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Higher Education and Social Change in India!
Higher education in India stands as an immobile colossus-insensitive to the changing contexts of contemporary life, unresponsive to the challenges of today and tomorrow, and absorbed so completely in trying to preserve its structural form that it does not have the time to consider its own larger purposes.
Its maladies have been investigated by an unending chain of committees, working groups, task forces, and commissions, who have produced weighty reports embodying recipes for reform and panaceas for progress. All this labour, however, appears to have left the system untouched; the giant keeps on growing, but only in bulk. Discontent with it grows because it is dysfunctional and irrelevant. Every passing year makes the convulsions within it more frequent and violent. Today a university can count itself lucky if it can function for eighty to ninety days a year in relative peace.
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What happens during this brief spell is well known. There is a concerted effort to pass on information capsules to weary students to enable them somehow to get through an examination that will entitle them to obtain a piece of parchment permitting the use, after their names, of some magical letters of the alphabet – symbols in years gone by, of achievement and status, but losing value rapidly on both counts. Higher education has become a ritual without meaning or purpose.
The pervasive discontent and the periodic outbursts of violence in our universities and colleges are so conspicuous that we often fail to notice the other crises destroying the soul of higher education. Take for example the crisis of objectives.
Although not explicitly stated, these were fairly obvious two decades ago; today they are blurred. They are perceived in different ways by the students, by their parents, by the educators, and by the political elite. The system is being pushed in too many contrary directions (often only for short-run gains) and is made to serve a variety of conflicting purposes. Its potential role in nation building and development gets only lip service or is, at best, articulated in low key.
If we can evolve a national consensus on its objectives and can develop the muscles for moving towards their realization, we would also be on our way to meeting the crisis of confidence and the corrosive cynicism growing all around. This does not happen. From time to time laudable objectives are set, but in terms of implementation they prove to be empty rhetoric. The younger generation is cheated.
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The country still has vast reserves of talent—eager students as well as teachers with imagination and commitment—left almost untapped. It is time we explore why they get disenchanted with the university system. The aimlessness of the academic routine frustrates the keen student who seeks something more than shreds and patches of information offered to him as knowledge.
The dynamic teacher has to learn either to conform to the prevailing standards of mediocrity or to divide his life into two separate compartments—one of routine teaching for a living, the other of creative work for fulfillment. Those who cannot adapt themselves to one of the alternatives have either to move elsewhere or reconcile themselves to a life of rankling bitterness. To demolish these structures of frustration, we need powerful engines of purpose.
That fund of human knowledge doubles itself every five years is a truism, repeated as a matter of course in every gathering connected with education. It is customary also to lament over rapidly declining standards. For decades we have bemoaned the falling standards without doing anything about it.
Dozens of reports—varying in quality—have pointed to the deficiencies in curricula and made suggestions for their modernization. But this was a case of the elite planning for the elite, as little consideration was given to the underprivileged universities and sub-standard colleges. The reports were silent on ways and means of achieving the projected Utopia.
Meanwhile, a great deal has happened to accentuate the obsolescence of much that goes under the name of higher education in this country. The switchover to regional languages was desirable and necessary. But we did it the easy way—through ordinance rather than through sweat and toil. The bounty of a crore of rupees to each State to support the production of textbooks in regional languages was a sop. It did not guarantee that modern and up-to-date educational materials will emerge from the programme.
Many of the books chosen for translation were themselves obsolete. The translations were often stilted and incomprehensible. In respect of new writing, the state has bestowed its seal of approval, in several cases, on semi-literate authors who have flooded an uncritical market with non-books and anti-books.
Obsolescence has other faces also. We see it in the intellectual apathy and mental lethargy of those who teach and also in their methods of teaching. Large holdings of university libraries go unread, expensive journals remain unused. The only method of instruction is the time-worn lecture method.
A section of teachers does not even go through the motions of a formal lectures. Dictation from decayed and fragile notes is all it is capable of. Can nothing be done to change all this? Inaction has worsened the situation; the products of the system get some information but no knowledge.
The problem of relevance has not received the critical scrutiny it deserves – the crisis is perhaps the most acute in this sphere. Professor D.S. Kothari has said, “In a science-based world, education and research are crucial to the entire developmental process of a country, its welfare, progress and security”. Does our university system offer an adequate understanding of the science-based contemporary world? Or, of the powerful forces shaping the destiny of man?
