Lifelong lessons

 

Five American states — Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Alaska and Utah — have now dropped the requirement of a four-year college degree for most government jobs

The college degree is losing its shine right in the heart of the country that claims some of the best colleges in the world. Five American states — Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Alaska and Utah — have now dropped the requirement of a four-year college degree for most government jobs. The immediate trigger is no doubt the tight labour market. But as college tuition continues to rise and their enrolments continue to decline, opinion polls repeatedly reveal falling public faith and support for traditional higher education.

What Peter Drucker called the knowledge economy seems not to be working quite as well as when the term was doing popular rounds in the second half of the 20th century. Even so, the erosion of faith in traditional colleges in the United States of America remains a localised phenomenon. It does not necessarily indicate a loss of faith in higher education per se, just in its traditional method and venue of delivery. The knowledge worker most likely to continue being relevant is still someone immersed in knowledge, just capable of coursing through its rapidly changing waters through an entire lifetime rather than bearing an early, immutable stamp. Lifelong learning, that great liberal humanist expression, is now a corporate catchphrase owned by organisers of distance, continuing, and (the particularly lucrative) executive education. And with pandemic-accelerated logistical support behind, and the ongoing and impending wave of Artificial Intelligence right ahead, the giant called educational technology has expanded its reach to engulf much of that life of long learning. Certainly enough for the newsmagazine, Inside Higher Ed, to describe a recent crucial gathering of tech and finance business leaders at MIT as the “oncoming AI Ed-Tech tsunami”.

The onset of the tsunami is being particularly felt in post-industrial island states where the key resource is people. At 275 square miles and home to 5.4 million people, Singapore knows well what its key strength is — human capital. “The only thing Singapore has,” Gan Chee Lip, associate provost for undergraduate education at Nanyang Technological University, recently told the Times Higher Education, “without natural resources, is people.” It is natural that Singapore has taken lifelong learning more seriously than most other countries because without a future-ready workforce it will quickly lose its edge in the global economy. The SkillsFuture programme was introduced by the Singapore government in 2014, with the motto, “Develop Our People”. With the goal of providing Singaporeans with “opportunities to develop their fullest potential throughout life,” it gives every citizen aged 25 or older S$500 of credit that they can spend on further education or training. The programme has gained traction in the corporate world as it does not necessarily require employees to commit to a full-length academic programme but space out the learning as and when necessary. Universities have followed, with the National University of Singapore making the striking announcement in 2018 that all its alums will stay enrolled in the university for 20 years from admission, making its 300,000+ alums automatically eligible for its 700-odd continuing education courses, to which they can apply their government subsidies.

Innovative US institutions have been experimenting with the ‘fragmented’ college model for some time now. The Design School at Stanford initiated a six-year undergraduate degree a few years ago, which could be taken in instalments of two years each in different decades of one’s life. It is not quite clear what the success of that initiative has been, but what is clear is that the traditional model of college education is under significant pressure in the US, not just from unsympathetic politicians and an increasingly disinterested public but also from the rapid decline in numbers of college-age students, which is projected to reach a major crisis in 2025. Which, incidentally, means that these colleges will be more eager than ever to welcome fee-paying international students, particularly from Asia, from where applications continue to rise.

That the bachelor’s degree is being stretched and pushed in different directions is clear from its new incarnation in India’s National Education Policy, 2020. As we know by now, it offers four versions of undergraduate certification, attainable at the end of each of the first, second, third, and fourth years. This is a significant departure from the examination-driven, three-year structure that was the colonial inheritance of Indian universities from the University of London model. While the relevance of undergraduate research is acknowledged in the expanded, four-year degree, a productive fragmentation of this education seems to be the goal behind the early exit policies, with credits bankable and transferrable through the Academic Bank of Credit. The NEP seems torn between — sometimes productively and sometimes not so productively — the liberal, the professional, and the vocational — and the pluralisation of the undergraduate degree reflects this, to a similarly mixed effect.

