Saturday, February 20, 2010

deemed universitites

Deemed Universities – future of the role of private investors in higher education

A fortnight has passed since the Union HRD Ministry decided to crack the whip on erring private deemed universities, The flush of emotions on all sides is ebbing away and hence it’s time to raise a few pertinent points that an unbiased audience will have.

Of course, this is not to defend any erring institution. Any educational entrepreneur who fails to render quality education to students deserves little mercy from the monitoring and enforcing organizations. In fact, everyone needs to support the Union government’s affidavit before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India that such institutions be shut down and their students relocated.

But only by due process of law.

If enforcers of the statutes need to act against those who transgress the law, and brazenly at that, it is important that the enforcers, act scrupulously by the law which they are charged with enforcing.

Look at the sequence of events in the last 8 – 10 years: private colleges, mostly those money power and political muscle have demanded and got the deemed universities. Some of them have done so due to sheer dint of hard work and the quality systems they have set in place over the years.

Over the years, a due statutory process necessary to evaluate an institution’s claim to become a deemed university has been diluted. In fact, a few years ago, the head of an institution was apprehended with a load of cash in an airport, which was allegedly to be used to bribe people to into getting university status for his college. That he still got such a status is another story!

Now for the larger questions that rise in the present situation:

What has the Union government or the P.N. Tandon committee planned to ensure that someone in the UGC or the Union government assumes full responsibility for granting University status to sub=standard institutions?

Will there be a full scale investigation in how these institution got the status and what will be penalty that should be levied on such erring officials?

Why are the Union HRD Minister and the P N Tandon committee speaking in two voices? The Union Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal is on record asking “why should we have deemed universities?” However, the Tandon committee has reportedly stated that there was nothing wrong with the concept of deemed universities if deserving institutons attain such a status by dint of merit. Who will have the final say on this?

The National Knowledge Commission and even leading academics like Prof. V.C Kulandaiswamy have said India needs another 1500 universities so that academic leadership, high end research and curriculum planning will rest with the Universities and not be spread among the 18,000 affiliated colleges in the country. It is very difficult to imagine a situation where the government alone will create such a large number of universities in the short term. The only other way would be identify the top 10 per cent of the colleges in the country and grant them university status so that they can assume the responsibility of involving in high quality research.

Private enterprise has to necessarily play a significant role in this. Considering the existing legal lacunae that has led to the deemed university fiasco, it is time the government clearly charts out a path for private investment in higher education.

A legal framework that sets rigorous standards for educational delivery and high quality research and academic activity is immediately needed. And the framework would clearly set out a legal course of action for anyone who tries to misuse the statute, dilute standards or seeks to gain university status by an act of con.

Finally, such a legal framework should include the same standards of quality in governance, educational delivery and research excellence for government run institutions too.