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It is ‘essential today to appreciate how quickly the world is changing, in what direction, and what consequences. The university system does little to help develop such appreciation. We seek to perpetuate “sacred truths” that are no longer true, but still continue to remain sacred.
Knowledge is sought to be stored in air-tight compartments, sealed against possible contamination from other fields of learning. The meaningless disciplinary boundaries are passionately defended. Academic purism triumphs, but in the process education loses touch with realities. What happens, then, to the universal mind that the university is ideally expected to produce?
Many of us in India continue to work with dated conceptions of the functions of the university. The situation is further aggravated because many of our better university men have their sights fixed on high prestige foreign models; they try to keep pace with peers abroad while failing to sort out critical areas of national development by concentrating their energy on an analytical understanding of problems implicit in them.
The agricultural sciences have given a reasonably good account of themselves, but the same cannot be said for many other branches of learning. Of course, there are bright patches here and there, but the totality of the effort is generally sterile. It is time we scrutinize our educational baggage closely in terms of relevance.
Let us now turn briefly to the most explosive of our problems— the problem of numbers. The need for trained manpower will continue to grow as our society registers further technological advancement. We shall need more institutions of higher learning, but our need will be for “trained competence”— for men and women with sharpened problem-solving capabilities, and not for degree-flourishing hordes having only vague and inadequate acquaintance with one or other field of learning.
A great deal of confusion continues to prevail in respect of who should receive higher education. This is compounded by woolly thinking and uncritical pronouncements by those who should know better. Populism vitiates the situation further. There is nothing like a “right” to higher education; it is a privilege which must be earned by satisfying fairly stringent achieve mental criteria. The sooner this is recognized the better will it be for the educational system in particular and for the country in general.
Misguided political support to demands for an “open door” policy in state-supported institutions of higher learning has caused a steady decline in academic standards, setting off a chain reaction that has brought higher education to a dead end. Admissions to the universities have to be selective; the criteria for admissions must not only be objective, they must also be seen to be objective. We know that when these are weighted heavily in favour of verbal skills, the consequences in terms of recruitment, at least in India, are socially regressive.
The problem is complex. It is often suggested that the catchment area can be broadened by giving substantial weightage to manual skills in the procedures for selection. But will this go far enough? It may help the son of a carpenter or a blacksmith, but what about the children of unskilled agricultural labourers, sweepers, and stone-breakers?
To state the problem in this manner is also to recognize that the issue of educational inequality cannot be resolved fully through compensatory facilities for such categories as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Such programmes, although useful and necessary, make greater sense where a small minority has been subjected to unusual disabilities, as in the case of the Blacks in the United States.
The situation in India is reversed – during the past hundred years or so, privilege here has come to be concentrated in a small minority. The prime national tasks in education, thus, is the introduction of imaginative programmes for the overwhelming majority.
Most thoughtful observers of the educational scene agree that the drive required for such a thrust can come only as part of a package which will neutralize the privileges in education that money can buy. The gut question is – can educational structures built to transmit and renew privilege be demolished, when the larger society continues to cherish the grossest inequalities?
To cope with the crises, higher education will need high-calibre management. Of this, we have little evidence. On the contrary, the first quarter century of India’s independence has witnessed a steady decline in the quality of leadership in the institutions of higher learning.
The office of Vice-Chancellor has lost much of its former dignity. An aggressive student minority can hold a Vice-Chancellor to ransom at will. Angry young (and old) teachers, absorbed more in politics than in academic pursuits, add to his problems.
Runaway politicians and irate university senators constantly needle the Vice-Chancellor who has also to face a wooden state bureaucracy and some very temperamental ministers. Even some Chancellors are known to adopt a highly partisan attitude. With all this a Vice-Chancellor’s cup of misery is full. A few courageous ones, who still hold out, have to encounter flying paper-weights and worse.
But the Vice-Chancellors as a group have also not distinguished themselves. To save their jobs some of them suffer these indignities in silence; a few even join hands with rowdy elements among students and teacher-politicians to pressurize “untamed” academics who refuse to surrender their integrity and dignity. What leadership can these men of straw, a minority that is growing, provide to higher education? But they are perhaps the only ones who last their full terms.
Few universities have received a fair deal from state governments. They have exercised visible and invisible controls without restraint. And have been so niggardly with funds as to make bare survival a trying experience.
The UGC has injected substantial funds and has kept a semblance of development going in many universities. It can be credited with several bold initiatives. It has also kept alive a dialogue on certain key issues concerning higher education in India. As such, the UGC was a good thing to have happened. But a feeling is growing that this organization has lost much of its earlier momentum that it is a prisoner of indecision, that many of its innovations have not taken off, and that by letting universities bypass its recommendations all too easily, it has not contributed as much as it could have towards maintenance of standards.
