On Indian Universities

Note: A version of this blog was posted on my Tumblr.

Today, I had an interesting discussion with a fellow Indian post-doc here at UBC. Since both of us are at a stage where we are about to start looking for academic jobs, the discussion moved towards the university system in India. Both of us were in agreement that the way universities are currently administered actually does grave injustice to the young Indians that they are supposed to serve. I argued that as things stand today, there is just no quality control mechanism that can force these universities to reform or aspire for excellence. There are so many Indians aspiring for a university degree in the hope that it will help improve their social and financial status, that even the worst among the private universities, with barely any physical or intellectual infrastructure, manage to get many times more applicants for each available seat in every course. The situation in the public universities that charge almost nothing for a fee, the demand is unimaginable. Given this, the government is obligated not only to let these institutions survive despite their low standards but also to actively support their existence to manage the ever increasing demand and avoid riots on the streets. However, the government does have the power, both financial and administrative, to push the universities towards better quality. Problem is that they just don’t seem to think of it as a priority issue. And in a democracy nothing becomes a priority unless the voting public asks to make it one. If past experience is anything to go by, politicians in India do nothing to address an issue unless they are forced to by public pressure. And when they do want to make things happen, they do; the success of pulse polio campaign is a proof to that. In my opinion, one possible way to force this to happen is by imposing a penalty on the public for tolerating sub-standards in the institutions where they get degrees from. Let’s say the recruiting agencies do not consider the degrees from all the universities as equal. They could, for example, apply a normalizing factor that would put the degree issued by a good quality university at a higher level and pushes the one issued by a poor quality institution to a lower level. Such a normalizing factor could be developed by an accreditation agency like the NAAC. In fact, the entire function of UGC can be limited to assessing the different universities in the country to determine this normalizing factor for each university at regular intervals, instead of going around micromanaging universities. The union government can make it mandatory for all its departments, to begin with, to apply this normalization while assessing the applicants before any appointment. Government can also suggest the private sector employers to do the same. If people realize that the degree issued by a particular university is of no use to them in getting a job, they’ll hopefully pressure their local government to initiate the much needed reforms process. And eventually, probably in a couple of decades or so, our institutions might be in the same vicinity as the best in the world.

What do you think of this suggestion? Do you think it can work? Do you have any ideas that you think can help improve our universities’ standards? Do share. I would love to hear from you.

Campus and Politics?

That was the subject line of an email I received a couple of weeks ago from a shocked Canadian lab-mate with the following attachment. 

 

As you can see the image is a paper clip from a Malayalam language paper. For those who can't read Malayalam, here and here are some links to the news in English. While my colleague was shocked that an academic campus could become the playground for the mainstream political organizations to the extent that it could even result in bloodshed, the news didn't even surprise me. So much that, I didn't even bother reading beyond the headline (and I searched for the English news stories just for this blog). And my guess is that even in the printed papers, this news was probably in some interior nook amongst the matrimonial and obituary sections. That's how common such incidents are in school, college and university campuses of Kerala. I do not know much about student politics in many other parts of India but I have studied in two other neighbouring states of Kerala, in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In both these states, though there are student organizations affiliated to mainstream political parties just like in Kerala, their activities are pretty mellow and very rarely lead to violence, if ever at all. 

There are two major students' organizations in Kerala. SFI is affiliated to CPI(M) (and the now opposition LDF) and the KSU is affiliated to Indian National Congress (I) (and the now ruling UDF). Of these, SFI generally tends to invoke violence at the slightest provocation (here is an example). There are students' organizations affiliated to other political parties such as the BJP and IUML but are not as strong as these two which mainly derive their strength from the support of the consecutive LDF and UDF governments that change every 5 years. As the report in the above link points out, these organizations tend to function in consonance with the unions of teaching and non-teaching staff which themselves have political affiliations. Students are often forced to donate money and participate in their activities such as strikes and processions/marches which often turn violent resulting non-activist students getting injured and sometimes, even worse, getting killed. Since both the major political formations in the state have a vested interest in ensuring that these student orgs so that they can have a constant supply of fresh man power, no state government has ever tried to regulate their activities. 

