I welcome
the UGC’s move of setting up an Expert Committee in
October to review the governance, organisations and management
of Indian Universities and the views of the Expert Committee
to bring about effective changes to improve the governance,
organisations and management of the Indian Universities. It
is high time in the new millennium that the 300 universities
and 10,000 colleges in the country take up the responsibility
of improving the organisation and management of academic institutions.
In general, the professionals working in these institutions
are intellectuals with good academic background, strong intelligence
base and charged with the responsibility of building educational
base of young students for the future of India, imbibe ethical
and moral values to appropriate character building, inculcating
discipline and a sense of patriotism, commitment and devotion
of duty.
Unfortunately,
the nation has not been able to use this honored and respected
academia to its best advantage because the atmosphere in most
of the universities and colleges is more of play, irresponsibility
and unaccountability.
Some of
the teachers instead of spending their time in academic pursuits
and research spend their time gossiping in staff room, college
cafe’s and coffee houses, restaurants accusing, abusing
and criticizing one and all including authorities.
In universities
in United States and Europe, there is a requirement that besides
teaching, every teacher is required to produce a minimum of
two research papers each year and his academic activities
are reviewed at the end of the year. In case a teacher fails
to live up to the expectation in terms of quality of teaching
and research is given appropriate warning and at times even
yearly increment is stopped. But in India, some of the teachers
have the liberty even not to take classes and join pressure
groups to cow down the principals or heads of the departments
so that he/she may not even ask them the reasons for not taking
classes; what to talk of research. These pressure groups entice,
intimidate or coerce innocent teachers to join their group
to increase their strength in the college or University. In
return they provide protection to them for their no doing
academic duties including teaching. Extension of service is
considered as a matter of right.
In most
of the universities abroad, the heads of institutions are
charged with the responsibility of raising resources to up-date
and improve academic infrastructure which is ordinarily provided
by either the state or the incorporating society or charitable
trust.
I have
myself taught in one of the most prestigious colleges of Delhi
University for 10 years twenty years ago. The academic atmosphere
in the college was superb but there were no opportunities
to grow in professional hierarchy. But I feel bad to write
that even there were few trouble makers who never wanted to
work or allow others to pursue academics. My wife teaches
economics in one of the colleges of the University for the
last 30 years. She once prepared her lecture notes in 1972
on diaries and she still been teaching only from those lecture
notes subjects like Indian Economics and Microeconomics. She
was not even reading newspapers for as long as 15 years despite
my requests and persuasion. Sometimes I used to ask her how
can you teach Indian Economics without reading newspapers
and consulting relevant magazines and journals. It was after
15 years of persuasion that I could help her finish her Ph.D.
and motivate her to get into academic work of writing books,
articles and reviewing books. But, unfortunately, her college
atmosphere prevailed over her so much that she reverted back
to her old style of living in less than 8 years. There are
hundreds of similar cases in universities and colleges in
India similar to that of my wife. Principals either do not
take note of it or unable to take any action due to these
teachers belonging to pressure groups with nuisance value.
Many of teachers in the Universities are taking tuitions as
full time activity, or are on a full time assignment outside
the college, engaged in commercial activities, dealing in
stock exchanges, teaching in tutorial colleges or working
as shop keepers. Working in the college for them is visiting
a club to gossip in the staff room and resorting to mud slinging.
Minimum work performed is the maximum work ethos. Disguised
unemployment at full salary is the current day environment.
I wonder how can a nation like India afford to pay hefty salaries
to a large knowledge and intellectual resource without taking
adequate work from them.
I feel
that the state should give funds initially for building up
infrastructure of universities / colleges and operating expenses
for few years after which the universities and colleges should
become self sufficient and the government should meet only
the deficits if any. The funds so saved should be used to
setup new institutions of higher learning or divert them to
elementary or secondary education to remove mass illiteracy
which stills prevails after 56 years of India’s Independence.
India needs to effectively use this treasure of intellectual
and knowledge mines spread throughout the length and breadth
of India to impart quality education and engage in appropriate
research to develop India’s international competitiveness
and help solve the problems of poverty alleviation and mass
illiteracy.
UGC can
be an effective organisation to play an effective role in
this regard. The model Act is a step in the right direction.
However, enactment of a Model Act alone would serve no purpose
till it is effectively implemented. A few rotten apples need
to be identified and separated from the rest of the academia
to improve the academic culture. Necessary opportunities in
terms of suitable promotions, facilities for research, secretarial
assistance need to be provided to the worthy teachers of the
Universities and colleges so that they may contribute more
positively in the nation building by developing human resource
appropriate to India’s needs. The University administrators
and teachers themselves need to generate necessary resources
for providing these facilities.
I
strongly support the UGC’s move in this direction. I
feel that the new Act would facilitate Universities in introducing
reforms for accelerating its pace of orderly development to
meet the challenges of the present competitive environment.