One trend of thought holds that the UGC has outlived its utility and that its functions should now be taken over by the government – on the contrary, others favour a stronger UGC—a body with larger and sturdier arms for purposive use. The blunt fact is that the autonomy of this organization has been eroded considerably; it can take policy decisions but can rarely get them implemented in their true spirit.
There is evidence of growing rift between the UGC on the one hand and the universities and individual academics on the other. This institution must not be allowed to lose credibility. The organization and methods of the UGC have not been critically reviewed ever since its inception. Such initiatives can best come from the UGC itself. A scientific appraisal and some expert management guidance will not hurt the organization; it will, on the contrary, enhance its performance capability.
Innovative institutions like IITs and JNU were expected to become pace-setters for the older universities. This has not happened; the crises-ridden IITs now appear to be moving in the direction of adopting the discredited old system and JNU’s contradictions are becoming increasingly apparent.
After a great deal of talk about autonomous colleges, some halting and hesitating steps have now been taken in this direction. One must wait for the results of the experiment. The need for flexibility in curricula has been emphasized time and again, but our university syllabi remain prisoners of a pattern and continue to offer only limited and conventional choices. The semester pattern, once believed to be the cure-all for the evils of our system, has proved to be a non-starter. Without a radical restructuring of our courses and attendant changes in the system of assessment, it had to go the way it has gone.
The much debated examination reforms do not appear to be anywhere in sight. The useful scheme of general education died in its infancy, without anyone shedding tears on its demise. The quality improvement programmes, needed so urgently, are progressing at a snail’s pace. These are only a few examples of our incapacity to handle innovations with imagination and determination. We have good ideas and good intentions; what we lack is the capability to translate them into action.
If higher education has to move ahead, we must seriously rethink the strategy of its management. How long will an aggressive minority of students be allowed to keep the universities in turmoil? For how much longer are we to let university management operate only as fire-fighting apparatuses?
It is time we attended seriously to the question of resolving the conflicts and inner contradictions that have immobilized our university system. Education—a problem-solving instrument — has become a problem-generating mechanism; the system which should have been functional to national development has actually become dysfunctional. Prognosis is gloomy – if we do not attend to the many ills of the system now, it may spark off, sooner than we think, a major national disaster.
Finally, let us touch briefly upon the sensitive themes of values and commitment. The very mention of these words raises the blood pressure of many self-appointed custodians of academic freedom and autonomy and some even get into epileptic fits. But education cannot be totally value-free nor can it be divested of social commitment.
Planning of education involves value choices at different levels and, divorced from any commitment, it becomes a vacuous exercise. In other words, value—and commitment-free education is dehumanized education—the very type of education against which youth power had trained its guns a decade or two ago.
Higher education in India will have to adopt and promote the values of democracy, egalitarianism, social justice, and secularism. More than these it must emphasize excellence, high performance, and problem-solving. As a mechanism of socialization it should prepare the generation under its charge for a new design for living — a design aimed at promoting a quality of life that is desirable, feasible and sustainable. A disillusioned generation in drift needs to be invested with a sense of purpose. And this cannot be done by a commitment-free education.
To conclude, let us recapitulate the major tasks ahead. First, we must redefine the objectives of higher education. How do we make it an instrument of producing trained competence with sharpened problem-solving capabilities? Second, we must revive confidence in the system of higher education. What must we do to enable those’ who participate in it to have greater faith in it? Third, the obsolescence of Indian education has to be attacked. What can we do to ensure that our education partakes of the growth points in knowledge?
Fourth, it has to be made relevant to the changing contexts of life and national needs. How do we shake off the dominance of high-prestige Western models which do not suit our realities? How do we give our students a realistic feel for the science-based, rapidly changing society of tomorrow? And how do we convey to our younger generation the grim realities of Indian life today and get them to join in the adventure of building a self-reliant and prosperous nation?
Fifth, we have to take some hard decisions regarding the growing number of those unprepared for, and unable to take advantage of, higher education. What must we do to divert them to useful vocations and make them employable? At the same time, what must we do, within education and in the larger society, to ensure that selectivity in recruitment does not have regressive social consequences?
Sixth, we must evolve an effective strategy for the management of higher education. And seventh, something must be done to invest values and commitment into the system lest it leads us into a void of anomie and drift.