What ails higher education system?

Way back in 1995, I wrote in ‘Nature’, a centre of higher lear ning has “a profound role to play in generating knowledge, as well as transmitting that knowledge from one generation to the next. The responsibility to do this rests squarely on f aculty members .…lecturers have a distinct role to play in enriching the lives of those they teach. And what is taught must stand up to the scrutiny of the students. It is good quality research that makes the lecturer acceptable to the system.”

When I l ook back, t he situation has worsened and reached a point of no return. So, what has gone wrong? Why is higher education in a mess? On one hand, mushrooming of coaching centres has killed the relevance of 10+2 education. On the other hand, higher education has been plagued with the backdoor entry of some incompetent vice-chancellors in the universities. Research institutions too are on their way to collapse.

Major academies in science, technology, and humanities are the centrestage for networking. As a result, a group of influential people manage to showcase Indian science. This results in frustration among young scientists and most of them become protégés of this group to get recognition.

In 1997, I wrote in ‘Current Science’ — “In a temple of learning, the understanding should be enlightened and the character enriched. These virtues need to be given top priority. And the university campus in the post-independent era must return to a place where virtues of discipline and nonviolence, should be written as with a sunbeam on everyone’s

THE KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED FROM TEACHERS OR FROM BOOKS IS AT MOST REPETITIVE, IMITATIVE AND DERIVATIVE

mind, let alone students.”

We must come to appreciate the intuitive knowledge of our ancients to derive some fundamental lessons.

The knowledge acquired from teachers or from books is at most repetitive, imitative and derivative.

Therefore, there seems to be an urgent need to help/ encourage anyone committed to scientific pursuit even in this grim, rat-race societal scenario. And it can be accomplished by exceptional individuals.

If science has to grow in quality and content, individual, capable scientists need to come out from this net and move forward as much as Sir CV Raman, JC Bose, SN Bose and MN Saha in the past and adopt the science culture of JV Narlikar, Govind Swarup and G Mehta at present.

In conclusion , 70 - plus year scientists need to pave the path for young scientists if higher education has to become live and meaningful.