Comment

Towards a national university system

THE eleventh five year plan proposes a massive expansion of higher education – 30 new central universities, including 14 world class universities, as many as eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, 10 National Institutes of Technology, 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology, and several others types of higher education institutions. The Union budget for 2008-09 has already provided for 16 new central universities, three Indian Institutes of Technology, hundreds of colleges and several other institutions of higher education in 2008-09, with more to come up in the later years of the five year plan. Proposals are also being made for setting up a university in each district. Given the low levels of higher education in the country, we do require a massive expansion of the system. The issue is, of what kind?

Universities are conventionally seen as institutions where scholars, interested in a wide variety of areas of study, come from all over the world and participate in the process of creation and dissemination of knowledge. They engage in serious scholarly discussion and debate, not only on their subject but wider issues of historical and contemporary importance.

We need to recall Nalanda, one of our premier ancient universities. According to available records, it was one of the world’s first residential universities. It had extensive dormitories and accommodated over 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers on the campus in its heyday.

Considered an architectural masterpiece the university was enclosed by a lofty wall. Nalanda had eight separate compounds and ten temples, alongside other meditation halls and classrooms. On the grounds were lakes and parks. The library was a nine-storeyed building where meticulous copies of texts were produced and preserved.

Courses of study were drawn from every field of learning, Buddhist and Hindu, sacred and secular, foreign and native. Students studied science, astronomy, medicine and logic as diligently as they applied themselves to metaphysics, philosophy, Samkhya, Yoga-shastra, the Veda, and the scriptures of Buddhism. They likewise studied foreign philosophy. The university attracted pupils and scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia, Turkey and other parts of the globe. It was not just Nalanda, but also Taxila, Ujjain and Vikramshila among others that belonged to this category of great institutions of higher education in ancient India.

Alongside such an understanding of a ‘classical’ university, how do the present universities in India compare? It is unlikely that more than a few would stand scrutiny. I wish to refer to three aspects that are fundamental to the very concept of a university, which are missing in the present system, viz., universality, teaching and research, and multi-disciplinarity.

Most universities in India are small in size, and many more small universities are being set up. Moreover, over the years, with a few exceptions of some central universities, most universities in India have ceased to be universal; they are not even national in their character. Instead, they have become regional, with students and faculty drawn strictly from within the state. The policies of both the state and central governments have been responsible for the ‘sons of the soil’ theory dominating the very nature of university development. Alongside the student body, nowadays a state university operates as if it also has to recruit teachers (and others including vice chancellors) from only within the state. In fact, in some states like Andhra Pradesh, the jurisdiction of each university is restricted to a few districts. As a result, universities have become very parochial institutions with no semblance of national character in terms of students and faculty composition.

I feel this constitutes a great national loss. To ensure that universities, expected to be universal in coverage, do not become local and regional institutions, it might be useful to think of a quota system that is different from the one prevalent today. It should be made mandatory that one-third to half the student enrolment in a university be earmarked for out-of-state students. Similarly, one-third to half the faculty positions must be filled with scholars from outside the state. This would also help universities to attract talent from a larger pool. The term ‘out-of-state’ can be broadened to include all major regions of the country. This would provide socio-cultural and linguistic diversity in our university system, which would help enhance the learning and teaching environment.

Peer learning is an important though unplanned component of university education everywhere, sometimes more important than even classroom learning. It is generally felt that peer learning accounts for about one-third of total learning of the young minds. Students as well as faculty will learn better from colleagues drawn from various other parts of the country. Some central universities do testify to the significance of regional and socio-cultural diversity among students and faculty. Such a national university system would promote social cohesion, regional harmony and national understanding among people – one of the most important externalities that universities can produce. Equally, it is necessary to see that universities are not reduced to specific religion/caste and community-based organizations. They have to be genuinely inclusive of diverse groups of population – social, economic, cultural-ethnic, religious and geographical.

