Delhi
Belated awakening
In the final year of its three-year term, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has something to cheer about. Several of its recommendations on higher education reform have somewhat belatedly been accepted by New Delhi. Among them: oblique acknowledgement of its plea to establish an independent regulatory authority for higher education by constituting the Prof. Yash Pal review committee for assessing the role of the UGC and other statutory bodies including AICTE and Medical Council of India; rolling out of four new IITs and one IIM this year together with proposed 14 world-class universities; and promoting 16 additional universities and four IITs and six IIMs during the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) period. This is some solace for NKC and its high-profile chairman, the Chicago-based telecom switches tycoon Sam Pitroda whose education reform recommendations have been consistently blocked by Left-leaning Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh who resents NKC’s intrusions into education, which he regards as his private turf.
Therefore at a crowded press conference held in Delhi on March 28, the HRD minister didn’t acknowledge NKC while announcing the sites of the four IITs, one IIM and proposed 14 Central universities. He repeatedly emphasised that these decisions were taken by the PMO (prime minister’s office).
According to HRD ministry sources, of the proposed four IITs, three  in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar  will become operational this year with an initial intake of 120 students while IIM Shillong will also admit its first batch of 60 students this year. The proposed IIT in Himachal Pradesh  the fourth  is unlikely to become operational this year. Other states which will inaugurate their first IITs during the Eleventh Plan period are Orissa, MP, Gujarat and Punjab. States offered new IIMs are Tamil Nadu, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Haryana.
Quite obviously all this will cost a pretty penny with the total outlay for each new IIT with an intake capacity of 860 students projected at Rs.760 crore, and for each IIM with an intake capacity of 180 students, Rs.210.25 crore. "This year Rs.50 crore for IITs and Rs.10 crore for an IIM have been provided. For this year, IIT Kota, Rajasthan will function from the IIT-Delhi campus," says R.P. Agarwal, higher education secretary in the HRD ministry. Moreover two IISERs (Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research) will be sited in Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram with a first batch intake of 75 students each admitted in June. A sum of Rs.150 crore has been provided for each of these institutions. The estimated cost for infrastructure of each Central university with a school of medicine, and an intake capacity of about 12,700 students, is estimated at Rs. 720 crore spread over a period of nine years. All these new institutes/ universities will be funded by the Central government (excluding land cost).
According to Agarwal, the ministry has also drawn up a 20-point plan to ensure faculty shortages don’t stymie the Congress-led UPA government’s higher education capacity expansion plan. "We’ve thought about it and have drawn a comprehensive plan. The retirement age of faculty has been raised to 65 years; lectures and pedagogies developed by IITs and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore will be videographed and distributed free of cost to faculty of the new institutions under NPTEL (National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning) and NRI professors will be attracted with Ramanujan Fellowships of Rs.5 lakh per annum for research projects besides a salary package of Rs.50,000-plus per month. Similarly Indian professors will be given an additional Rs.20,000 as salary and grant of Rs.5 lakh for research under the Bose Fellowship scheme," he says.
Towards the end of its term in New Delhi, the UPA government has finally become energised about higher education. But whether this will translate into votes for the Congress and its allies in the forthcoming general election is a moot point.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Ranking proposal debate
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)  the largest pan-India school examination board  is considering a proposal to rank its affiliated schools on the basis of their students’ performance in mathematics and science. The rationale of the move, according to CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly, is to help schools "brand" themselves better and compete more effectively interna-tionally. Under the proposed system of ranking, each school will present 20 of its best students from classes III, IV and VIII for a special test. Their scores in the test will serve as the criterion for ranking schools.The proposal has sparked off a debate among teachers and parents of some of the 9,581 schools affiliated with CBSE worldwide. The Indo-Asian News Service has reported a debate in the United Arab Emirates, which has 50 CBSE-affiliated schools.
For the most part, the debate centres on whether only two subjects should be included in the ranking test, and whether it is fair to rank schools which differ vastly in the quality of infrastructure, the background of their pupils, and their access to learning tools. "There is every reason why this debate should be encouraged, and why it ought to be greatly extended and deepened," says Janaki Rajan, professor in the department of education at Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi, who has had long years of experience working with state education boards. "In my view, the proposal is dangerously misguided. It will encourage the worst forms of elitism, strengthen the growing obsession with ‘objective’ tests, and deflect from comprehension, knowledge and understanding which are at the core of education."
