Govt drops Prakrit, teacher training varsity plans

The State government has dropped its plans to set up two specialized universities - one on Prakrit language and another for teacher education - following criticism from academicians.

The Karnataka State Higher Education Council (KSHEC), at its 18th general meeting held recently, resolved to let go of these proposals.

The Karnataka Jain Association had been demanding a Prakrit language university. During Mahavir Jayanti in April 2016, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced that the government would consider starting one. Prakrit is a term that refers to a group of Indo-Aryan languages that lie between Sanskrit and its modern offshoots. Pali, for instance, is a Prakrit language.

Vice-Chancellors of universities, who are KSHEC members, felt a university dedicated to Prakrit was “unnecessary” and that a separate Prakrit department may be started at the Karnataka Sanskrit University instead.

The government also wanted to start a Karnataka State University for Teacher Education to offer high-quality Bachelor in Education (B.Ed) and Master of Education (M.Ed) courses on the lines of the Azim Premji University (APU). A committee headed by APU vice-chancellor Anurag Behar was formed to review the idea. The committee concluded that “good education programs are best run within multidisciplinary institutions” and “a separate institution for education is not optimal.”

This is in line with the Karnataka State Education Policy, whose draft recommends doing away with single-discipline universities. “The practice of opening universities of restricted scope or in single disciplines is a deeply flawed move that must be halted and indeed reversed immediately,” it states.