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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A Question of Status by Tapan Raychaudhuri

A Question of Status by Tapan Raychaudhuri

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published Published on Nov 24, 2009   modified Modified on Nov 24, 2009


There is a new excitement in the air concerning higher education. It has been decided by the powers that be, warmly supported by the academic community, that turning selected colleges into universities will open the gates to a Valhalla of knowledge. A commission entrusted with the qualitative improvement of higher education has recommended that on top of some 350 universities and/or equivalent institutions, another 1,500 will be created by upgrading colleges to the university status. Our very highly educated and highly intelligent prime minister has decided to open 14 world class new universities. This brief article is meant to examine the viability and implications of such proposals.

In the days prior to the primacy of political correctness, C.D. Deshmukh, then chairman of the University Grants Commission, made a projection of the number of colleges and universities we would need in some 20 years based on an assessment of our future economic and social needs. He concluded that either we would need to create a given number of new universities or get the required number of graduates from a certain university then universally recognized as by far the worst of the lot. Now, of course, we know that all Indian universities are equal, only Jawaharlal Nehru University being equal to Harvard and Oxbridge. Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shamed be he who thinks evil of it).

We have had umpteen committees and commissions looking into the state of higher education in our country. They have looked into everything except the content and quality of education received by our graduates and holders of higher degrees. A similar enquiry led by Amartya Sen into the state of elementary education in a selected area of West Bengal has established that after four years of elementary education a very high proportion of students remains illiterate. No wonder, because in quite a few institutions the education dispensed consists in the students being asked to go home after their names have been called. I suggest a similar study be undertaken on the basis of random sampling to establish what actually our graduates and MAs have learned after three to five years spent in the worship of the Goddess of Learning in the numerous temples we have set up for the purpose.

I have not undertaken such an exercise, but have some idea as to the likely findings based on qualitative, and necessarily impressionistic, evidence. Over the years, I have lectured to students and teachers in most universities of West Bengal and quite a few in other parts of India. My evidence partly derives from the experience of such contacts.

There is one basic determinant of the quality of our higher education. Since Independence, there has been one welcome change in the way we dispense education: vernaculars have become the medium of instruction even at the highest level. This is entirely desirable so long as the students do not lose their access to the higher levels of knowledge. I do not know of any Indian language in which there is adequate number of books or journals providing access to the ongoing developments in knowledge at the highest level. No one has disputed the truth of this proposition, except one highly placed ass with whom I had the misfortune of lunching. But this was in the happy days of Bharatiya Janata Party rule. And it is beyond dispute that, except in a few institutions, students do not have enough knowledge of any world language (in our case English) to allow them the necessary access to the advanced literature in their subject. This means that the education of our MAs and honours graduates, except in the case of a small percentage of them belonging to some elite institutions, consists in memorizing lecture notes. The quality of the said notes determines the quality of our higher education. The truth or otherwise of this statement can be very easily tested by using the method of sample survey.

Assuming my hypothesis to be true, and I should be very happy if it turns out to be false, what exactly do we gain by multiplying further the number of universities at a very heavy cost to the nation? If, as I suggest, our institutions are spreading mainly non-knowledge (for how else would we describe education based almost exclusively on lecture notes?), is it really worthwhile to increase their number? If we want more people with degrees that are worth very little in terms of the knowledge acquired, this target could be more inexpensively attained through open universities and correspondence courses and the savings expended on improving the quality of our primary education. After all, it is more important for our nation to have a higher level of real, not nominal, literacy rather than an inflation in the number of graduates. There are always ways of improving the quality of our higher education, but that is not the subject matter of this article. I focus simply on one issue — whether by further multiplying the number of universities we are doing any good to our educational system.

My particular concern here is with the new initiative to confer the status of universities on selected colleges. One assumption behind it seems to be that colleges that, perhaps after a glorious past, are now suffering in quality will regain their old excellence if turned into universities. The logic underlying this assumption is incredibly bizarre. Spelt out, it would imply that institutions which are mediocre or worse today will become centres of excellence tomorrow by virtue of having university status conferred on them. It is well to remember that in the golden tomorrow, the people running these institutions will continue to do so still. If they are sought to be replaced by allegedly abler people, the seat of learning will be converted into a battleground for power. If, on the other hand, the old guard are allowed to remain in power they will ensure that the newcomers do not excel in any way. Such, indeed, is the way of all flesh as is well-known to all but the most doggedly optimistic among us.

On the other hand, the logic behind conferring university status on a particular college may well be a recognition of its excellence, and making that excellence available for the service to a higher level of learning. If this is so, I suggest some very simple tests to ensure the validity of the judgment. First, since we are, these days, so enamoured of American academic practices, let us take anonymously the opinion of students about the quality of teaching and make a high mark a sine qua non of the relevant decision. Secondly, since these institutions will be expected to contribute to knowledge, let us have surveys of the amount of quality research they have produced in the last ten years — in terms of scholarly books (reviewed in authoritative journals), refereed articles and theses done under their supervision. Thirdly, a quiet survey of library books issued to students and teachers in an average year. Of course both may have borrowed or bought books to supplement what is available in their college libraries and an enquiry into this aspect of the pursuit of knowledge would be indeed worthwhile.

I mention this because of my experience of an extremely negative example. During a visit of enquiry into the state of education in 1967, I found in a college in Rajasthan with a brilliantly equipped library that neither students nor teachers had borrowed a single volume in course of the entire year. The students, incidentally, proudly acknowledged their total ignorance of the English language. This was at the high tide of the Angrezi Hatao movement.

My point is very simple. There is no point in increasing the supply of higher education without first finding out the real content of the education we are dispensing. And there is even less point in promoting institutions to a status higher than their present one without making sure that they are worthy of the promotion. And I humbly appeal to our prime minister to consider whether 14 new universities of an exceptionally high standard can be created simply by the fiat of one’s will. Would it not be better to try and improve the existing ones instead of creating a herd of new sacred cows? Unesco recently produced a list of 100 top universities of the world. Not one of them is an Indian university — not even JNU with its aura of supra-terrestrial excellence.
 
The author is former professor of modern Indian history at the University of Oxford
 

The Telegraph, 24 November, 2009, http://telegraphindia.com/1091124/jsp/opinion/story_11765072.jsp
 

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