According to Rajan, the ranking proposal seems geared to help pupils (or rather their parents) decide which schools to choose in preparation for entry into science and engineering colleges or professional courses abroad. It is also heavily biased against the humanities and social sciences, she argues.
Even this bias pales into insignificance when the reality of objective testing and the proliferating phenomenon of ‘teaching to test’ rather than ‘teaching to educate’ is taken into account. Surveys indicate that an overwhelming majority of students enrolled in CBSE-affiliated and other elite schools also attend coaching classes or take private tuition. Most follow ‘guides’ and kunjis as shortcuts to serious learning from textbooks, which involves a struggle to understand the subject rather than to mug up answers and regurgitate them. Such career-conscious or career-obsessed students are coached in the techniques of anticipating what kind of questions might be asked, and in managing the time available to maximise their score. Many educationists also charge CBSE with deviating or departing from its original mandate, which was never to act as a central agency designing curricula or holding examinations, but to assist state-level education boards with the latest developments in pedagogy and examination methods with a view to improving the reach and quality of education. They emphasise that the CBSE-affiliated school system accounts for less than 3 percent of all pupils in India who attend more than 1.2 million schools. It largely affiliates private schools, although it also includes a limited number of government-run secondaries. And yet, it sets the agenda, including the curriculum and syllabus, for a majority of school boards simply because of its upstream linkage to professional courses through CBSE-set entrance examinations.
They allege a nexus between the CBSE, elite schools, designers and setters of examination papers, and authors of ‘guide books’, which caters to a minuscule proportion of school students looking for professional careers on the strength of their parents’ ability to spend large sums by way of coaching class fees, in addition to extortionate monthly school fees that run into several multiples of India’s average annual per capita income.
Perceptive educationists fear that the CBSE’s proposed ranking system will further aggravate maths phobia or even aversion to PCM (physics, chemistry and mathematics) which is widely prevalent among Indian students, driving them to utter despair, and often to suicide.
Praful Bidwai (Delhi)
West Bengal
Primary neglect
West Bengal chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, rarely publicly eats humble pie. Yet at the 19th congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), held at Coimbatore from March 28-April 3, when the subject of ‘education for all’ came up for discussion, that’s what he had to do. At the two-day CPI(M) conclave, Bhattacharjee had to suffer scathing criticism from his fellow partymen for publicly conceding that West Bengal’s CPI(M)-led Left Front government, which has ruled the state since 1977, is way behind in implementing the Centre’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)  Education for All  primary education programme.
SSA is India’s flagship programme for achievement of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time-bound manner. As earnest of India’s commit-ment to the MDG, the Constitution of India (Eighty Sixth Amendment) Act 2002 was passed by Parliament making State (i.e government) provision of free and compulsory education to all six-14 year old children a fundamental right.
Currently SSA is being implemented in 50:50 partnership with state governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1 million habitations. The programme mandates state governments to start new schools in those habitations which do not have schooling facilities and strengthen existing school infrastructure through provision of additional classrooms, toilets, drinking water, maintenance and school improvement grants. Moreover under the programme the calibre of existing teachers is to be strengthened by extensive training, grants for developing teaching-learning materials, and by strengthening the academic support structure at the cluster, block and district levels.
If Bhattacharjee is contrite, his cabinet colleague in charge of school education Partha De, isn’t. He flatly refuses to accept the Centre’s statistic that 50.54 percent of six-14 year old children in West Bengal have never attended any of West Bengal’s 50,275 government primaries (including upper primaries), of which 15 percent are single classroom institutions and 37 percent have more than 60 children per class, according to National University for Educational Planning and Administration data.
"The actual progress of SSA in the state is not as bad as what is being portrayed by the Centre. The pattern and criteria of assessment followed by the Centre are completely different from what is being followed in the state. It is due to this difference in the process of assessment that the state is being depicted as a poor performer," he says.
According to the Union HRD ministry, the reasons behind West Bengal’s failure to implement SSA are: parents’ indifference to sending children to school, wipespread illness of children, shortage of teachers and poor infrastructure facilities in schools. But De is unmoved: "In order to counter the misleading figures (sic) of the Centre, my department is conducting a series of surveys. Preliminary studies show that our figures contradict those furnished by the Centre."
Given that the Left Front government is in denial of the abysmal condition of primary education in the state where the ratio of upper primaries to primary schools is a pathetic 5.28 percent and 26 million citizens are comprehensively illiterate, it’s doubtful if the MDG goal of education for all will be met in West Bengal. According to the West Bengal Primary Teachers’ Association, primary schools get only Rs.47 per month from the state government to cover "contingencies".
