Transforming HEIs into Multidisciplinary Institutions: Getting Priorities Wrong

 

Transforming HEIs into Multidisciplinary Institutions 

Getting Priorities Wrong

 

On 5^th January, 2022, the University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Jagadesh Kumar has released the ‘Draft Guidelines for Transforming Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) into Multidisciplinary Institutions’, as per the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The Preamble to the Draft reads: “to develop intellectual, aesthetic, social, physical, emotional, ethical, and moral facets of an individual in an integrated manner, thereby contributing directly to transformation of the country and making India a global knowledge superpower, large multidisciplinary HEIs to be established in or near every district by 2030.”

 

The plan is to make all affiliated colleges degree awarding multidisciplinary autonomous institutions and to achieve 50 per cent GER through online and ODL mode of education by 2035. It is proposed to create cluster of colleges as the “single-stream institutions and multidisciplinary institutions with poor enrolment, due to lack of employment-oriented innovative multidisciplinary courses and lack of financial resources to maintain and manage the institutions can improve enrolment by becoming members of clusters and by offering multidisciplinary programmes. The lack of such resources has also proved to be a hurdle for securing good grades in NAAC accreditation.“ The idea is to convert the cluster into a single unit eventually so that "every college will either develop into an autonomous degree-granting college or become a constituent college of a university.”

 

The ‘Draft Guidelines ’make higher education market oriented.  It says, “many industries now look for graduates with sound knowledge of different disciplines. in sync with the market demand, majority of students aspire to acquire multiple skills.”  The document claims that multi-disciplinary approach is the right way to promote holistic development of students: “A holistic education to help develop well rounded individuals is possible by exposing students to multiple disciplines. Only a multidisciplinary institution with no disciplinary boundaries, enabling free flow of ideas, can aspire for and ensure holistic education”

 

The UGC's Draft Guidelines are short-sighted, not addressing many a vital issue:

 

First, transforming HEIs into multidisciplinary institutions will lead to massive privatization and commercialization of higher education, making higher education privilege of the rich and the affluent. It is unrealistic to suggest that weaker institutions will be able to survive by merging into a cluster and by offering multi-disciplinary courses, having no adequate financial resources.  

 

Second, the ‘Guidelines’ say that “State governments will continue to provide the same funds to government aided colleges as they had been doing before the cluster formation.” The reality is both the States and Centre are withdrawing funding the existing HEIs. Consequently, most of the private unaided institutions find it difficult to survive, unable to offer good salaries and service conditions to attract talented people into teaching profession.

 

Third, what about the teachers? Where are the qualified teachers to teach different disciplines? It is all grandiose. Even if the institutions manage to get qualified teachers, they are not financially viable to attract and sustain the qualified people.

 

Fourth, nearly 50 per cent of posts of teachers are vacant in colleges and universities, including the central universities. The first priority is to fill these posts immediately, before meeting the requirement of additional appointment of teachers, as a result of transforming colleges and universities into multidisciplinary institutions.

  

Fifth, the Centre and States are appointing teachers on contract, making a mockery of teaching profession.  The appointment of teachers on contract basis for a specific period, with full admissible salary, is understandable. But what is deplorable is appointing teachers on contract, keeping them on tenterhooks, and paying pittance and exploiting them. This practice should be discontinued forthwith.  The first thing the UGC must do is to ensure that teachers in institutions of higher education are paid the salaries and offered the service conditions, as prescribed by it, which are a sine qua non for maintaining and sustaining high standards of education. How can the high standards be maintained when teachers are poorly paid and ill-treated and demoralized? The UGC cannot absolve its responsibility.

 

Sixth, it is neither necessary nor feasible that every college and university should transform into a multidisciplinary institution.  We need some institutions of excellence specialising in humanities and social sciences and technical courses. Of course, making the curriculum multidisciplinary, for instance technical institutions offering humanities and social sciences as an integral part of their courses is desirable.  But this is not what is visualised in the proposal to transform HEIs into multidisciplinary institutions.  

 

Seventh, the transition of institutions into multidisciplinary institutions will encourage mushrooming of sub-standard institutions, offering sub-standard courses, in the name of market demand, benefiting coaching classes, luring the students under illusion of offering job-oriented courses.  Where are the employment opportunities? Where are the industries and big business corporate houses creating jobs for youth? If at all there is some development, it is development minus jobs. In fact, the onslaught of technology has resulted in decline of job opportunities, with a chunk of existing staff laid- off or retrenched.

 

Eighth, unless the government raises the funds allocated to education to 8-10 percent of the GDP, as most of the countries including the advanced countries are doing, the NEP will not succeed in achieving its objectives. The Constitution makes India a socialist welfare state. However, the government policies are turning India into a capitalist economy with private sector playing a dominant role, denying social and economic justice to the most disadvantaged citizenry.

 

Ninth, Public universities are declining, playing a marginal role in higher education.  Private universities are growing rapidly, playing a dominant role in structuring the courses as dictated by their commercial interest. The whole higher education system is gearing-up to meet the needs of big business, losing its primary objective.  The universities are no longer, except perhaps few exceptions, the centres of creative learning promoting intellectual growth. The private universities account for two-third of all enrolment in higher education. The NEP has ignored this factor beyond a pious declaration of the government’s primary role.  Consequently, quality higher education has become inaccessible and unaffordable to a vast majority of students, particularly to the poor and marginalised.

 

And finally, who will fund the additional courses in the multidisciplinary institutions?  That apart, what we see in this approach is centralization of policy making and direct control of higher education by the Union Education Ministry, with the UGC playing a subordinate role as its agent, taking away the academic freedom and autonomy of institutions, besides encroaching on the rights of states and weakening the federal structure. It is a crazy idea of converting every college into a multi-disciplinary autonomous institution? Getting priorities wrong!

The apex regulating body of higher education is more interested in raising the GER somehow by offering all degree courses online and now proposing to transform HEIs into multidisciplinary institutions, and inflate the number of institutions getting accredited, as proposed in the NEP, rather than addressing the real issues.