A UGC communication to central universities on December 28, 2021, has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Citing government instructions, it said that courses should be taught based on demand from students and the number of students attending them. It also said that a rationalisation of all departments be done and teaching staff be aligned with the number of students enrolled in such courses.
According to the letter addressed to the registrars of all central universities, the ministry of education conveyed that “there are some departments which were started in central universities without any assessment of the number of students interested in such courses”.
The letter by V Talreja, undersecretary, UGC, states that the Department of Higher Education has already fixed the norms for the number of departments that can be opened in a university in its initial five years keeping in mind the number of students expected to join it.
Teachers’ organisations have voiced concern over UGC’s notice. The Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF) at Delhi University criticised this move and said it was robbing them of their autonomous status. They said universities cannot customise content to meet the demands of students.
In a statement on January 4, DTF said that the government should not be guided by job prospects only while deciding such matters. It will lead to job losses and weaken language and social science departments.
DTF also said that it highlighted the farcical propaganda of the government of promoting languages in the National Education Policy 2020.
The statement further said that it would create a burden on ad-hoc teachers in Delhi University, of which there are nearly 4,500. According to DTF, the government is urging universities to provide up to 40% of their courses online, which might result in a decrease in workload.
The directives of the education ministry, if implemented, will push the central universities to close several courses that do not have high enrolments. The teachers said that academic decisions for universities are now taken by the integrated finance division of the ministry as opposed to the executive and academic councils of universities.
However, according to UGC officials, the Commission was only acting in accordance with the rule laid out by the government which made it mandatory for varsities to introduce and provide courses only after conducting a comprehensive evaluation of demands by students.
Defending the notice, a UGC official said on condition of anonymity that apprehensions over the latest UGC communication were misplaced as it was a repetition of existing guidelines that central universities should launch courses and departments after a thorough assessment of demand from students. The official also rejected suggestions that the directive would disproportionately hit language and social science departments.
Typically, North American universities require students to achieve both breadth and depth of knowledge across disciplines in a chosen subject area, known as a major. Thus, students of arts or humanities are required to take some science courses and vice versa. Normally, students are free to choose their particular electives from among a wide range of courses offered by their university as long as they possess the knowledge to understand the subject matter being taught. Elective courses are also offered in the third and fourth years of university, though the choice is more confining and would depend on the particular major the student has chosen.
In February last year, a similar excuse was proposed for IITs by the ministry. Headed by education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, a council of IITs had recommended that they cut down teaching staff.
The National Education Policy of India 2020 (NEP 2020), which was approved by the cabinet on July 29, 2020, outlines the vision of a new education system for India This policy replaces the previous National Policy on Education, 1986. The policy is a comprehensive framework for elementary education to higher education as well as vocational training in both rural and urban India. After the release of the policy, the government clarified that no one would be forced to study any particular language and that the medium of instruction would not be shifted from English to any regional language. The language policy in NEP is a broad guideline and is advisory in nature and it is up to states, institutions, and schools to decide on the implementation.
The National Education Policy’s ambitions for education and call for greater autonomy to higher educational institutions is handicapped by several factors, from shortage of funds to challenges of inequality.
The Department of Higher Education takes care of one of the largest higher education systems of the world, just after the US and China. The Department is engaged in bringing world-class opportunities of higher education and research to the country so that students are not found lacking when facing an international platform. For this, the government has launched joint ventures and signed MoUs to help Indian students benefit from world opinion. The technical education system in the country can be broadly classified into three categories—central government-funded institutions, state government/state-funded institutions and self-financed institutions.
Education in India is primarily managed by the State-run system, which falls under the command of the government at three levels—central, state and local. In a country as large as India, this means that the potential for variations between states in policies, plans, programmes and initiatives for elementary education is vast. Periodically, national policy frameworks are created to guide states in their creation of state-level programmes and policies. State and local government bodies manage the majority of primary and upper primary schools and the number of government-managed elementary schools is growing. Simultaneously, the number and proportion managed by private bodies is growing.
Poorly resourced public schools which suffer from high rates of teacher attrition may have encouraged the rapid growth of private (unaided) schooling in India, particularly in urban areas. Private schools are divided into two types—recognised and unrecognised. Government recognition is an official stamp of approval and for this, a private school is required to fulfil a number of conditions. However, most of those which get recognition, actually fulfil all of them. Private schools in India are highly regulated in terms of what they can teach, in what form they can operate and all other aspects of the operation.
Another challenge presently is that most educational institutes have shifted to online learning platforms due to Covid-19. For a developing country like India where technical constraints like suitability and availability of devices is there, this poses a serious challenge.
—By Shivam Sharma and India Legal Bureau