February 19, 2002

A task force on higher education set up by the government has finalized its recommendations. These are designed to improve university education in the country. According to reports, one of the major steps suggested by the task force is the abolition of the senate and the syndicate of the universities. These two bodies serve as the legislative and executive arms of the institutions of higher learning in the public sector and supposedly supervise their management — administrative as well as financial.

That the task force wants these bodies to be replaced by a governing board is not really surprising. The fact is that our universities are in a mess. The quality of education they are imparting is poor. There is very little research which is being conducted there. Their graduates are ill-equipped to cope with the information explosion of the modern-day world and meet the challenges of a technology-driven economy. These institutions are isolated from the national mainstream and have no linkage with industry. Most important of all, they have been politicized so badly that they have lost their academic worth. Over and above this is the financial dimension — nearly all universities are starved of resources.

It is, therefore, time the government took a hard look at the higher education sector. It was a welcome move to establish the task force comprising educationists with experience in the field. It is, however, a different matter whether something will actually come out of this exercise. If one were to identify the main factors responsible for the malaise in the universities, the absence of a system of checks and balances in their administration would stand out as a major cause of the abuse of power in these institutions. When this concentration of power has been combined with the politicization of the faculty and the administration there has been a breakdown in the structure of accountability in these institutions. It is inevitable that the standard of university education should have been undermined.

The recommendations of the task force appear to be eminently valid. It is generally admitted that political interference from the government has not proved to be good for the health of our universities. What they need primarily is autonomy and the freedom to determine their own academic role. The academia is most qualified to decide what is good for their institution. But neither would it really help if the teachers are given unbridled freedom to steer the universities in whatever direction they wish specially when political motives drive them on. In that context the role of the governing board should prove to be crucial.

Here again much would depend on how the boards are constituted and the calibre of their membership. A procedure has been spelt out by the task force which seeks to regulate the appointment of the board members by the government to ensure that the people who are appointed are independent, public-spirited, qualified and people of calibre. In the end, it is the political will of the government which will finally make or break the reforms. It hardly needs to be pointed out that higher education cannot be pushed on to the backburner on the plea that the country has to address the issue of primary education. The need is to adopt a holistic and integrated approach.

It is also important that the government recognizes the intrinsic role of the public sector universities in the field of higher education. Undoubtedly, the private universities have been doing an excellent job as seats of higher learning. But they cannot replace the institutions in the public sector. Not only are they inaccessible to the majority because of their fee structure, the private universities also have a limited capacity. Hence the universities in the public sector need to be strengthened and upgraded.

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