So where’s the money allocated by the Centre going? In Midnapore district, Prabal Maity, district project officer (SSA) says he gives the SSA amounts to the sub-inspector of schools (primary education), but cannot say how these funds have been utilised.
Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)
Maharashtra
Recurring strikes fever
Rising disaffection within the medical students community in Maharashtra (pop. 96 million) has aroused fears of a decline in the number of post-secondary students entering the state’s 13 government medical colleges. During the past one year, medical students have struck work on six occasions causing great inconvenience to the public, as they provide OPD (out patient department) services in government hospitals as part of their study programmes. Moreover postgrad students provide in-hospital free treatment to the public. Nevertheless once again on April 14, the Medical Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) struck work for six days protesting a decrease in postgraduate medical seats in government medical colleges which have been reduced to 411 this year from 653 last year.
This capacity reduction is the result of the state government’s Directorate of Medical Education and Research failing to maintain a faculty-student ratio of 1:1 for postgrad programmes as mandated by the Medical Council of India (MCI).
On April 20, the strike was called off following verbal assurances by health minister Dilip Walse-Patil that faculty vacancies in government colleges will be filled up soon. "We have made it clear that there is no intention to reduce the number of seats. But we had to follow guidelines of the Bombay high court which has asked us to maintain MCI guidelines after we challenged them in court. We are now awaiting the final judgement and hopefully the Maharashtra government and MCI will sort out this issue soon," says Walse-Patil.
Following the end of the latest strike called by MARD, termination notices which were issued to around 100 resident doctors in Nagpur who participated in the strike have (predictably) been withdrawn. "We agree that the public is affected by our going on strike. But we do so only after all negotiations with the government fail," says Ravikant Singh a spokesperson of MARD.
The root cause of the frequent strikes and turmoil within the medical students community is the reluctance of medically qualified faculty to accept teaching positions in government colleges which offer poor salary packages and abysmal infrastructure.
Every year 60-70 faculty flee to teach in private medical colleges where they are offered much higher remuneration and emoluments. This annual exodus skews the teacher-pupil ratios mandated by MCI and prompts the state government to reduce the annual intake into postgrad programmes. Every year an estimated 10,000 MBBS students write the entrance examination for admission into postgrad medical courses, of whom only 411 are admitted into government colleges.Against this backdrop it’s hardly surprising that there is constant disaffection in the ranks of medical students, medical interns, medical teaching staff and MARD on varying issues  students protesting against the internship period being extended to two years, teaching staff demanding higher pay and the reduction of intake in postgraduate programmes.
This constant turmoil within the medical fraternity hits the poor, obliged to patronise government hospitals, hard. With doctor-patient ratios in government hospitals touching 1:1,000, a decrease in the number of postgrad seats means less doctors on duty. "If the postgraduate education intake is not increased, government hospitals will soon be reduced to primary healthcare centres," warns Dr. Shailesh Mohite, general secretary of the Teachers’ Welfare Association.
Moreover in the longer term the supply of specialised medical practitioners into the national pool  which is already running dry given the average 60:100,000 doctor-patient ratio countrywide  will go from bad to worse.
Vidya Sunderesan (Mumbai)
Uttar Pradesh
Rising suicides fear
Before Priya Bose (14) hanged herself on March 30 she was just another friendly student of the City Montessori School (CMS), Lucknow. But driven to anxiety by poor performance in her final exams, this class VIII student of one of the city’s most highly rated schools, hung herself from the ceiling fan behind locked doors. "I am doing this because I am fed up and irritated with life. Nobody but I, am to be held responsible. Sorry Ma," read her poignant suicide note.A day later, Pinki Lal (17) who had just finished writing her board examinations at New Public School was found hanging from a fan in her room. And on April 3 Abhishek Tiwari, a class XII student of CMS, was driven to suicide after successive failure of his science practical exam.
Since Bose’s suicide, 20 teenagers in Lucknow (pop. 2.5 million) have taken their own lives, causing near panic within the administration, schools, parents and counsellors in the administrative capital of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh (pop. 180 million).
