A Chaotic Education System

 

A Chaotic Education System

In an interaction with Rahul Gandhi on October 7, 2022, during his Bharat Jodo Yatra, the teachers in Karnataka complained of India facing an educational emergency. They identified commercialization, communalisation and centralisation as the three major problems ailing education.

 

Commercialisation

The parents, keen on their children taking coaching for JEE, NEET, and now CUET etc. rather than ’waste’ time in a regular classroom, are enrolling them in dummy institutions. A large number of students are enrolling in ‘dummy schools’- a euphemism for schools that do not require physical presence, but instead allow them to spend time for coaching in competitive examinations like engineering, medicine, CUET and the like, undermining or making the school system redundant. Some schools have found a novel method of surviving by collaborating with prominent coaching institutes. The Rajasthan Jhunjhunu Academic Chairman Dilip Modi says, “Schools have been hollowed out. Earlier only students who were in class 10 and 12 were targeted by coaching institutes, then it became class 9 and 11. Now there are foundational courses for children as young as class 6’.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools boast of offering a more progressive curriculum motivating students to engage with self-learning.  However, the IB schools today have turned into thriving tuition centers with teachers for every subject, and parents willing to pay Rs.10 lakh tuition fee annually.  The commodification of Indian education system is not new, but with more and more students setting their sights abroad, the money spun into the parallel system has reached sublimely ridiculous levels.

The parents spend a fortune on their children to make them engineers, heavily depending on coaching classes. This is a misplaced priority in view of the large-scale unemployment of engineering graduates, and many engineering colleges closing down for want of enrolment. The unemployment in the engineering sector is also due to ill-informed choices. According to Prof. Rajagopal Rao, former Director, IIT Delhi, “Engineering education is facing enormous challenges with colleges hardly able to fill even one-third of the available seats in branches other than computer science and IT” (TOI 25/9). He asks if everyone studies IT/CSE and if all the companies and products they build are e-commerce and IT related, where does that leave the other disciplines such as civil, mechanical, materials science, metallurgy, electrical etc.  The students are not realising that it is easy to move from mechanical, civil, electronics to IT but the vice versa isn’t easy. And what about India’s unsolved problems at the grassroots level?  Engineering is all about providing optimal and sustainable solutions to society’s needs.

Communalisation

The second major problem identified by the teachers is communalisation and saffronisation of education The school textbooks are being condensed by deleting inconvenient topics.  History is distorted to fit into the narrative of a particular ideology.   Mythology and fiction and religious instruction have become part of school curriculum in the BJP ruled states.  The country’s linguistic and cultural diversity is threatened. The persons subscribing to a particular ideology and school of thought are appointed to leadership positions in academic institutions. While the teaching in Madrassas is being questioned, the religious teaching in Hindu organisations is not regulated.

To counter efforts by the votaries of Hindutva, some 88 Indian and international scholars have come together to publish a ’report on the civilization and histories of India.’  It documents India’s history over the last 12,000 years. The report ‘attempts a contestation between the scientific view of history against the ideologically charged attempts to distort and twist the history’.  It strives to ensure that ‘no extreme ad exclusionary stand ever gains hold over the minds of India’ (DH 9/10).

Centralisation

The third major problem identified by the teachers is centralisation of decision making. Of late, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has been issuing circulars and guidelines arbitrary and unilaterally without consulting the stake holders. This is leading to a chaotic education system. Firstly, the UGC has announced a Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUGP).  A student completing all four years of the FYUGP will have 160 credits. It is aimed at benefiting the students who want to go abroad for higher studies. However, as Prof Amber Habib of Shiv Nadar University says, in his article Ed Reform Gone Rogue (TOI 5/5), ‘this benefit will not accrue once foreign universities realise that the knowledge of the discipline has actually decreased…Due to the proliferation of breadth requirements, the FYUGP students will study an extra year and yet emerge with less knowledge of their main subject than preceding batches.”  No one knows who authored the FYUGP.  He makes a shocking revelation that “a major part of the UGC document was directly copied from a webpage of the University of Michigan…another significant portion from a webpage of the University of Arizona." This reinforces the charge that the UGC is copying the western modules and thrusting them on HEIs in India.

Second, the UGC relaxing the norms for NAAC accreditation, making it mandatory and asking more and more HEIs to opt for accreditation, linking it to granting autonomy, has created a crisis of credibility for the accreditation body.  The temporary Institutions which do not have even five years standing are being allowed to opt for accreditation. Why should the UGC interfere with the functioning of the NAAC, which is an autonomous body?

The NAAC ratings are altered for extraneous consideration. Some seven private universities have secured unusually high rankings this year, higher than the best ranked Indian universities, raising serious questions about the credibility and reliability of the NAAC accreditation. A deemed University in Bhubaneswar-the Institute of Science-has secured 3.88, out of 4 points-the highest ranking ever awarded to any Institution. A Bengaluru Engineering University, placed in the 175-200 band in the National Insitute Ranking Framework, managed to secure 3.83 score from the NAAC. And a deemed private university in Coimbatore jumped five grades from Grade B to Grade A++ (TOI 2/10). Higher NAAC Grades mean benefits in terms of increased autonomy, funds from the UGC and foreign collaborations.

There is large scale corruption in the assessment and accreditation process. A new breed of questionable consultants and agencies have emerged promising high ratings with a price tag: A+ Grade for Rs.10 lakh and A Grade for Rs.8 lakh (TOI  8/10).  To avoid the magnitude of corruption in the accreditation process, the NAAC accreditation should be made voluntary, delinking the institutional funding from the accreditation. It is a fallacious assumption that the academic standing of an Institution depends on the NAAC grading. The intrinsic worth, academic ambience and public perception make an institution. If there is transparency and accountability, there is no need for a rating as students and parents can make informed choice.  The All India Survey on Higher Education reveals, there are 1043 universities and 42,34 3 colleges as in June 2022, but only 406 universities and 8,686 colleges are accredited.

Third, the UGC’s guidelines relating to multidisciplinary courses; dual degree policy; appointing ‘Professor of Practice’ without any prescribed qualifications; permitting students to do PhD after four years degree course and asking colleges to apply for autonomy directly to the UGC – all these will create a chaotic situation in the campuses. If a PhD candidate without a master’s degree in a particular subject is qualified for appointment as Assistant Professor, it will lead to fall in the quality of teaching at UG and PG level.  And conferring autonomy to colleges will result in dismantling the affiliate system, doing away with the traditional university education. The State Universities are the creation of State legislations. The UGC is interfering too much and encroaching on their academic choices.

And finally, the introduction of CUET from this academic year has sharpened the divide between the urban and the rural students- the rich and the poor. As the CUET results show, most of the students, coming from urban pockets and rich background, who cleared the CUET have taken tuitions from coaching centers. And most of the toppers are from the CBSE Board, and most of them had more than 95% in their class 12 exams. None of the 114 toppers who scored 100^th percentile scores is from a state Board. This only proves the point that the Tamil Nadu raises that the CUET based on the NCERT syllabus gives the CBSE students an edge, like the NEET, putting the state board students to disadvantage. In the name of all India uniform test, the students from state boards and under privileged background are discriminated. That the students create an unnatural demand by preferring certain elite institutions, when the courses of their choice are available at other institutions, is a different matter.  

Similarly, asking Universities and colleges to tie- up with industries and work out courses required by them is an indication that the nature of higher education is determined by the Business and Corporates interests.  The corporatisation of higher education will kill the very objective of education, that is promoting value-based education and holistic development of an individual. And where do the poor, deprived and marginalised who constitute the ‘Bharat’ fit into in this scheme of higher education?