But it is impossible to talk about the fragmentation, diminution or, for that matter, the obsolescence or lifelong expansion of the college degree without considering what this means for social mobility, particularly for those who need it the most. This was, indeed, the caveat behind Drucker’s knowledge society — the loss of manufacturing jobs to venues overseas, he had argued, would render the American unskilled worker jobless — as it did across the Rust Belt across the Midwest. The NEP committee, now working on the National Curriculum Framework, recently asked me to provide a brief definition of ‘knowledge’ that could be used to frame the policy discussion, and while trying to think of something that would be as expansive as it would be pluralistic — a sore need of the hour — I realised anew the porousness and amorphousness of the term, whether at the secondary or the post-secondary stage. And it is a problem of practice, not just philosophy. Knowledge and skill are just elements of the educational experience, and the college degree offers the making of a cohort, a community, and socio-professional networks that may just return to the exclusive possession of the born-elite if eroded beyond recognition. The biggest risk of the early-exit undergraduate degree is the early exit of the poorest college student.

Saikat Majumdar is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University

Source: The Telegraph, 24/05/23

Passive consumption: The growing commodification of education

 When the idea of inviting foreign universities was mooted in 2010, the then minister for human resource development had said that his objective was “to provide a Harvard Education” within India at a fraction of the cost. Implicit in this remark was the view that ‘Harvard Education’, hence by implication education itself, was a commodity; indeed his remark was of the same form as saying that he wanted ‘to provide a kilo of fish at one’s doorstep at a fraction of the cost’. This idea of providing ‘Harvard Education’, of course, was patently unrealistic, for no off-shoot of Harvard in India can ever be a clone of the original: if local academics are recruited as faculty, then they would forever be seeking to migrate from the off-shoot to the original, and if academics come to the off-shoot on a temporary basis from the original, then they would be more concerned with sight-seeing than with any serious academic activity. But the commodification of education that the proposal entailed was an assault on the very concept of education as an activity; the University Grants Commission is now taking this idea of inviting foreign universities and commodifying education much further.

Inviting foreign universities to set up off-shoots in India presumes two things: first, that education is a homogeneous activity which involves imparting an identical set of ideas no matter where such imparting occurs; second, that this imparting, which is the essence of education, occurs in a better manner at Harvard than at any Indian university, which is why creating such an off-shoot of Harvard and other well-known foreign universities is beneficial for Indian students.

Both these presumptions are wrong. Education does not entail imparting an identical set of ideas. For instance, an Indian student should have an awareness of the impact of colonialism on the Indian economy, for which he or she must have some exposure to the work of Dadabhai Naoroji, Romesh Chunder Dutt and other, recent, scholars; he or she, in short, must have some exposure to the view that underdevelopment is linked to the phenomenon of imperialism. But in Harvard and other such foreign universities, the faculty teaching development economics would scarcely have heard of Naoroji or Dutt, and colonialism would scarcely ever figure in the curriculum. A homogenisation of the curriculum, therefore, necessarily means imparting to Indian students an understanding of underdevelopment that is favoured by imperialism, and that institutions like Harvard typically advance, perhaps unwittingly.

In the social sciences, inviting foreign universities is thus tantamount to buying wholesale the imperialist obfuscations about slavery, colonial exploitation, economic ‘drain’ and the recurrent famines under colonial rule. Even as regards the natural sciences, the eminent British scientist, J.D. Bernal, was of the view that the course contents and curricula in universities in countries like India had to be different from those in British and American universities since our problems were so different. The presumption of homogeneity, in short, is completely incorrect.

Second, education is concerned not just with imparting a set of ideas to students; its objective, above all, must be to arouse questioning among students, for critical questioning is the source of creativity. The commodification of education — of which the invitation to foreign universities is an obvious manifestation — far from creating any questioning, actually destroys it. A commodity, after all, is a well-packaged entity that is supposed to be consumed; it is not supposed to agitate or disturb the consumer’s mind. When education gets commodified, it becomes synonymous with the imparting of ‘skills’, not with the application of creative minds to a set of ideas not limited by imperialist perceptions or prejudices.

The destruction of creativity is the hallmark of the education system being developed now. Three factors contribute towards making it so. The first is the discomfort of the ruling Hindutva elements with questioning minds; such minds become much more difficult to manipulate into accepting a discourse that generates hatred against hapless minorities. The second is the eagerness of globalised capital to homogenise course contents and curricula across the world so that wherever capital relocates, it finds potential employees of equal levels of training and docility. The third is the desperate need of middle-class youth to secure employment: questioning minds are unnecessary, even a handicap, for securing such employment, while degrees from European or American universities are far more valued by selection committees both at home and abroad than degrees from Indian universities.

