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Journalism of Courage
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced on June 1 that 16 new central universities will be established and that every state of India will have 8216;centres of excellence8217;. The PM believes that such centres of higher learning will act as role models for every other institution in every state and the quality of higher education will improve on the basis of leadership provided by central universities. Public policy makers have assumed that the existing central universities have succeeded in improving the quality of higher education and such a mechanism deserves to be replicated in 16 states, which are at present without such institutions. But have the existing central universities fulfilled these expectations?
The capital of the country, along with UP, has six central universities and it can be stated unequivocally that they do not stand on an equal footing as far as standards of education and research go. They are, in fact, not comparable with each other on any criterion of academic performance. Not just this. The existing central universities have a good number of 8216;non-performing8217; scholars. 8216;Good performers8217; are thus expected to co-exist with their incompetent colleagues.
Second, professional bodies can play a very significant role in identifying the 8216;meritorious8217; and differentiating them from those 8216;below standard8217;. But this is also not acceptable to universities and faculty members who start championing their 8216;autonomy8217; to counter the demand of 8216;their accountability8217;. Third, the University Grants Commission, at the behest of the education ministry8217;s bureaucracy, has played havoc with procedures to determine the levels of performance of individual faculty members.
Any move to create new central universities should be informed by the experiences of existing central universities. But this is easier said than done. The teaching faculty has generally resisted any attempt to 8216;differentiate8217; on the basis of performance. The notion of a formal equality among individual staff members has given birth to the system of mechanical uniformity and this has, in turn, given birth to complete non-accountability on the part of faculty members.
