The UGC must nudge the universities to excel

Heads of India’s regulatory agencies are mostly unseen and their thoughts seldom read by the public. Given this, the article by the Chairman of the UGC in The Hindu of April 5 is somewhat of a rarity.  It is also significant from the point of view of its impact. The UGC’s actions impinge upon a population far greater than most other regulators, such as those in the financial sector, for instance. The article itself is to be welcomed for its plain speaking and sensible suggestion. Mr. Jagadeesh Kumar would like the universities to be far less controlling in their relationship with the autonomous colleges under their jurisdiction. This, as he points out, when the UGC itself grants the universities substantial freedom. Whether the last is true is contestable when viewed through a global lens, as we shall see. And, a global lens is the only one to be used here, as the production of knowledge is an enterprise without borders.

The core of Mr. Kumar’s message is that more colleges ought to be granted autonomy. This autonomy he considers essential for improvement in the areas of curriculum design … He is, of course, absolutely right in principle. However, the evidence that he presents does not go far enough in the direction that he would want. The evidence presented is the number of autonomous colleges at the top of the list in the NIRF rankings. In particular 5 out of 10. This does not show a decisive tilt towards autonomous colleges when it comes to excellence. Surprisingly, the UGC Chairman considers it sufficient evidence of the superiority of the autonomous colleges.

Despite the absence of strong evidence that autonomous colleges do better than those without autonomy, there is a compelling case for full autonomy for colleges. India’s universities are by now stranded leviathans weighed down by bureaucratic procedures. They appear to have lost touch with the mission of producing and disseminating knowledge and have not responded to the observation increasingly made that their graduates are found unemployable. Today, when greater resources compared to half a century ago and the presence of the internet, global best practices and material for study are accessible to anybody intending to set up a college. This was not the case in the mid-nineteenth century when universities were set up and knowledge was transferred by British officials in person or in the form of books brought here by sea. The universities had acted as some sort of a transshipment hub without which knowledge could not reach colleges scattered across a vast hinterland. Think of the University of Madras which had affiliated colleges from the Presidency’s northernmost districts all the way to Kanyakumari. While some of this may have eased as universities came up to cater to the difference regions of Tamilnadu, the bureaucratised university of today is neither in a position to disseminate knowledge to its constituent colleges nor, as Mr. Kumar states, willing to relinquish power to the colleges so that they can get on with their business. Nothing it seems is gained by continuing with the present system of shackling the colleges to the university when the university has turned out to be an unresponsive behemoth.

The advantage gained when autonomy is granted to a college is that it has greater flexibility in designing the curriculum and can devote more attention to assessing learning, both being fundamental to the purpose of a university. There is of course no guarantee that an autonomous college would embrace the opportunity with alacrity. In fact, some of the first colleges to be granted autonomy by the UGC have not come out with flying colours, even though they have demonstrated that they are able to conduct their affairs without any guidance from the UGC. The latter outcome is significant as a case against autonomy was that it would jeopardise students, leaving them in the hands of unscrupulous elements at the college level. We now know that this is by no means necessary.

While the UGC Chairman has made a strong case for autonomy, it can be said that there is much that the UGC can do to improve higher education is India. Despite any autonomy that they  may have India’s colleges have to abide by some UGC rules that hold them back. They would also gain by some actions of the UGC. As knowledge production and dissemination is to be judged by global standards, India’s educational institutions can participate in the activity only if there is a level playing field for the faculty. UGC norms on teaching hours in the undergraduate colleges of India leave the faculty will very little energy to improve their classroom performance. The UGC must revise downward the required lecture hours per week, ensuring that teachers have time to read the burgeoning literature in their respective fields and devise more effective means to assess student learning. The present teaching requirement is far too high in a global comparison. Less lecture hours leaves the student to try to learn on their own, something unheard of in India but quite normal in the leading universities of the world. Indian students must be encouraged to be self-reliant with regard to the learning process. The release of faculty from excessive teaching must be accompanied by expectation of a far superior classroom performance. Nothing short of global standards should be expected both in terms of the knowledge transfer and communication with the audience. The only route to ensuring this is institute course evaluation by students. This is standard across the world. The singular failure in higher education in India happened when the transition to far higher salaries for faculty, referred to as “UGC scale”, was not accompanied by any measure for raising faculty performance. The UGC Chairman has done well to ask the universities to nudge the colleges to autonomous status by he should nudge, nay, direct, India’s universities to think of ways to improve the level of instruction in the colleges they govern.