This last point suggests that we cannot build a proper education system in the country, creating questioning and interested students who go on to become “organic intellectuals” — to borrow a Gramscian concept — of the people of free India, unless we simultaneously build a welfare State that guarantees employment to all.

But one should not despair. An Indian academic who teaches in a top Ivy League university in the United States of America was visiting India recently and gave a lecture at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was impressed because the students’ discussion with him was so intense and prolonged that the event had to be ultimately cut short after four hours. This is a university that has been under massive and continuous attack from the Hindutva elements for over seven years now. And, yet, they have not been able to destroy the institution, as is evident from the overwhelming intellectual engagement and passion among the students. Many such institutions in India still remain which the Hindutva elements have not succeeded in destroying. The hope for the country’s future lies in them.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Source: the Telegraph, 15/02/23

Notable decline: India is degrading its public universities

 Last December, Harvard University announced the appointment of Claudine Gay as its 30th president, to assume the position in the summer of 2023. It is a momentous appointment as Gay, an African-American woman, will be the very first black president to lead America’s oldest university. Gay comes to the job after prestigious academic stints in the country’s elite private education system, at Harvard and Stanford, where she also took her graduate and undergraduate degrees, respectively. What is equally striking is that Gay is the daughter of Haitian immigrants who came to the United States of America with very little, and in her words, “put themselves through college while raising our family”, with her mother training as a registered nurse and her father qualifying as a civil engineer. And “it was City College of New York that made it possible,” Gay says. If she built her impressive academic and administrative career in elite private universities, not far behind them, just a generation away, stands the founding college of the public and widely inclusive City University of New York, known throughout its history for giving lives and careers to poor immigrants, members of the working class, and other members of society for whom the nation’s elite private university system remains distant for an array of reasons.

While the trajectory of Gay’s family story is more recognisable, I have personally witnessed the opposite journey too. In 2013, when I was teaching in the English department at Stanford, my senior colleague, Jennifer Summit, left a full professorship in the department to join the public and inclusive San Francisco State University as Professor and Dean of Undergraduate Studies. The daughter of a pioneer of the online search engine and a former mayor of the wealthy Los Altos Hills in the San Francisco Bay Area, Summit left a life of elite scholarship to pursue her mission to champion public education in California at SFSU, where she now serves as the provost. 

Society celebrates stories like Gay’s family more than the kind of service narrative exemplified by Summit, but for me, the former brought up the memory of the latter as a reminder of the strong symbiotic current that runs between the public and private university systems in the US, notwithstanding the wide gulf between them. The American university, the product of a great historical serendipity in the 19th  century, was brought about by the unexpected coming together of three very different institutions: the British undergraduate college, the American land-grant college, and the German research university. The popular, the practical, and the elite — that is how the education historian, David Labaree, characterised the three forces, respectively, identifying the populist nature of undergraduate social life, the community-facing nature of the land-grant college, and the elite global appeal of the research university.

Notwithstanding the serious crisis that the US university faces today in the face of declining student enrolment and skyrocketing tuition cost, since the early 20th century, it has been the global leader in higher education. The powerful symbiosis and wide, sometimes hidden, networks of relationship between the private and the public system, indicative of America’s high social mobility — have contributed much to the overall excellence of a system that benefits as much from the achievements of its Nobel laureates as from the popularity of college football.

America’s system of elite private universities is unique. Higher education in most other countries in the world is defined by their public universities. Even Oxford and Cambridge, notwithstanding the vast property and real estate holdings of some of their colleges, are public universities. This is the system where most people learn and work. As I had, before joining Stanford — in public universities in India and the US, and the beginning of a teaching career in Canada, where all research universities are public. Teaching at McMaster University in Ontario, I negotiated federal and provincial bureaucracy and grant systems before experiencing the freedom and the wealth that private capital brings to the American university and the costs it extracts.

Even though I now teach at an ambitious private research and liberal arts university in India, I cannot help but see the privatisation of higher education in this country as unsettling — at once bizarre and instrumental, creating very little of the philanthropic culture of academic excellence and none of the public-private synergy that exists in the US where they bolster each other in spite of their differences. The vast public university system in India, much of which made the historical transition from a British colonial to a postcolonial socialist system, is now on the verge of destruction in the hands of unsympathetic governments at the Centre and in various states alike, including West Bengal. Classes are run by a hapless army of ad hoc teachers without benefits, State funding is drying up everywhere, including my alma mater, Jadavpur, while minority institutions such as Jamia Millia face disproportionate funding cuts by a hostile Central government. But with a booming youth population and an expanding middle class, higher education is big business that profiteers are keen to exploit, creating a host of private universities of dubious quality and distressing working conditions for its faculty and staff.