Second, it is important that every university have a major research component along with teaching. The interlinkages between teaching and research are well known – they mutually support each other. While this has been the case with all good universities, many, particularly new universities, are becoming increasingly and exclusively focused only on teaching, with negligible doctoral and postdoctoral research activity. As a result, they are becoming truncated institutions. After all, in India, most colleges are exclusively teaching institutions. Postgraduate colleges are also not an exception to this. In effect, there is no difference between such universities and colleges. So if a university chooses to devote itself only to teaching, it may as well remain a postgraduate or an undergraduate college.

To ensure that every university becomes a full university, it should be made mandatory for it to have at least a minimum sized M.Phil/PhD., and a post-doctoral research programme. While one can expect most universities to be both teaching and research, some high quality ones may be allowed to become exclusively research oriented. There is also a strong need to re-energize the M.Phil. and PhD. research programme in the country. Unfortunately, some of the recent initiatives of the University Grants Commission and other bodies have caused an explosion in spurious demand for admission in M.Phil. and PhD. courses, which is met differentially across universities. While university autonomy must be respected, there is need to ensure at least a minimum quality and standard of M.Phil. and PhD. studies in various universities in the country. If anything, the attempt should be towards developing a strong, vibrant and high quality research programme in our universities with generous state funding.

Third, I feel that the concept of a single faculty university distorts the very nature of the institution. Universities are expected to be sites where scholars from various disciplines and backgrounds engage in discussion, and not just in classrooms, on a variety of academic and non-academic – social, political, economic, cultural, local, national and international – issues, contributing to a cross-pollination of ideas and thinking. A single faculty university serves to produce a somewhat homogenized product, but not human beings with rounded personalities. Knowledge production and dissemination takes places at a very low level in such institutions, because of a lack of opportunity for the cross-pollination of ideas.

For instance, we often find that even simple issues relating to religion and caste, forget advanced theory in sociology and philosophy, are completely alien to the faculty in a major institution focusing on management or engineering. As for the students and faculty in a language university, even the basics of law and human rights become like Greek and Latin. Single faculty universities, including the institutions deemed to be universities – both public and private, but more importantly the private – which have proliferated in recent years, largely due to political economy factors, have no place in a good national university system. Highly advanced and specialized research centres though can be considered as an altogether different category of institutions; universities per se have necessarily to be multi-disciplinary.

Further, in the same context, it is worth considering that students be required to opt for more than one faculty in choosing their courses. For example, students majoring in physical sciences may be required to take one or two optional papers from the humanities or social sciences and vice versa, like the first two years of study in a four-year bachelors’ level study programme in some foreign universities. Many foreign universities allow such practices even in case of graduate (and research) study programmes. This will be possible only in multi-faculty universities. Otherwise, our universities will end up producing narrow specialists with little knowledge of other areas of study, be it is related to society, human relations or global development.

All this suggests that we move away from the present pattern of creating small universities to planning for really big multi-faculty universities, truly national in character, with a minimum student strength of 20,000-30,000 and a few thousand high quality faculty drawn from all over the country and even from abroad, engaged in serious teaching and research as well. Vast campuses with huge academic infrastructure – quality teachers, libraries, laboratories, computers, auditoriums, gyms, parks, grounds, hostels, and faculty residences, besides providing an intellectually stimulating and vibrant academic environment, will ensure economies of scale.

In this sense, the creation of another 1500 universities (probably small ones), a recommendation of the National Knowledge Commission, makes little sense. There is a need for expansion, but not necessarily in the number of universities. Rather, we need to expand, strengthen, re-energize and revitalize the public university system. It should be liberally funded by the state, which would guarantee enhanced levels of equitable access and improved levels of quality and excellence and at the same time exhibit and continuously nurture national character. The march should be towards building a truly national university system, which would produce intellectuals, in fact, ‘organic intellectuals of the people.’

Jandhyala B.G. Tilak