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HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA. |
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Higher
education in India is at the cross roads and there are
many ills afflicting this. Let us have a good look at the
aetiology, the disease picture, and later, if possible,
the treatment of this serious and almost malignant
malady.We need to have more educational institutions to
cater to the needs of millions of youngsters coming out
of our schools. The root cause of all our ills seems to
be our population explosion; the radical cure would be to
apply breaks on this, but no one seems to be really
concerned. So opening new institutions of higher learning
is a necessity. For the good of the future generations
the latter should, at least, have the bare minimum
standards set for them by the multifarious watchdog
bodies that we have set up for ourselves after
independence, based on the British model. While the
British model is not bad, we need to modify it to suit
our changing needs.
The British rely very much on the authenticity and
credibility of the individuals manning those bodies to
give credibility to the institutions. Ours has been a
nascent democracy trying to copy that pattern. Corruption
is the order of the day in our melieu, whether one admits
it or not. While a sizable percentage of society is
corrupt, one can not expect these watchdog bodies to have
honest people manning them all the time. Consequently
corruption has got into the educational field in a big
way. Running educational institutions is the best
business these days. The latter has no dearth of raw
material, no labour problems, no natural hazards, and
there seems to be a good market for the finished product.
To cap it, the finished product does not have a strict
quality control system to face up to. The quality control
departments could easily be bought up in the present set
up. Any intelligent entrepreneur will want to get into
this business.
We see the results daily. There are institutions of
higher learning cropping up like mushrooms all over the
place. Politicians, with their proclivity for comfort and
greed for money bend over backwards to please these
educational barons to boost their coffers and advance
themselves in the political field. Power corrupts and
absolute power corrupts absolutely is very true in this
field as well. The Governmental bodies set up to keep
vigil on all these are conniving with the culprits to let
them have their way. Permissions are granted by the
politicians.The administrators do not either point out
the flaws in the system to their bosses for fear of
losing their patronage, or are themselves in the pay roll
of the educational Mafia. Let us take the example of our
centres of higher learning, the temples of our new Gods,
the Universities.
Our Universities are called autonomous. They are anything
but that, unless one changes the meaning of the word. The
act is so designed to give the politicians all the powers
to manipulate these august bodies and corrupt them from
top to bottom. Most, if not all, the vacancies in the
senate and syndicate are filled with the people who run
their own private educational institutions or their
chamchas. They even go to the extent of having the heads
of these Universities appointed at their behest. The
whole process of selecting the incumbents is shrouded in
secrecy, according to the act, and is left to the whims
and fancies of one or two individuals. There is no
accountability for the process or for the incumbent. The
greatest casualty in the process seems to be honesty and
merit, the two most dreaded by the educational Mafia, and
their bosses in politics.
A cursory look at the method of selecting the
vice-chancellor will speak volumes for the way we run our
temples of higher learning. The "so called"
search committee has four members, one of whom is the
Chairman. Two members are nominated by the university
syndicate, one by the chancellor and the last represents
the University Grants Commission. The whole melodrama
starts here. The university syndicate selects only those
who dance to their tune, and if the syndicate is also
joined by the out going VC, ( this happens often ) then
these two members of the search committee are the choice
of the said educational Mafia. The chancellor’s
nominee could well be a political choice, as many
chancellors happen to be retreaded politicians
themselves. Politicians do not retire in India, and the
inconvenient one’s are sent to the safety of the
expensive Raj Bhavans the poor tax payer maintains with
the sweat of his brow, a luxury a poor country could ill
afford. The UGC nominee, however well intentioned he is,
is in the minority. He/she can only voice the feelings,
but it will not count. One retired VC once told me "
the names are put there as the politicians want and merit
has very little to do with that ." The choice falls
on those who are likely to toe the line and sign on the
dotted lines rather than on those who think for
themselves. The latter will be a hindrance to the well
oiled machinery built by the powers that be and their
fiscal masters. I have known a few good and honest
chancellor’s nominees, but they are easily
neutraslised by the chancellor who has the last word
anyway.