A few months before the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, I spent a day speaking at the Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya, in Gannaur in Haryana’s Sonipat district. Many of the journeys scripted there, including those from Hisar to Sonipat, some of them  via  PhDs from Chandigarh and Kurukshetra, felt wider than continents — as did the trajectories of the students from remote corners of rural Haryana. But another trek also felt endless — that to nearby Ashoka University where I teach, an institution of genuine philanthropy in pursuit of global academic excellence that nevertheless cannot dream of doing a fraction of the kind of mass education BPS Mahila Vishwavidyala does with far scantier resources.

The sad truth is that to almost anyone in the middle-class and above, the public system of secondary education is already lost. This system is only left for those who cannot afford to send their children to private schools.

Please, as a nation, let’s not lose our public universities as well.

Saikat Majumdar 

Source: The Telegraph, 26/01/23

IIT-Bombay, Delhi and JNU most sustainable institutes in India: QS World University Rankings

 IIT-Bombay emerged as the best educational institutions in India in the first of it’s kind QS World University Rankings: Sustainability released on Wednesday. With a total of 15 Indian universities getting a place in the list, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) featured in the 281-300 rank range, followed by IIT-Delhi (321-340 rank) and Jawaharlal Nehru University at the third rank (361-380).

In order to assess how universities are taking action to set the world’s most pressing environmental and social issues, QS World University Rankings: Sustainability ranking has been started this year.

As of this year, experts took view of over 1300 higher education institutions meeting particular eligibility requirements, out of which 700 institutions made it to the final ranking list.

Fourth rank has been saved by the University of Delhi which marks in the 381-400 rank range and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) took on the fifth spot (451-500).

However, not just these but many other Indian universities like the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), Aligarh Muslim University, Jadavpur University, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT-KGP), Banaras Hindu University, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) also featured in the list.

Meanwhile globally, the University of California, Berkeley (from the US) has taken the lead in the sustainability frame as it has achieved top scores in both the Environmental Impact and Social Impact categories, each providing 50 per cent of the all-around score. It is followed by two Canadian institutions, the University of Toronto securing the second place and the University of British Columbia making it to third spot.

Source: The statesman, 27/10/22

NEP 2020: Absorb ancient Indian knowledge, but view it critically

 The University Grants Commission (UGC), the apex regulator of universities in India, just concluded the Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sangam, a three-day education summit, in Varanasi. The summit, held from July 7-9 and inaugurated by none less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, brought together over 300 heads of higher education institutions to deliberate on strategies, success stories, and best practices in implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Nine themes were taken up for discussion, ranging from ‘Holistic and Multidisciplinary Education’ and ‘Quality, Ranking, and Accreditation’ to ‘Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship’. Experts and educators deliberated on these themes for three days.

So, what is the likelihood of progress in India’s higher education after this summit?

If we can focus on one of the themes taken up for the discussion, it may help us get a glimpse of what UGC plans to do vis-à-vis what could be of value to us.

Let’s take Theme 7, ‘Promotion of Indian Languages and Knowledge Systems’, and subject it to a bit of scrutiny.

Focus on Indian Knowledge System

The summit wants the ‘discontinuity’ in the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) to be bridged by integrating it with curricula at all levels across humanities, sciences, arts, crafts, and sports. Every UG and PG programme will have a mandatory IKS component.  The UGC has constituted an experts’ panel to set the guidelines for teacher training and ‘orientation’ in IKS. The focus seems to be on finding out sets of knowledge claims in ancient texts, accepting them across domains, and then integrating them with current curricula in universities.

While anyone would agree that there could be valuable lessons to be drawn from IKS, there is one critical part that is missing in UGC’s action plan: encouraging critical examination of material from IKS and accepting only those that get sifted through the filters of reasoning and evidence.

Ayurveda as example

It might help to further narrow our focus and consider a single branch of IKS in some detail to understand its usefulness in the contemporary context. Take Ayurveda, for example. The way it is being practised in clinics and taught in Ayurveda medical colleges is that the wisdom of the ancient texts cannot be questioned.