autonomy institutions

The word "Autonomy" is a much misunderstood framework in educational administration. Autonomy is today treated in a very narrow sense of only examination orientation and offering some slightly fine tuned version of the existing university recognized courses or programs.
But autonomy is a concept with far greater depth and zeal. A college should take up the responsibility for achieving excellence and own up both achievements and mistakes in process and delivery of education. That's what autonomy is. In other words, a college should set its own milestones for excellence in input, educational process, assessment and evaluation, besides output and in long term social impact which the institution creates.
Institutions such as IITs, IIMs, BITS and IISc or our own PSG or TCE-Madurai, are well-known organizations that have used their autonomy to the full extent. They maintain a transparent and high quality oriented admission process, attract the best of students and teaching talent, best of researchers, in a vibrant educational ecosystem, have tough markers for examination question paper setting, educational process and classroom delivery, and output. These institutions have also made a social impact in the long run. their alumni are leaders in industry, education, politics, business, academics, etc.
In terms of academics, even India's well known institutions are not fully utilizing their academic and administrative autonomy to create more innovative courses/programs. In American or British universities, it is not uncommon to find someone pursuing sciences and arts/fine arts in their UG program. Also, institutions abroad believe in creating revolutionary academic changes by putting disparate differently-thinking minds in one place. For ex: history, science and agriculture major students have the opportunity to work together to look at how agricultural sciences have grown and how some new innovations can be fostered in this....the possibilities of utilizing autonomy to benefit all stakeholders is immense.
Affiliating colleges: To quote Dr. V.C. Kulandhaiswamy, former VC of Anna University and Madurai Kamaraj University, affiliation is a curse and an outdated concept. In the affiliating system we see that 85 per cent of the students are outside the university system and only 15 per cent are within the university system, with access to the best of professors, teaching learning process, equipment and research exposure. His suggestion which has also been echoed by the National Knowledge Commission, is that the govt should select the top 10 per cent higher performing institutions among the 18,000 plus colleges in the country, and grant them university status. As for the rest, they should be given a five year time window to either become on par with the universtities, or be relegated to community colleges that offer diplomas and not full degrees. In the existing affiliating system, universties neither have the time to manage its own affairs or the affairs of their so-called affiliated colleges. So research, teaching innovations and process innovations suffer and cannot be sustained.
Deemed Universities: It is clear that this process has turned out to be a problem areas in terms of money, muscle and political power. While government is dithering and seems to be undecided in whether to continue with deemed universties or not, students are clearly avoiding even better performing institutions, which manage to get deemed status. So first the stigma about deemed universities should go. for this, colleges should not be encouraged to apply and seek the status. This becomes a den of corruption. Instead, the govt should put in place a robust system with clearly defiined weightage for input, process and output excellence, encourage all colleges to meet the high quality milestones or indicators and once colleges reach that type of excellence, they should be granted deemed univ status by an independent empowered committee.
you can give specific examples of negatives and positives of the deemed university and autonomous colleges. the pros and cons of this.

university reforms

The main points that have been highlighted in the media by the Task Force are:

1) There will be a National Council for Higher Education and Research as mooted by the Yash Pal committee

2) It will be governed by a NCHER Bill (Act).

3) It will give norms to govts and states on appointment of University VCs.

4) TN and Kerala are some govts which have opposed it.

5) TN wants Hr Edn back in the State List and not in the Concurrent List.

6) But this is not in the ambit of the Task Force to roll out the NCHER.

My thoughts:

1) It is a good and positive move to reform University administration.

2) It is also good that some basic guidelines and norms are given for university top level appointments.

3) But it will be better if govt moves away from university administration.

4) When all other systems in society are moving towards further reforms, we cannot use a 19th century idea of government imposing its whims on learning centres.

5) A 21st century Education 2.0 idea would be to allow universities to with their own solutions and reform accelarators.

6) Let the government gives a reform framework giving a list of guidelines and norms and move away. Chiefly, such a framework should involve academics, civil society and industry stakeholders.

For ex: A panel of three or five ppl from these sections should form the VC /Registrar or Dean appointments panel. And globally visible advertisements to attract the best of talent. The panel will vet the responses and go through a clearly defined process to select

7) Also the selection norms should clearly state the objectives of the appointment and spell out what are the expected deliverables /expected outcomes of the tenure. After each year, the VC appointee should undergo a clear appraisal process where he/she should show quantifiable outcomes of the year long work. It need not be research papers, Ph Ds or funds secured for/through projects or consultancy. Let the selection committee define the outcomes, processes.

8) Secondly, we cannot have the present governance structure in universities.

9) When deemed universities are pulled up for packing governing boards with their family members, the same accusal can be made at government. Look at existing State universities. The government packs the Syndicate or governing boards with its own people, however incompetent they are. After all they are only IAS officers who have little academic exposure or an outcome based perspective.

10) Whether govt or private or corporate universities, the best reform would be to clearly give competencies and qualifications for governing board members. It is no one’s concern whether they come from within the family or outside. Whether individuals sitting in the Board are competent and qualified is the only question to be answered.

11) In a country where more than 70 per cent of corporates, media houses, newspapers or political organizations are run by families, let’s understand that this is a country that believes in family first. There is nothing wrong. To repeat, whether the person is competent to hold the post is the most important aspect to be decided.

jpgandhi