NEP: Expect major reforms

NEP, A game changer

The new National Education Policy (NEP) has made a sincere attempt to align itself to the global education model to prepare the Indian youth to be more globally competitive, better skilled and equipped with cross-disciplinary knowledge that makes him a better human being in his professional career as well as in his dealings and attitudes in societal life.

The major reforms that promise a great impact are:

Changing the compulsory education law to cover those in the range of 3-18 years of age. Bringing pre-primary education in the ambit is recognition of the fact that 3-8 year old is the formative age and most crucial period in one’s life that moulds the future personality of any person.

We had hardly recognised that a first-generation learner child from vulnerable sections was a potential school dropout if deprived of pre-primary education. This is a path-breaking policy change that would drastically reduce school dropouts, eventually increase college intake and increase the gross enrolment ratio (GER).

The second major change aligning with the system in advanced countries is the flexibility of learning, blurring the water-tight boundaries between arts and science programmes and even giving an option of taking some credits in social science subjects to graduates of medicine and engineering sciences.

Restructuring to 5+3+3+4 curricula and leaving an option of lateral exit in the undergraduate programme particularly with skill and vocational courses gives the student dignity of holding a certificate or a diploma and seek job; not a tag of a college dropout. The four-year undergraduate degree makes students acceptable in western universities for graduate and doctoral degree.

Irrelevance of M.Phil was recognised quite some time back though UGC had retained it. I had abolished M.Phil in 2002 in Kashmir University and in 2008 in Pondicherry Central University, where I served as Vice-Chancellor. 5. There are several more reforms in the NEP which certainly inject greater competence in students to make them more globally competitive, employable and be better analysts in their decision-making.

The next question is, will the NEP now make our universities more innovative and inventive with path-breaking research, the research publications with citations globally comparable, patents globally sought-after, and ultimately see three or four of our universities in world’s top 10 or at least top 50?

A study of certain characteristics of the top 50 world class universities clearly brings out features that are common to all of them which I believe hold the key to creating innovative, inventive world-class research universities, besides all other features that the new NEP has brought in.

A comparison of the average student strength on campuses in world-class universities is 20,000 to 25,000 as compared to 3,500 to 4,000 in Indian universities. In Indian campuses, there are nine students per acre of land while this number is about 25 per acre of campus abroad. This emphasises on the significance of critical mass.

Fishing in pond fetches small fishes while fishing in oceans will get you large fish, as remarked by a Nobel laureate. It is obvious that our campuses are grossly under-utilised and none of the campuses possesses the critical mass.

The diversity of students and the faculty is incorporated into the policies of all world-class universities. Some have even fixed diversity index for students from across the nation and from other nations.

That is how millions of students from India, China, Africa, West Asia and Asian nations study in US and other countries. In comparison, Indian universities have a unique character, as a rule, to define the jurisdiction of universities. This works against the element of diversity.

The diversity of students and faculty is nearly absent in Indian universities, except in some central universities and IITs. Western universities believe that diversity, besides critical mass, is the key to excellence, innovation and inventions while we have failed to abolish jurisdiction and boundaries between universities even in our new education policy.

The third character that enhances the research potential of all world-class universities is the quantum of funding and multiple sources of funding by the state, corporates and endowments, to create the state of the art infrastructure and research facilities in laboratories.

Sharing facilities

Universities in the west join to create common and sharing facilities that not only save resources but promote inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional research groups. The emphasis in sharing resources, inter-institutional programmes and research, a collaboration between national research laboratories and smaller Indian universities should have found a place in NEP.

Needless to say that investment of less than 0.5% of GDP will keep all our dreams at bay. The government must increase the spending on education to 4-6% of GDP in coming years.

The schools and faculty of all the world-ranking universities enjoy great financial and academic autonomy with minimum governmental controls and regulations, and greater trust.

Our system starts with bureaucratic controls, lack of autonomy, and distrust and suspicion between bureaucratic administration and the faculty. A major emphasis on these reforms in our NEP would have gone a long way to bring the desired changes that we dream of.

While there is no doubt that the new NEP has made several game-changing reforms to make our education system more globally competitive benefiting the youth, it has not adequately addressed to bring a change in four of the above crucial characteristics to create world-ranking universities at par with the top 10 or 50 of existing global universities.

(The writer is former Vice-Chancellor, Kashmir University, Pondicherry Central University and BSA University, Chennai, and former Member, UGC)