However, according to a paper titled ‘Bridging Ayurveda with evidence-based scientific approaches in medicine’ by former UGC vice-chairman Bhushan Patwardhan, “Ayurveda lags far behind in scientific evidence in quantity and quality of randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews. For instance, out of 7,864 systematic reviews in the Cochrane Library, Ayurveda has just one, while homeopathy and TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) have 5 and 14, respectively. Substantial grants have been allocated to ambitious national projects involving reputed laboratories. However, the design, methodology, and quality of clinical trial on Ayurvedic medicines seem to lack the expected rigour.”

(Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Cochrane Reviews are globally accepted as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare.)

So, how do we go about injecting rigour into this traditional system and align it with modern medical practice, using a scientific approach?

For that, we need to get a glimpse of what Ayurveda was like in the days of Caraka (pronounced Charaka), a master physician and principal contributor, along with Susruta and Vagbhata. The treatise, Caraka Samhita, attributed to him, forms the bedrock of today’s Ayurvedic practice.

Herein lies a stark contrast. Dr MS Valiathan, a renowned cardiac surgeon and author of the book The Legacy of Caraka, says: “Caraka described the practice of medicine in his time (1st Century CE) in North-West India, which was reason-based in contrast to the faith-based practice during Atharva Veda (1500 BCE). He even gave yukti (reason) an independent status as a pramana (proof) in acquiring knowledge. In Caraka’s time, mantras and rituals had largely disappeared from medical practice.”

However, over centuries, reason has been replaced with blind faith in the system. In a sense, we seem to have come to a full circle – from faith to reason and then back to faith.

Look with a critical eye

In a kind of double whammy, this comes at a time when reason, which made major advances possible two millennia ago, is perhaps no longer enough. We need evidence-based medical practice, which Ayurveda seems to fall behind significantly compared to Western medicine. Nudging it back to a reason-based medical system would involve examining concepts in ancient texts, including Caraka Samhita, with a critical eye. Obsolete concepts may have to be discarded. Some concepts may need to be modified – marginally or significantly – and amalgamated with modern medical practices. All possibilities exist.

But the bottom-line is scanning texts like Caraka Samhita with a fine toothcomb using critical thinking combined with what we now know about human anatomy and physiology, in contrast to what Caraka knew. In short, reviving the spirit of Caraka without uncritically accepting the principles in Caraka Samhita and other ancient texts.

THE WAY WE HAVE ASSIMILATED THE MONUMENTAL WORK ASHTADHYAYI, THE WORLD’S EARLIEST KNOWN TOME ON LINGUISTICS, BY GRAMMARIAN PANINI, IS A POINTER TO HOW WE SHOULD TREAT IKS TEXTS.

There is at least one ancient IKS that has the potential to show the way. The way we have assimilated the monumental work Ashtadhyayi, the world’s earliest known tome on linguistics, by grammarian Panini, who is said to have lived between the 6th and 4th century BCE, is a pointer to how we should treat IKS texts. No one questions the contribution of Panini to linguistics. He is widely labeled as the father of linguistics. But the discipline itself has progressed beyond Panini. Can what happened in linguistics happen in other IKS domains too?

The issue of language

The second part of Theme 7 deals with the ‘Promotion of Indian Languages’. UGC lists initiatives such as the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex body that controls technical education in India, approving 20 institutes in nine states to conduct engineering and technology courses in regional languages. AICTE is undertaking technical book writing and translation into 12 Indian languages.

Now, this does not amount to pushing the frontiers of knowledge in technology. This seems to be a recipe for converting AICTE, or at least one of its wings, into a translation bureau.

In which language should higher education be is more a function of the availability of resources and opportunities – for both jobs and research – in that language. A century ago, German was the language of physics. The most famous physicist of the last century, Albert Einstein, wrote his papers on relativity in German.

However, as the US gained prowess to become the most important force in science, as well as the preferred destination for top scientists, German lost out to English. Now, German universities, in their attempt to attract overseas students, advertise saying that the courses in their institutions are taught in English.

Closer home, in September 2019, the government of Andhra Pradesh announced that English would be the medium of instruction in all government schools. Of course, Telugu would be still taught as a subject, but that’s about it. Expect this to become a trend in other states too. In short, a realistic option for higher education institutions is to focus on improving the quality of content delivered rather than re-create content in an Indian language.