The influence of vested political interests is not, however, limited only to the student bodies. It extends all the way through the teacher and staff unions up to the Vice-Chancellors (VCs). Most VCs are appointed not because of their academic or administrative accomplishment but due to their political and social affiliations. And these VCs don't even remain coy about their political links and often openly show off their political patronage even after assuming office. I know a person who is currently working as a Reader at the Calicut University (which, incidentally, is shut down due to competitive strikes by the SFI and KSU, one opposing the VC and the other supporting). This person had returned to India after two post-doctoral assignment, one in the US and the other in Germany. He had joined the Calicut University despite attractive offers from other private higher ed institutions. A few days after his appointment, he was approached with a membership by the staff union affiliated to the then ruling LDF. Since he was mostly bothered about doing research and teaching and wasn't even inclined towards a leftist ideology, he turned down the offer of membership. This set in motion a series of steps to harass him ultimately ending with termination of his appointment. The poor man had to go for a lengthy and costly legal battle with the University to get his job back, that too only after a change of government following state elections. This example is to demonstrate how the political-staff-student union nexus works in our academic campuses. They break anyone who is not ready to bend to their wishes, sometimes literally. 

All this is not that difficult to fix. As I said, there are states adjacent to Kerala where the politics of student and staff bodies is conducted without resorting to violence. It is also time to rethink if our academic campuses really require political activity at all. I am one of those who believes the primary purpose of universities and other academic establishments is to generate and disseminate knowledge. And the primary duty of the students is to learn as much as they can. Development of politically aware citizens can be restricted to the activities and organizations outside the campus. We can certainly design some other means to ensure student participation in the running of our institutions but that certainly should not be in anyway influenced by the vested interests of the political parties. Elimination of political interference is one basic and simple step that can have a cascading effect on the quality of our universities. Instead of ensuring that, our government keeps spending thousands of crores of taxpayer money to start more higher ed institutions that will all be plagued by the same problems and will ultimately fail to provide quality education to our students. It just saddening and infuriating at the same time. 

Well begun isn't always well-done

I recently came across an article in the careers section of the journal Science recently. Here is the link. This is one of those feel-good news write-ups. Especially so if you are interested in Indian science scenario, both as a member of the research community and as someone who takes pride in anything good happening in his country, even if those are few and far between. A point that is repeatedly made out by the author in the article is the need for labor law reforms to enable the research and higher education institutions to hire foreign researchers. An underlying, unstated assumption of such a line of thinking is that the homegrown talent in India is probably not good enough. Not surprising considering the fetish we Indians have for anything and everything that is imported. 
Over the past few years, there have been many schemes launched by the government in New Delhi to invigorate the research eco-system in the country. New institutes and central universities have been established, money has been showered on the  already established premier research institutes and the moon has been promised. There is no doubt that the country needs to reinvest in research to give a fresh impetus to economic growth and stay globally competitive. If anything, this reinvestment has been much delayed. It is alright to spend money but that should not be done without application of thought (as in this example). More importantly, it needs to be followed up by steps that bring about a change in the existing culture and attitude of our research community. Otherwise, the enthusiasm generated by the present investment, like with most schemes launched by our governments, will be short-lived and will not result in long-lasting gains for the country. In my opinion, the most important of these steps should be to restructure and reboot our state universities which is where most of the graduates in our country are trained. Establishing specialized research institutes is fine, but the number of Indian citizens who are directly influenced by these places is minuscule. Most people probably wouldn't even know of their existence. Money needs to be spent in such a way that it benefits the most people. After all, there is a strength in numbers!!! Another important step would be to popularize research as a main-stream career option. Make it less intimidating and more cool to be a researcher in popular imagination. It's probably time someone made an Indian version of Big Bang Theory. Does anyone know how to get in touch with Ekta Kapoor?