The joke called higher education

Reservations will not destroy higher education; the damage has already been done

I am as disappointed as Pratap Bhanu Mehta at the move to block almost 50 per cent of seats in institutions of higher education for SC/ST and OBC students 8216;Seats of power8217;, IE, April 7. I feel this is a superficial solution to end social inequities. But, unlike him, I do not see the increased presence of OBCs in my classroom as the destroyer of higher education.

Anyone who teaches outside the few elite universities of India will agree that we have made a joke of higher education. This mess has nothing to do with quotas. It is frustrating to teach when 50 per cent of students have not gone through the academic paces provided by anglicised and elite schools that frames higher education. Should we be angry with the architects of the quota system, or with those who have framed higher education in elite ways?

In most of our universities today we have academic programmes reaching out to the latest literature available in the field of social sciences and the sciences. We have faculty competent to handle these courses. But barring a handful of universities, we have students with little or no knowledge of the English language 8212; the international lingua franca of higher learning.

How do you develop first class skills as a historian when you cannot read a single secondary book on historiography? How can you participate in a group discussion if you are unable to read anything of standard in your subject because it comes in English? How can you compete with others who hold university degrees like yours but have had the privilege of elite schooling? And this elitist bias in our higher education affects all our students, not just OBCs and SC/STs. Having more deprived students in a classroom is not going to solve the problem. It is only going to make the job of teachers more frustrating and students will only end up being more frustrated.

It is a hypocritical state that opens up higher education for all and claims that degrees from all universities have parity. Yet, in practice, it is neither able to absorb all its highly educated in jobs, nor ensure non-discrimination when it comes to finding jobs. I worry about the future of my students each year as they receive their degrees. On paper they are at par with their counterparts from the better Indian universities. But in practice they cannot compete for the public and private sector jobs that their more privileged contemporaries can land.

Administrative red-tapism, poor infrastructure and lack of incentives for meritorious teachers gnaw our institutes of higher education from within. Barring a few elite universities, the infrastructure for teaching and supervision is pathetic. In an average Indian university merit and individual expertise is rarely harnessed to strengthen the department. There is nothing in this environment that motivates the student. Is it any surprise that in the last 20 years we have lost some of our best academics to the West? Again, a quota system that adds a few reserved category seats to the faculty can hardly lead to the feared crisis of higher education. Nor can it work wonders for those who today find themselves out of the loop.

The writer is associate professor, history, Jamia Millia, New Delhi