However, in universities, even if the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against regional languages in favour of English, there could be a few realistic options for promoting Indian languages – such as initiating online courses that address students bi-lingually, allowing students to write exams in a mix of English and regional languages. But that is about it.

We have examined just one theme in some detail. What seems true of  ‘Promotion of Indian Languages and Knowledge Systems’ could be true of the other eight themes taken up at Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sangam as well.

Overall, UGC has a task cut out. Begin prioritising and implementing proposals with tight deadlines, and tell the world about the progress and what the outcomes are (for the students), before moving on to the next summit and more proposals.

(Sriram Naganathan is a core team member of ThinQ (www.thinq.education). He can be reached at srihamsa@gmail.com)

Source: The Federal, 15/07/22

NIRF Rankings 2022 – Highlights

 NIRF Rankings 2022 were released on July 15, 2022 by the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Key Points

• In year 2022, rankings were announced in 11 categories viz., Engineering, Colleges, Universities, Management, Overall, Medical, Law, Architecture, Research, Dental, and Pharmacy.
• Number of colleges or universities or institutions taking part in NIRF ranking has been increasing over the year.
• In 2021 rankings, 6,000 colleges took part for eleven categories. Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad was ranked first that year, in management category. It was followed by IIM Bangalore, and IIM Kolkata.

NIRF Rankings 2022-highlights

• In Engineering institutes category, IIT Madras has been ranked at first position.
• In Medical college category, AIIMS New Delhi has been ranked as best.
• Savitha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai was ranked best in dental college category.
• Miranda House was tagged as best college, followed by Hindu college and Presidency college.
• IIM Ahmedabad was ranked as best B-school in India, in management category. IIM Bangalore ranked 2^nd while IIM Calcutta 3^rd.

What is NIRF Ranking?

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) is provided by Ministry of Human resource development. Ministry has launched the NIRF on September 29, 2025. It provides a methodology for providing rank to institutions across India in different categories. This methodology is prepared from overall recommendations and broad understanding, which was arrived at by a Core Committee. This committee was formed by MHRD, in a bid to identify broad parameters of providing ranks to universities and institutions. The parameters cover- Teaching, Learning & Resources; Graduation outcomes; Research & Professional Practices; Perception and Outreach & Inclusivity.

Dalits and Access to Higher Education

 Oppressed, broken, or crushed is the direct translation of the word Dalit, which is used to describe the class of citizens that are lowest on the caste system’s social ladder. Previously considered “untouchables” by the standards of the caste, their goal is to eliminate this oppression that they have experienced going back to the beginning of the Hindu religion and second century BCE. However, during the time of Mahatma Gandhi, he called the groups Harijans and promoted keeping the caste system in place while changing the stigma behind calling almost 25 percent of the country’s population. Currently, there are over 200 million Dalits in India alone, according to Paul Diwakar, from the National Campaign of Dalit Human Rights.

Dr. Ambedkar, a lawyer and Dalit from the 1950’s initially called for the caste system to be ripped apart to limit the “untouchability” of the Dalits, but eventually gave up on this and converted to Buddhism. He had the right idea, however, as the Indian Constitution abolished the untouchability status by law, but socially, many still treat Dalits as such. It has disproportionately affected them in a 2004 tsunami, their sanitation facilities and sewage systems have been worse than the higher castes, and even politically have been undermined by the higher caste systems. Specifically, a good amount of Dalit injustice stems from education, especially higher education akin to college and other sorts.

When looking at the data, there is a misrepresentation in Dalit education in many states and villages, with only few states actually educating them past a certain point at a reasonable rate. This is due to the socio-economic hardships of not only being poorer and unable to get certain jobs, but also because they are not socially accepted by everyone in India.

In a study conducted by Kathryn Lum at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, which shows at the most elite universities in India, the discrimination of Dalits is similar to students in the LGBT community, and really focuses on the inner struggles of their life, both institutionally and socially at college. They actually have some pressure to not reveal their caste status, called the “Dalit Closet” which is why Lum compares them to this group. The students are well aware of the disadvantage that they have been given, and use it to motivate and mask themselves off, facing many internal challenges with fitting in as well. Ultimately, the author suggests change in the systems, admission of Dalit students, and talks of how a middle class of Dalits has actually emerged. There are now state legislature spots reserved for Dalits, and they are apt to pass at elite universities, but almost because of a societal impostor syndrome, some have developed a lot of mental issues.

