One size can’t fit all -Pratap Bhanu Mehta
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/258501._.html
According to reports, the University Grants Commission is all set to increase its stranglehold on Indian universities. The latest proposal under discussion calls for standardisation and homogenisation of curriculum across all Indian universities. The ostensible rationale for this proposal is that it will make for greater portability across Indian universities. But if followed through, this proposal will squelch the few remaining vestiges of autonomy and creativity left in the Indian university system. It is one more step in the direction of a colossally ambitious centralisation of the Indian university system.
The centralisation is premised on a number of deeply entrenched principles. First, that homogenisation of institutions is better than a diversity of experiments. Second, that the academic community, teachers and students must not shape courses, syllabi and new frontiers of knowledge; rather these should be shaped by a small cabal that controls India’s education bureaucracy (usually statist in their orientation). Third, this centralisation is premised on the thought that accountability has to be vertical, where institutions answer to some top authority. It has no room for the thought that the only way to make institutions more accountable is to foster competition amongst them. Fourth, while recognising the infirmities of India’s education system, this approach harbours the illusion that more control and supervision will somehow produce the pedagogic creativity that Indian higher education needs.
The drive towards a uniform syllabus for all Indian universities is symptomatic of the dangers that afflict the system. Such a move undermines the very integrity of the concept of a university. The very core of the idea of a university vanishes if it cannot, within some constraints, control who it can teach, what it can teach, and how it teaches. It is a community of professionals accountable to students, peers, and a sense of vocation. The worst thing about the UGC’s approach is that it also treats deemed universities on par with state universities, exercising the same degree of control over them. Indeed, it is toying with the idea of even centralising admissions to all deemed universities under its own aegis.
Second, it is an act of colossal hubris to even suggest that all Indian universities should have similar curriculum. Why confine our appreciation of diversity only to identity, rather than a myriad of institutional forms and intellectual experiments? The great wave of creativity in Indian university building, when Delhi University, BHU, Jamia, Shanti Niketan came up, was premised on educational innovators trying out different things. Surely India can have room for the pedagogical philosophies behind a Gandhian institution like Banasthali Vidyapeeth on the one hand, and out-and-out new economy institutions on the other?
Third, the UGC ought to recognise that centralisation impedes rather than promotes curricular updating and innovation in three ways. One of reasons so many Indian universities found it difficult to update curriculum was such updating required negotiation with a large number of actors. This inevitably made the negotiation over curricular change protracted and aimed at the lowest common denominator. Even within the Indian system, the universities that have done better have done so because faculties and departments have more autonomy and control over their courses. In the American system faculty members make up their own courses subject to department approval. This makes for a more supple and innovative system. Now try to imagine what centralisation of syllabus making over a country as large as India would entail: most likely such curricular reform will be done by diktat. Our best teachers will be even more demoralised, because they have to teach syllabi crafted by committees where political compromise more than pedagogical purpose will guide curricular choices. It is also more likely that the quest for homogenising large systems will aim at the lowest common denominator rather than promote distinction. And such revisions will in future be subject to even more protracted negotiation.
Confusing standards with standardisation is a recipe for stifling innovation. All that portability requires is a university recognising that another university can be trusted to uphold certain pedagogical standards; it does not require that they follow the same curriculum. Finally, the idea of standardising curriculum goes against the grain of what our education system needs: more choices for students. Centralisation militates against choice, and Indian higher education needs to err towards the latter rather than the former.
No one doubts that there is an urgent need to reform the governance of Indian universities. But the kinds of reforms that are being contemplated, suggest even more centralisation and erosion of university autonomy. It should not be the UGC’s job, for instance, to prescribe qualifications for vice-chancellors. One proposal doing the rounds is that significant administrative experience be made mandatory for holding the post of vice chancellor. This is frankly a bureaucratic solution designed to perpetuate more of the same; and exclude outsiders who have the energy and passion for institutional innovation: the likes of Madan Mohan Malviya or Ravi Mathai.
The decline of Indian higher education can be traced to that peculiar combination of the Congress and the Left that dominated higher education in the seventies. It killed higher education through a combination of state control, populism, patronage and subordinating universities to every purpose but the cultivation of the intellect. The combination continues: centralisation of syllabus is another way of enhancing state control; the seventies gave us populism in the guise of automatic promotions; Arjun Singh gave it in the guise of indiscriminate increase in retirement age; the last regime was controlled by a small cabal; the men entrusted with curricular and institutional reform now are those who represent the twilight of the old system, not those who are yearning for a new dawn.
The Eleventh Plan will see a massive expansion of Indian higher education. Most of the increased outlays are likely to be wasted, because we are ducking important questions about what ails the university system. Great universities will help build a great society; lack of universities will produce a stagnant society, but bad universities will create a social disaster. It is a pity, that this government, most of all, seems oblivious of the stakes.
The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research
pratapbmehta@yahoo.co.in
