Dr. D. Mukhopadhyay
The economic development and growth of any country is significantly related to knowledge based innovations and the same is keenly associated with the quality of human capital it possesses. Higher education is the contribution of Universities and the quality and effectiveness of higher education delivery system is the prime mover in this direction. There are more than seven hundred Universities in India and the academic standard and quality of research leading to conferment of the Doctorate Degrees is not uniform among them but there is noteworthy variation though all of them are under the control and supervision of a common authority which is by and large the University Grants Commission. Moreover, research is not highly incentivized and encouraged in India. In India, people try for a decent employment after obtaining a Degree from a University and majority of the learners cannot afford to sustain unemployment due to poor financial support from the family and Government is also not found to be proactive in this context. Simply speaking, there are about 1.5 lakhs researchers in India compared to about 10 lakhs in China. Hardly any learner wants to have life long career in research. The number of researchers in India is 157 per million which is 1/50th of the corresponding figure of south Korea and the same is 1/30th of the corresponding figure for the United States of America and Japan. The research and development outlay per capita is 1/100th of South Korea and the same is highly insignificant in comparison to global level.
Indian Research organizations are heavily controlled and bureaucratized and as a consequence growth in progress for scientific research is badly affected. Universities are not given due attention for creation of conducive research friendly environment. There are many Universities who do not have the basic scientific laboratories for conducting routine academic experiments. These are the primary reasons as to why the academic standard is of wide variation among the Indian Universities. Universities should be transformed into a lifelong learning centre rather than a Degree giving institution. Universities need to transform into knowledge hub from being mere information delivery organizations.
Universities should be made as the centers for cultivation of knowledge, hub for critical thinking and creativity for overall upliftment and development of the society. Sustainable development is possible only when our Universities shall be able to act as the catalysts for generating intellectual capital. Under the circumstances, perhaps the concept of model University may work for India. The administrators shall be nobody other than the facilitators, students shall be encouraged to be lifelong learners and University staff shall be supporting machinery in this framework. The Universities shall be student-centric and the teachers shall be remain engaged in knowledge creation and cultivation of research oriented temperament in the Universities under the conceptual framework of model University. The students and research scholars and the teachers should be given adequate weightage as the main stakeholders of the higher education delivery system. Universities are required to be global and not local degree shop. They are to develop their capacity to undertake revision of the syllabi from time to time keeping pace with the contemporary requirements. The Universities are to have global outlook. In this context, it may be mentioned that Universities should have online learning centers, massive open online courses (MOOCs), Edx programmes launched and introduced by highly world reputed Universities like MIT, Harvard University, Stanford University and many more. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide free access to many time honored and value adding courses at a an affordable price.
Most of the Universities should be made residential and unitary in character in order to deliver the quality education which can be helpful in enriching intellectual and human capital. Quality learning is dependent of quality teaching . Indian Universities suffer from many maladies and few of them are absence of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, low level of industry and corporate involvement in academic delivery system, shortage of competent teachers, obsolete pedagogy and curricula, lack of accountability of the teachers, lack of being students’ friendliness etc. Moreover, teaching is hardly separated from other administrative and research activities. Excellence in higher education is highly desirable and the term ”excellence ” is frequently used in the context of higher education delivery mechanism but at the same time it is neither defined nor quantified. Anything not quantified cannot be measured and something that cannot be measured cannot be monitored and controlled to the extent of requirement. There are several independent variables such as infrastructure, quality of teachers, academic environment, classrooms conditions, use of technology in delivery process, quality of library and knowledge resource centers on which quality of education provided by a University depends upon. Leadership and quality of the leader does have influential impact on education delivery system. Vice-chancellor is the chief executive of the University and there is complete centralized decision making system in the University. It has been seen that in most of the cases Vice-Chancellors are incompetents and their appointments are politically motivated. As a consequence they are defocused from academic excellence and in most of the time they do not believe in democracy but they try to manage the show in autocratic manner and it is an impediment in the process of upbringing intellectual capability of the teaching fraternity and teaching community. The Academic council and syndicate are the two governing authorities of a University but practically they remain defunct in true sense. It is only the single trait of the Vice Chancellor that governs the University. The term of appointment of a Vice Chancellor varies in between three to five years and it is difficult for him or her to know everything and every nitty-gritty of the University . Decentralization in decision making process is urgently called for in order to enhance the quality in day to day academic governance. Most of the Universities suffer from poor academic governance.
Therefore, it is difficult to achieve academic excellence by a single person but it needs an effective and efficient team work. Excellence in academic delivery is possible only when there is top class vice chancellors, top class professors, favorable and conducive working environment, encouragement in research, job security, decent salary and incentives, adequate funding, academic freedom, intellectual debate and deliberation and self governance faculty. A University possessing all these attributes may be considered to be a model University and a model University can be in assistance of having outlook towards globalized education. We need to set our benchmark and define the parameters to measure excellence in the context of India and an in Indian socio-economic context and not American or any other economically advanced Country. Our resources are scarce and we have to achieve and maintain the standard within the the circumference of bounded rationality. The Government of India is to give a serious thought to the concept of building model University with global outlook. India has to have excellence in education cultivation and knowledge dissemination and the 21st Century is knowledge based society and not information based society. India shall remain developing or under developed if she cannot overcome the mediocrity syndrome. The need of the hour is to create model Universities of quality and not quantity and let India have a vision for model Universities for globalized education system and perhaps this is necessary for reaping the benefit of demographic dividend. Young men should be adequately equipped with time-honoured knowledge and intellect in order to ensure sustainable economic development. The sole objective of the Model University should be only cultivation of knowledge and dissemination of the same to society so that Indian society can compete with rest of the world with dignity.
(The author is Professor of Management, School of Business, Faculty of Management, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra, Jammu & Kashmir)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel