Onus, accountability for boosting higher education

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has apparently passed the buck on the states for providing impetus to higher education in the country at the recently-concluded meeting of the Association of Indian Universities at Lovely Professional University.

The state funding of higher education has indeed dwindled over the past few years in view of the escalating grim resource availability situation, but to say that the states have completely abdicated their responsibility in bolstering up higher education, would be unfair.

If, for instance, we were to gauge the growth of higher education in Punjab over the last decade, it is no mean achievement for a resource-strapped state.

During 1991 to 2012, total number of universities in the state went up from 3 to 10; degree colleges from 171 to 238; engineering colleges from 4 to 84; medical colleges from 5 to 8; teacher training colleges from 18 to 176; number of teachers in degree colleges from about 6,000 to over 8,300; number of teachers in engineering and technology colleges from 270 to over 5,000; number of postgraduate and research students from about 6,000 to over 29,000; and number of graduate level students from 9,600 to over 1.5 lakh. Consequently, the Gross Enrolment Ratio in Higher Education ( 18- 23 year age group) in the state stands at 20, which is identical with that for the country as a whole. This is quite perceptible expansion of higher education in the state despite financial hardships.

'CASUALISATION' OF TEACHING WORKFORCE

As a matter of fact Punjab has given overbearing precedence to the exacerbation of higher education in the state. Reckless growth of colleges, of late, conjures up the image of a sort of "educational revolution". I t is a remarkable feat as there were just four engineering colleges in the state in 1996, now there are 137. This indeed is a monolithic accomplishment.

Although it may be incontestable that in this process, the ' casualisation' of teaching workforce in higher education institutions has increased having an adverse bearing on the quality, yet a considered view may give leeway to the state government that it was constrained to engage staff on ad-hoc and contractual bases to negotiate steep hike in remuneration, salaries and perks of the teaching and non-teaching staff in academic institutions since the pay revision of 2006 recommended both by the UGC and the Sixth Pay Commission.

BUDGET ALLOCATION REMAINS STAGNANT

The overall budgetary alloca- tion for education might have jumped to 20% of the total budget outlay since the 200910 Union budget (or from less than 1% of GDP to 3.2%), yet the share of educational outlay allocated to higher education has remained stagnant at around 14%.

Besides that the permissiveness due to contemporary labour market reforms also induces an element of casual and contractual hiring on the part of employers. But the expansion of higher education per se has not had a back seat in the scheme of development of the state government.

UGC NEEDS TO INTROSPECT ITS ROLE

On the contrary, it is the apex higher education body, the UGC which needs to introspect its role and accomplishments in exalting higher education in the country––an objective for which the body was enshrined. Pragmatically, the UGC has done precious little in expand- ing and reinforcing the quality of higher education.

At best, it has played the role of a post office in channeling allocations and grants to states and institutions, that too without discreet justifications as per a well-mooted strategy. That’s why the UGC earned the tag of a defunct body ready to be disbanded by the previous government.

The UGC can only preen at indiscriminate and unmonitored allocations of grants to ill-conceived research proposals of colleges and university teachers, which are never genuinely evaluated or assessed.

The UGC has continued to brazenly implant foreign-copied schemes in universities without carrying out feasibility and compatibility studies simply because these were recommended by the UGC ‘babus’ after their foreign jaunts; e.g. since 2010 a new scheme of evaluation/ examination called Credit Based Continuous Evaluation System (CBCES) was forced on the universities in a jiffy.

The scheme was not only fraught with innumerable inconsistencies and fallacies, but is incompatible with the socio-economic and academic background of the students.

That’s why in most universities it met with stiff resistance from recalcitrant students and had to be scuttled. The UGC also had to make amends in 2014 by instructing the universities to insert external evaluation as a part of the CBCES process, which was earlier entirely based on internal evaluation.

Similarly, the muddling API score system in the appointment of teachers in colleges/ universities has made the selection procedure too mechanical that overlooks the innate pedagogic qualities in the prospective teachers. Consequently the quality of education gets dented.

The apex bodies like the UGC, constitutionally tipped to play a stellar role in monitoring and boosting the higher education system in the country, must acquit themselves conscientiously, rather than rhetorically passing the buck on the hapless resource-starved states to camouflage their own inadequacies.

IF, FOR INSTANCE, WE ARE TO GAUGE THE GROWTH OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN PUNJA B OVER THE LAST DECADE, IT IS NO MEAN ACHIEVEMENT FOR A RESOURCE-STRAPPED STATE. THE UGC MUST ACQUIT THEMSELVES CONSCIENTIOUSLY, RATHER THAN RHETORICALLY PASSING THE BUCK ON THE HAPLESS RESOURCE-STARVED STATES TO CAMOUFLAGE THEIR OWN INADEQUACIES