An absence of high quality education systems, employment opportunities, pathways to innovation and social mobility risks alienating the very demographic that the TMC’s development narrative seeks to address.