The working of the evaluation system could be gauged by
what happened in one of the famous Universities in 1975
resulting in Indian medical degrees being derecognised in
Britain and many other countries abroad. A student who
secured 1 marks in final MBBS was given 35% grace marks
by the syndicate of that University and all other
students got the benefit and many passed that way and
went abroad. The said student while working in a British
hospital was found to be totally ignorant of even the
minimum knowledge in the field. Confidential inquiry by
the General Medical Council of UK brought out the facts
and the student was deported from that country . The GMC
promptly, and rightly so, derecognised the Indian degrees
from that day in September 1978. Our Govt.’s
response at that time was to reciprocate the gesture and
derecognise British degrees. To cut the long story short,
an intelligent judge of the Supreme court at that time
advised the university to cancel that particular
examination and reconduct the same . Any one can find out
the depth to which we have sunk in the most important
field of education.
Higher education is a privilege that only a small
percentage of our youth could aspire for and that has to
be of very good quality if the country has to compete in
the world for scientific and technological expertise.
Indian Universities of yore were the seat of excellence
attracting students from all over the world. Today Indian
Universities have lost their credibility. If the famous
Universities in the West are considered good today it is
because they have maintained their high standards in
every sphere. There is no compromise at all as far as the
quality and credibility are concerned.
America had more than twohundred fifty medical colleges
in the early fifties. Many of them were substandard and
the then Govt. appointed a special committee to go into
all this and the latter recommended only 75 colleges to
be of good standard. With one stroke of the pen all the
rest were closed down and even today they only have that
many colleges. Interestingly except the Medical College
of Georgia, most of the colleges and even some of the
Universities are in the private sector. We should
certainly have private efforts in higher education as the
tax payer will not be able to defray the cost of higher
education which must be paid for by the recipient either
in advance or after he gets employed, in installments.
The standards should never be compromised in the bargain.
With corruption having reached Himalayan proportions even
in our central Govt. I see very little chance of our
lower cadres getting the message. We have one more menace
in the educational field. There are brokers who get
themselves appointed to these University bodies by
political pull. They have no background in education at
all except that they are "graduates" of a
University. These are the people who really run our
Universities. Most of the vice-chancellors are tools in
their hands.
Change is possible. We see in Japan many prime ministers
of the past are spending their time in jail. We must have
accountability in the educational field and take
Universities away from the political power structure and
make them truly autonomous. The chancellor, if he is not
an educationist, should have no say in the affairs of the
university, except presiding over the annual convocations
as a figure head. I have not been able to logically
convince myself of the need for the office of the
Governor in our set up in the first place. They are very
expensive to the tax payer and what role do they play in
the administration could easily be dispensed with. We may
have to rehabilitate these politically inconvenient
members of the ruling party in power. But they need not
be parked in such extravagant waste paper baskets, called
the Raj Bhavan, giving the poor tax payer the aura of
royalty in his midst. The best slot would be minister
without portfolio, where they are less expensive. If an
audit is taken of a few of the retired vice
chancellors’ performance and their assets, and if
found guilty, a few could easily be sent to jail, to send
a warning to those sitting in the chair.
Before appointing anybody to that post, a public inquiry
should be held about the person’s background, both
in the educational field for his excellence and also in
the fiscal field for any past misdeeds. Many of their
misdeeds do not stand scrutiny in a court of law, as
enough evidence may not be forthcoming. Public inquiry
would be the ideal alternative, like they have for
administrative posts in the US Govt.
The syndicate and the senate of the universities should
have no political appointments and there should be a ban
on appointing people owning private educational
institutions and their agents to these bodies.
Educationists of repute, with unsullied reputation should
only be appointed after proper selection and intelligence
reports. Majority of the seats must be reserved for the
faculty by election. No one who has had no touch with the
field of education should have any role to play in these
bodies. The Govt. should be the last to have a say in the
matters of day today running. The grants should be
channeled through the University Grants Commission and
not through the state Governments. The latter should have
no say in running the university at all. The grants must
be audited periodically and only those universities of
excellence must be allowed to have more grants. The
University must also fend for its routine expenses from
its own coffers.
Similarly the UGC must also be restructured to eliminate
politicians from its ambit. The UGC should have people of
exceptional merit as members and they should be made
accountable to the proper functioning of the various
universities. The rot which has set in at all levels of
our educational ladder should be cleaned with a powerful
broom. The earlier it is done the better. Many states
have not woken up to the appalling state of our
universities which bring a bad name to our young men and
women who graduate from the portals of these temples of
learning. I am not at all surprised that many, if not
all, the Indian degrees are looked down upon.
Congratulations to our apex court which is using the
broom to cleanse the political stable. Can the younger
generation look up to them to do a similar exercise in
our universities as well ![index]
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