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Towards a new paradigm in education

The current discussion and debate on higher education are occasioned by the globally experienced explosion in knowledge and the consequent internal pressures to modernise the existing system. There is general recognition that the existing system is “not adequate in relation to our needs”: it is rigid and stagnant, unwieldy and unmanageable, insensitive to social justice and unable to excite intellectual curiosity. “The world around us has changed dramatically,” observed the Committee on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Universities set up by the University Grants Commission (UGC) under the chairmanship of Professor Yashpal, “but our higher education continues to operate in the old policy frame. There is a need for a major paradigm shift in this sector which would not happen with small incremental and unrelated changes here and there.”

Such a paradigm shift should have happened much earlier, immediately after Independence. The road map for it was drawn up in excellent reports such as those by D.S. Kothari and S. Radhakrishnan. Yet, what was actually undertaken did not go beyond nibbling at the edges. As a consequence, the structure inherited from colonial rule persisted. It was obviously not suited to the requirements of a post-colonial society: the colonial system was not meant to educate the ‘natives’, but to command their intellectual resources in service of its interests.

Following the pattern set by colonial rule, higher education continued to be an enclavised system with the poor, particularly Dalits, Adivasis and women, being unable to benefit from it adequately. The implication of inadequate access is that higher education has not yet achieved a democratic character and the state has not been able to provide the necessary facilities for it. In order to impart a democratic character, the primary requirement is adequate number of institutions, particularly in the rural areas. Whether the setting up of a large number of universities, as suggested by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), without creating conditions that would ensure a groundswell at the base of higher education is an appropriate step for achieving greater access, is debatable.

A matter of worry among educationists appears to be the declining quality of higher education, about which there is near-unanimity in all assessments. It is no secret that “curricula have almost remained unchanged for decades, have not kept pace with the times, let alone with the extending frontiers of knowledge.” Excluding a few ‘centres of excellence,’ the quality of education imparted in other institutions — private, government or self-financing — is so poor, in terms of infrastructure and intellectual resources, that they do not deserve to be recognised as institutions of higher learning. Understandably, the temptation is to create “institutions which are exemplars of excellence.”

In pursuance of this aim, Central universities are being set up in all States and a few “world-class universities” are being planned. The filtration theory which informs this view is fundamentally unjust and hence flawed. In a country like India excellence has to be sought through equity and inclusion and not through separation and exclusion. This is not to suggest that excellence is not to be pursued; but to indicate that excellence is to be sought in as wide a social base as possible.

Such a perspective would imply that improvement in the quality of higher education would largely depend on the nature of the undergraduate system, which is currently the weakest part of the structure. Yet, in the present dispensation it receives the least attention. All discussion, initiatives and investment now concentrate on professional education, so much so that higher education is identified with professional courses. Education in humanities, social sciences and pure sciences in which the overwhelming majority of students, more than 80 per cent, are enrolled is treated as a poor cousin. As a result, undergraduate education is in an appalling state, without adequate numbers of qualified teachers, necessary infrastructure or sufficient intellectual resources. In some States there are colleges that exist only in government records.

The discussion about the quality of education is often restricted to curriculum and syllabi. It goes without saying that any educational system worth the name should periodically review and improve them. But the revision of syllabus in itself need not necessarily be academically productive. Pointing out the limitations of syllabus revision, Rabindranath Tagore had cautioned that “it is only like adding to the bags of wheat the bullock carries to market; it does not make the bullock any the better off.” The contribution of the syllabi to the quality of education depends upon how they are transacted in the classroom.

The weakness of higher education is not limited to its quality; it equally suffers from organisational inadequacies. If higher education is to be energised, the existing relationship between universities and colleges has to be altered drastically. Two ideas are currently in the air: autonomy and clustering. When the UGC initially suggested autonomy as a major element of reform of the system, there was widespread apprehension that it would lead to concentration of power in the hands of administrators. There are about 300 autonomous colleges in the country and their functioning goes to prove that there is substance in this apprehension. Yet, without autonomy to the colleges it may not be possible for universities to concentrate on their fundamental functions. Nor would it be possible for colleges to make any academic advance without autonomy.

Policy planners and administrators are seized of this issue. But the solutions they offer do not touch the heart of the matter. For instance, the suggestion of the NKC and the UGC that autonomy be tempered with accountability, though important, may not be an adequate prescription. Autonomy can be meaningful only with democratisation. If autonomous colleges have not been able to meet the expectations, it is because they do not function in a democratic ambience.

The improvement in the quality of education requires an all-embracing modernisation of the system — physical infrastructure, intellectual resources, quality of teachers and pedagogical practices. It is a gigantic effort for which large-scale investment is needed. The Eleventh Five Year Plan has made a substantial allocation for higher education. It marks a nine-fold increase over the Tenth Plan. Yet, the government admits that “such massive increase in public investment” would not be sufficient to meet even its modest objectives of raising the General Enrolment Ratio to 15 per cent. It is estimated that the resource gap would be in excess of Rs. 2.52 lakh crore. The remedy the government suggests is public-private partnership by “attracting enlightened and value-based educational entrepreneurship both from within the country and from abroad.”

Those who believe it is an utopian expectation may not be entirely wrong, even if India has a long history of private involvement in education, influenced mainly by philanthropic motives. However, unlike in the past, private educational enterprise is now a field of investment for profit. The proliferation of private universities and cross-border institutions that we see today are part of foot-loose capitalism and neo-liberal policies. It is possibly true that the demands of modernisation cannot be met without private capital, unless the state gives much greater priority to higher education. If private-public partnership is adopted as a remedy, as it appears from policy documents of the government, it should be so regulated as to prevent unbridled commercialisation. The present notion of private-public participation is a prescription for privatisation.

In a system of large-scale privatisation, towards which higher education appears to be moving, social justice is likely to be the first casualty. In a class-bound society education is an instrument of power, particularly in current conditions in which knowledge has emerged as a crucial factor of unequal relationship. To those who wield power, education is a means to perpetuate it. The entire ideological structure that the private system of education tries to construct contributes to the continuous exclusion of the marginalised sections. Those who are thus excluded often end up as victims, due to their inability to resolve the contradiction between their aspirations and the reality of their station in life.

If an egalitarian society is to be realised, as envisioned in the Constitution, the state has to intervene in a more decisive manner to control the private agencies to ensure a system of education informed by social justice and equity. In fact, they are the core values that education should uphold. That it is not an easy proposition in the prevailing circumstances was proved by the intervention of the judiciary to strike down initiatives taken by the Government of Kerala.

Yet, higher education is crying out for change. Despite possible resistance from vested interests, both academic and entrepreneurial, it has to chart out a new path that would usher in a modern system which is secular in content, democratic in practice and interdisciplinary in method.

(Professor Panikkar is Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council. These are excerpts from the convocation address he delivered at the North Bengal University. e-mail: knp8 @rediffmail.com)

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