Though with 3,099 suicide cases reported in 2006, UP ranks 20th on the list of states with the maximum number of suicides (way behind West Bengal and Maharashtra which top the list with 15,725 and 15,495 respectively), the state has been experiencing rising incidence of student suicides. Between 2002 and 2007 there were 91, 105, 143, 93, 121 and 95 student suicides in UP, with academic stress cited as the sixth most common of the 22 causes of self-inflicted homicide.
According to A.K. Misra, principal education secretary in the state government secretariat, the phenomenon is rooted in the basic inability of the education system to cater to the demands of a large population. "Of the 16,000 Plus Two colleges in UP, only 160 can lay credible claim to offering quality education. Thus only five percent of those with aspirations will be able to access them. With private schools having become completely profit and result oriented, students are worried about whether they will be allowed to write the board exam or will be held back so that school results are not adversely affected. There is no getting away from the fact that we need swift policy changes or our children will be driven to meltdown," warns Misra.
Given the rising incidence of depression and suicidal tendencies among students in high aspirational middle class households, psychologists and counsellors urge parents, teachers and elders not to ignore tell-tale warning signs. "What a child says is just as important as what she doesn’t say and by keeping a close watch on children, parents can preempt suicides," says Krishna Dutt, clinical psychologist at Lucknow’s Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University. Overt warning signs include radical changes in daily routine, withdrawal from family and friends, lack of or excessive sleep, self-destructive statements, excessive fault finding, neglect of personal grooming, preoccupation with death and poor academic performance.
Somewhat belatedly, the state government’s education department has circulated a list of do’s and dont’s to school managements. Among them: appointment of full-time counsellors to engage parents and students; mandatory quarterly meetings between parents and teachers; a warning to schools which expel students who perform poorly in exams and de-recognition of schools which are repeat offenders. Simultaneously a curriculum review committee (constituted in February 2008) is examining ways and means to trim the syllabus of the state- run UP Board of Secondary Examination.
Student suicides in the state traditionally peak after declaration of board results. This year UP board exams were taken by 464,000 students, of whom more than 10 percent dropped out because of strict anti-copying vigilance. Educationists are worried that the results (to be declared in the first week of June) will be poorer than last year’s due to the anti-copying drive. Last year 158 students committed suicide in the state over poor board exam results, and the fear is that this year the number could be higher.
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)
Tamil Nadu
Levelling down directive
Aroused out of its slumber following strident and continuous protests from industry leaders about the poor quality of arts and science graduates churned out by the state’s 450 arts and science colleges, the Tamil Nadu state government has unveiled a plan to upgrade them. Last month (April) higher education minister K. Ponmudy announced that the government proposes to introduce a choice-based credit system (CBCS) in all the 450 government, aided, self-financing and autonomous colleges in the state from the next academic year starting in June to equip students with industry-oriented skills and make them employable. Essentially, CBCS offers students the freedom to design their own curriculum, pursue skill-oriented elective subjects of their choice, migrate to other colleges mid course and even transfer credits from one institution to another.While welcoming CBCS as a flexible system which has already been adopted by a few autonomous colleges in the state in principle, academics in Chennai particularly of autonomous colleges, are dismayed by the simultaneous imposition of guidelines mandating a uniform curriculum for core subjects and a common course structure for undergrad programmes formulated by the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE). The course structure designed by TANSCHE on the lines of the model introduced by the Bharathidasan University in Tiruchirapalli two years ago, divides the study programme into five parts. Of a total of 140 credits for the three-year undergrad degree, 60 credits need to be earned in core subjects and the rest are distributed among languages, electives and non-major courses such as environment studies, value-education, skills-based elective courses and study of other languages, and extension activities. The study of English language has been extended to two years to improve the communication skills of students. But simultaneously learning Tamil is also compulsory for two years  a proposal which has outraged academics of autonomous colleges which admit students from other states and abroad
Principals of autonomous colleges argue that uniformity of syllabus and course structure contradicts the concept of autonomy and the prime objective of CBCS, which is to make curriculums flexible and variable. Many progressive autonomous colleges have already introduced innovations in their curriculum to offer students supplementary skills development programmes and are unprepared to surrender the freedom to design their own curriculums to conform with a common minimum standard. Moreover they are also apprehensive about imposing Tamil on non-Tamil and foreign students who may choose not to study in their institutions if the language is made compulsory. They also argue that not all aided and unaided colleges have the physical infrastructure and faculty to implement the CBCS."I totally oppose uniformity of syllabus as it erodes autonomy and the distinctiveness of universities. Academic autonomy should be given to all universities to draft their own syllabus based on their faculty and infrastructure strengths. In 2002, the University Grants Commission formulated a model curriculum for nationwide implementation by universities but it was strongly resisted as an intrusion on academic autonomy and was ultimately withdrawn," says Dr. R. Sethuraman, vice-chancellor of the SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur.
