A to do list for the incoming UGC chairman

After an eventful tenure of M. Jagadesh Kumar, the incoming UGC chairman has a few immediate pending issues that he or she needs to focus on. | Photo: Official X handle of UGC

The University Grants Commission (UGC), as the name suggests, was initially conceived to provide grants to higher education institutions in 1953. It evolved into an organization that is responsible for ‘coordination, determination, and maintenance of standards of university education’ alongside funding, when the UGC Act was passed in 1956.  With medical, legal, and even technical institutions (with varying degrees) out of its purview, the mandate remains truncated in practice with disastrous consequences for the sector. And the courts have only complicated matters.

Legislative vaccum

The NEP seeks to address this by creating different institutions for standard setting, accreditation (maintenance of standards) and funds under and overarching policy regime. That this demands a gargantuan legislative exercise seems to have been missed by everyone concerned with the result that despite the lapse of half a decade, no movement has been visible on the legislative front.

In the meantime, the UGC seems to be governed by letters, policy frameworks, and quasi-legal mandates with conditional funding tied to adherence to policies. Once in a while, a huge judicial battle ensues, like in the case of Deemed to be Universities, an anachronism that still lingers on, despite Viplav Sharma versus GOI. We also have GOI initiatives like RUSA (or is it PM USHA now), that eats into the ‘grants’ domain substantially.

The incoming UGC chairman would operate within this legislative vacuum, where the policy mandates splitting and subsuming its identity and functions into various units, under HERA, while there is no legislative progress on it. The UGC would continue to exist in some form or other, since it remains the core national agency responsible for standard setting and maintenance — a function it is uniquely mandated to perform.

Focus on larger issues

In an ideal world, the incoming chairman must focus on larger issues and there are quite a few ‘idea bombs’ the NEPS throws at higher education. Here are the big four.

Equity and Discrimination: This would be his first test. The supreme court has already granted leave to UGC to publish and proceed with the anti-discrimination policy. But the current draft is narrow and leaves the crucial elephant in the room. There are two major issues with the draft. First, it restricts caste discrimination as only happening to SC/ST and an is not broad basing discrimination. Second it does not address the elephant in the room, the other list syndrome’. One of the biggest means of discrimination is on the separate publication reserved list and common list. It is time we found a way to stop publication of separate lists and categories mentioned in any way once the candidate is in the system.

Promotion of Indian Knowledge system: There has been a plethora of policy measures on integrating IKS without a deeper discussion on what is IKS and how far it is different on an epistemological scale from other knowledge systems. There exists an Indian way of knowing and an indigenous way of doing. Both have undergone constant changes and evolution over the many millennia and, with the tremendous progress in western epistemology in the last few centuries there is no intellectual assessment of what is left of IKS that is truly unique and has value in the current context. There is current value in many domains like Ayurveda and there is historical value in many achievements of the past. Both need to be evaluated separately and integrated accordingly. That needs intellectual integrity of a very high order, not seen very much in the recent appointments. But if we do not want to be the laughingstock of the world then this exercise is imperative.

Recognition of Prior Learning: This is the elephant in the room. As early is 2014, the GOI mandated complete integration of vocational and general education in a credit-based format with appropriate credentialling of prior learning. But very little has moved in this direction operationally. The most important element is integrating skill and knowledge and removing the artificial distinction between the two. The deeply ingrained concept of ‘achut’ or the graded purity of profession would stand in the way of handling this, but must be addressed squarely. The current draft policy needs a complete overhaul, as of yesterday.

Admission fiasco: With its remit increasing by the day, the National Testing Agency is now the premier testing agency in the country. But it is totally understaffed. A recent report claims the agency has less than 15 permanent staff members and relies on private agencies massively to conduct the tests. There are issues of wrong questions, wrong marking schemes, and leakages on a recurring basis. In an opportunity starved nation like ours, this is a travesty. Fixing this must be the chairman’s first focus. Though the NTA does not come under the purview of the Chairman, his core test UGC -Net lies with NTA. Getting this right with or without NTA should his prime responsibility. Restoring the credibility of UGC-NET is non- negotiable.

In addition to the above four, there are major issues that front the current higher education regime like the immanent abolition of affiliation process, the creation of all universities as mega universities, promoting inter-disciplinary/ trans disciplinary education, creating value in the education process, addressing the increasing corporatization of education and raising cost of education and finally ensuring excellence in education. A tall order indeed!

(The author was founder-editor of Careers 360)