Herald, 28 Dec 2009
Most universities across the country have degenerated into useless, expensive white elephants, says VIDYADHAR GADGIL
THE BIGGER PICTURE
For the past six months or so, ever since the UPA was returned to power in the general elections, new Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal has been scurrying around like a man with a mission – even if he appears unsure of just what this mission is, apart from the broad objective of improving the quality of education. Inevitably, when talking of higher education, attention has been focused on elite institutions like the IITs and IIMs and central universities. This has left the issue of the dismal state of our second- and third-rung universities completely neglected.
There has been no success in improving things in Indian universities that fall outside the elite bracket (which means most of them). Accreditation schemes proposed by the UGC as well as minimum objective qualifying criteria for teaching posts have been given the go-by or short-circuited by the universities. In a moribund condition, these institutions perform no useful function beyond acting as administrative bodies for undergraduate examinations in affiliated colleges. The quality of education they dish out, particularly at the post-graduate level, is pathetic. The result can be seen in the alumni of these universities – having studied, say, English literature, to the BA level or even the MA level, many of them cannot write a logical, grammatical, correctly spelt English essay. The malaise extends to the PhD level as well, with these degrees being distributed fairly indiscriminately, without proper objective evaluation.
For too long, we have seen higher education – irrespective of quality – as a desirable end in itself, irrespective of whether the demands of particular jobs require higher education or not. This fallacy, combined with regional chauvinism, has led to numerous universities being set up across the country since independence, and these now number well over a hundred (not counting the proliferating ‘deemed’ universities, which is another scandal in its own right). These provide neither quality education to students at the post-graduate level nor any meaningful research. They cost a huge amount of money, diverting sorely needed funds away from other far more important educational requirements. Surviving on inertia, trapped in a long-drawn process of entropy, what is to be done about these white elephants?
Universities have been set up all over the country largely to cater to regional sentiment. From hopeful starts, as these institutions descended into academic limbo, large numbers of the better faculty members left for more academically stimulating pastures, like the IITs, IIMs, Central Universities, and the universities in metros. The problem of student intake due to small catchment area has bedevilled many such institutions, and post-graduate degrees from these universities do not make any significant difference to the students’ abilities or their employment prospects. Students have now voted with their feet, and there are university departments where the student strength is less than the strength of the faculty – nevertheless, these departments continue year after year, and even appoint new faculty members. The lack of good faculty and the absence of a supportive atmosphere for research means that very little useful research takes place either, as can be seen from the fact that hardly any research articles written by university faculty members are published in respectable peer-reviewed journals. With few students and little research output, what function are these institutions serving, and at what cost?
Second- and third-rung universities seem to serve largely as overpaid sinecures for unproductive staff. There is a culture of lack of accountability, in which performance appraisal is an alien concept. Even turning up at the office and putting in a certain amount of hours of work every day – a basic value in a capitalist society – is not considered necessary. Corridors and classrooms of universities are deserted due to lack of students, and faculty cabins are by and large empty, many faculty members turning up only to sign the muster roll. Little wonder then that university teachers across the country reacted with outrage to the recent suggestion by the UGC that they at least keep their chairs warm during working hours. Absenteeism and short working hours, from being a guiltily sneaked irregular perk of the job, gradually became a privilege and is now considered a right!
To make things worse, there is the issue of the completely unrealistic salaries that university faculty receive, increasing the burden on the exchequer. They are not alone in this – starting from the IV Pay Commission, government employees in general have been getting paid more and more, with some extremely specious reasoning guiding the process. At the top of the list of stated reasons is the need to pay salaries comparable to the private sector. But there is a consistent refusal to look at the other side – namely, factoring in the risks of private sector employment, where, unlike in the government, you can and will be sacked or demoted for non-performance.
Job security, which is almost total in government employment, has a high market value, but this was not factored in during pay revisions. Fifth Pay Commission member Suresh Tendulkar’s dissent note on this topic was ignored. The result is bloated government salaries, from which academic staff have also benefited. Thus, today university faculty get paid huge salaries for doing little or no work, and it is practically impossible to sack them, even in cases of gross misconduct, as we have seen in a recent case in Goa. The salaries may not look so extraordinary in the metros, but in smaller towns (where most universities are located), where the private sector pays considerably less for similar job functions, these pay packets are totally disproportionate. The creation of such sinecures has meant that politicians have more avenues for patronage. The result is a vitiated atmosphere that, in an academic version of Gresham’s law, rapidly demotivates and drives away those who want to do some useful work.
The lack of credibility of universities among the people is palpable. For example, in Goa when Manohar Parrikar, during his reign as Chief Minister, tried to tighten up things at Goa University, this led to howls of protest from university faculty, but they got no sympathy from the public at large. Inertia, of course, triumphed, and after Parrikar’s reformist flush had died down, it was business as usual.
What is to be done about the situation? Various reforms have been suggested, including systems to club together institutions of excellence into universities. But this leaves untouched the difficult issue of what to do with the over 90 per cent of our universities that are quite simply worthless. Reversing the inertia, doing objective performance appraisals, and closing down unproductive departments and institutions is vital. Upgrading them to central universities, as has been suggested in the case of Goa University, is little more than a nomenclatural change, which will achieve nothing, since pumping in more money and resources without making fundamental changes in the way these institutions function is only to send good money after bad.
But no serious reform is ever likely to happen, given the variety of vested interests and the inability to take hard decisions at the cost of government employees. If past history is anything to go by, the university system in the country is likely to continue to be an expensive white elephant into the foreseeable future.
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