Informed academics who have experimented with CBCS also agree that autonomous colleges should not be subject to standardisation norms fixed by government. "CBCS is a flexible model and cannot be applied to all universities and colleges in a uniform manner. Though minimum standards can be prescribed, every college should be allowed to innovate and introduce new programmes and pedagogies. Therefore TANSCHE’s proposals should be made applicable only to government and government-aided colleges to maintain minimum standards," says Prof. S.P. Thyagarajan, former vice-chancellor of Madras University and currently director of research at the Chennai-based Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Hospital.
Quite clearly, the state government’s interpretation of the CBCS is contrary to the objectives of the UGC which recommended the concept so that arts and science colleges can break out of the rigid and compartmentalised system and expand their curriculums to make students industry-ready. The wooden application of rules devised to raise the rock bottom standards of government and aided colleges to autonomous institutions which have sought  and merit  autonomy because of their superior academic standards, would be a clear case of levelling down, rather than upwards.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)
Karnataka
Much ado about nothing
There’s a storm in a teacup in Karnataka (pop. 57 million) over the prevalent practice of colleges levying extra tuition fees to coach already enrolled students for all-India competitive exams. According to several news reports in Bangalore-based dailies, privately managed PU (pre-university) colleges in the city are charging their students between Rs.10,000-20,000 to prepare them for exams such as IIT-JEE (Indian Institutes of Technology Joint Entrance Examination), CAT (Common Admission Test), the Karnataka state government’s CET (Common Entrance Test) for admission into professional colleges, AIEEE (All-India Engineering Entrance Examination) etc.The practice has aroused the indignation of some academics, particularly Left-leaning intellectuals in the state who say that the levy of additional coaching fees by PU colleges is not justifiable and against state legislation. According to them, colleges levying additional coaching fees are violating the Karnataka Education Act, 1983 and the guidelines of the Karnataka Board of Pre-University Education.
"It’s morally unjustifiable for college managements to charge extra for such coaching as it’s their duty to prepare students to face competitive examinations. Usually in competitive examinations questions are based on the regular syllabus. Then why do students need extra coaching for the same syllabus? If the PU colleges have a good teaching system then students would not have to spend extra amounts on private tutorials," says M.S. Thimappa former vice-chancellor of Bangalore University.
S.G. Hegde, commissioner of the PU Board, endorses this point of view: "PU Board guidelines and the Karnataka Education Act forbid college managements from taking special classes for such exams. Even if they do conduct special coaching classes they shouldn’t charge their students additionally. We will take action against such colleges," he warns.
However college manage-ments justify levying additional fees for entrance exams tuition, stating that students otherwise would have to pay exorbitant charges to private coaching centres. "We are not forcing students to pay additional fees. We are offering them a cheaper option. Moreover it saves them travel time as they get everything under one roof," says a spokesperson of Vision PU College.
According to PU Board sources, a growing number of colleges offer marginally more intensive tuition during regular class hours and charge huge sums depending on the entrance exam opted for by students. At best one additional teacher is employed per class to help out. For instance at Bangalore’s Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain College Rs.18,000 is charged to IIT aspirants in addition to the Rs.18,600 tuition fee per year payable by PU science students. Despite repeated calls and assurances, the corporate communications department of the college refused to comment on the issue.
Perceptive students are unanimous that paying an additional Rs.18,000 to the Mahaveer Jain College for questionable quality coaching for the highly competitive all-India entrance exams doesn’t make economic sense. "The quality of faculty and teaching in front rank coaching schools such as FITJEE and Career Launcher is far superior since they employ highly paid tutors including IIM and IIT graduates. True they charge more, but they regularly get their students into IITs, IIMs and other top institutions. What Jain College does is charge twice for the same education. They don’t hire any special faculty for coaching. It’s a racket," says a student who preferred to remain anonymous.Nevertheless the indignation of a clutch of academics in Bangalore about the coaching option offered by several PU colleges to their students is much ado about nothing because it’s only an option  and is far from compulsory. Moreover they offer the advantage of a low-cost option. Therefore as in all else, caveat emptor (‘buyer beware’).
Mekhala Roy (Bangalore)