Kerala - Kannur   

Need to frame education policy

Staff Reporter

To address State's higher education requirements: experts

FOR GROWTH: The former Calicut University Vice-Chancellor T.N. Jayachandran speaking at a seminar on the `Role of universities in social progress' on Kannur University campus on Monday.

KANNUR: The State is badly in need of an educational policy to address its higher education requirements and potential as also an effort to evolve a true concept of what a university is to save the universities from being Government-controlled institutions.

These were the observations made by education experts T.N. Jayachandran, former Calicut University Vice-Chancellor, and M.G.S. Narayanan, former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, at a seminar on the `Role of universities in social progress'.

While the former said the universities had a larger role to play in ensuring social progress and should utilise their autonomy for enhancing standards of higher education, the latter said real universities such as the ones in the developed countries would evolve in India only when the social progress reached a certain stage.

Speaking at the seminar organised by `Sarga', a socio-cultural organisation of the Kannur University staff, Mr. Jayachandran said the universities and higher education institutions should have organic relationship with society in which they existed.

While the universities in developed nations were being treated as markets of new ideas, their counterparts here were lagging behind in research, he said adding that research was often no more than efforts for securing additional qualification for promotions.

Even as the country was on a growth trajectory in the economic field, it was far behind in educational progress, Mr. Jayachandran said. Quoting a recent world-wide quality assessment of higher education institutions, he said that the much-celebrated Indian Institutes of Technology occupied only 57th position, while Beijing University stood 14th.

It was time the public, university administrators and decision-makers thought about the decline of standards in the higher education sector here, he said.

Stating that there was quantitative increase in the number of institutions and students, he said that at the time of Independence, there were 19 universities, 496 colleges and two lakh students, which in 2006 increased to 350 universities, 17,625 colleges and 10.5 crore students.

The State today had seven universities, two deemed universities, 356 colleges and two lakh students. Of the 356 colleges, 167 were unaided institutions, he pointed out.

Universities being autonomous institutions, Vice-Chancellors should be bold in their decisions, Mr. Jayachandran said calling for more control over self-financing institutions.

Dr. Narayanan dwelt on what he called the fundamental flaw in the concept of university in the country. No university in India could be compared with major universities in the world, he said.

When three universities were started in the country in 1857, they were established as affiliating institutions entrusted to conduct examinations. "That was a colonial strategy from which we are yet to free ourselves," he said. None of the major universities in the developed countries had as big examination wings as those in the Indian universities, he said.

Students in the developed countries were examined by those who taught them, while in India the teacher had no role in assessing his or her students, he observed.

"What we have as universities are just buildings labelled universities that are in fact Government institutions," Dr. Narayanan said. Often they were centres for training youth in political agitation, he said.

Autonomy of the universities existed only in their statutes, he said adding that the Vice-Chancellors were selected and controlled by the Government.

More Government control would only lead to stagnation, he pointed out.

The seminar was inaugurated by Kannur University Vice-Chancellor P. Chandramohan.

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