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Journalism of Courage
The HRD ministrys decision to review and quality-check the recent rash of deemed universities has landed 44 institutions in trouble. And as it happens,at least 11 were shooed in by the University Grants Commission,which completely disregarded the counsel of local experts in the states where these institutions were based.
When an institution is deemed to be a university,it enjoys near complete operational and financial autonomy. The UGC,which recommends them to the Centre,is responsible for keeping up educational standards. And that is where the UGC has transparently failed,as the new review committee has revealed,and undercut its own mandate. While only 29 institutions made the cut in the decades between 1956 and 1990,a staggering 36 were deemed to be universities in the last five years,empowered to set their own curriculum and terms of admission,fees,etc. There is a good reason for this sudden eruption of deemed universities encouraging educational entrepreneurship and quality,and credentialing them is important,given the patent need to expand higher education. In fact,many stellar institutions,from Birla Institute of Technology and Science,Pilani to Tata Institute of Social Sciences,Mumbai,have taken this route. But there is a bad reason,as is evident in the list of those cleared by the last HRD ministry no-name colleges that added a couple of courses and aspired to university status. Many state governments deemed institutions unfit to be universities because they failed to measure up in research and teaching standards. But according to the latest audit scrutiny report of the UGC,at least four more institutions did not meet eligibility requirements,but the UGC rammed them through anyway,despite the explicit objections of expert panels in various states. These institutions fell short in several ways,like not maintaining a minimum corpus,or not having been around for the minimum 10 years.
What has this shown us? That education is too important to be left to our current education regulators,whether it is the All India Council for Technical Education,the Medical Council of India or the UGC.
Indias higher learning institutes have to be pried away from the grip of flabby,inept and often outright corrupt regulators which enjoy great discretionary power with minimal accountability. Replacing this regime with a transparent super-regulator,and making sure that money and influence cannot twist our educational system to its own ends,is the obvious course of action.