To combat these injustices, the Indian government has mostly done its job on eradicating the unequal distribution of equity that the caste system had created. Now, it is more so up to private businesses, schools, and other institutions to not discriminate against Dalits. Yes, public buildings in certain areas most likely have some stigma toward the Dalit population, and some villages almost segregate Dalits from higher classes with specific areas for them, it is really a collective social change that needs to be made: Dalits need to be accepted as touchable, or accepted in society. While this defeats the purpose of caste, to break up groups, caste is stagnant, and does not allow for anyone to move up, meaning that these same groups will continually be institutionally discriminated against.

Since the beginning of the caste system, Dalits have been labeled untouchable. They have been oppressed, been unemployed for, given the worst treatment possible. This treatment has been mitigated in previous years, with people such as Gandhi, and legislation such as making it illegal to discriminate against Dalits. Similar to prior and current situations in American politics with the treatment of many systematically oppressed groups, Dalits will continually be oppressed against. To change this, an entire social change among all members of society to bolster a better, positive treatment for the previously untouchable Dalit class in India.
Source: educationforindia.org

IISc is top Indian university in global rankings, overtakes IITs

 Rising 31 places in a year, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru has emerged as the highest ranked Indian institute in the 2023 edition of the QS World University rankings, pushing IIT-Bombay to the second position, followed by IIT-Delhi.

Apart from IISc at 155, IIT-Bombay (IIT-B) and IIT-Delhi (IIT-D), which have risen five and 11 places to rank 172 and 174 respectively, are the only other Indian institutes in the global league of top 200, in continuation of a trend since 2017. The total number of Indian institutes among the top 1,000 globally has risen to 27 from 22.

Speaking to The Indian Express, QS spokesperson William Barbieri attributed the remarkable rise of IISc, which is one of the eight public Institutes of Eminence (IoE), to improvement across four out of six parameters based on which the rankings are prepared.

These parameters are — academic reputation (AR), employer reputation (ER), faculty-student ratio (FSR), citations per faculty (CpF), international faculty ratio and international students ratio.

Barbieri said: “IISc has had an exceptional year across QS indicators. Remarkably, its strongest performing metric, Citations per Faculty, in which it is the world leader, has not changed year-on-year and it remains at the top of the table. It is the improvements across QS’s other criteria to which it owes its impressive performance. IISc achieves gains in 4/6 metrics, most notably, it has drastically expanded its number of International Faculty. However, significant improvements in Academic and Employer Reputation alongside teaching capacity have all combined to propel IISc to the peak of India’s educational hierarchy.

According to the CpF indicator of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), which is a London-based higher education analytics firm, when universities are adjusted for faculty size, IISc Bengaluru is the world’s top research university, achieving a perfect score of 100/100 for this metric. “Furthermore, IISc Bengaluru is the fastest rising South Asian university among the QS World University Rankings top-200,” said a QS statement.

Overall, Indian education institutes, 41 of which made it to the rankings, have performed poorly across many key metrics. For instance, 30 out of 41 ranked universities have suffered declines in the FSR indicator, with only four recording improvements.

“However, on an encouraging note, now two Indian universities rank among the top 250 for Faculty/Student Ratio, compared to none in previous editions. The highest performing in this metric is Savitribai Phule Pune University (225 th for FSR) and O.P. Jindal Global University (235 th for FSR), followed by IISc Bengaluru (276 th for FSR),” QS noted.

Globally, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was declared the best university for the 11th straight year. The second place went to the University of Cambridge, followed by Stanford University. China has 28 universities among the top 500, including six in the top 100 with Peking University getting rank 12 and Tsinghua University placed 14th.

Notably, all the IITs, barring one, which feature in the rankings have improved their standing. In fact, IIT-Indore made the highest-ranking debut in the list, securing the 396th slot globally, while IIT-BHU made its maiden appearance in the 651-700 band.

The report shows that India’s presence in the top 500 category is also IIT-driven. Apart from IISc, eight IITs (Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Guwahati, Indore) are ranked among the top 500 globally. No other Indian university, public or private, has found a place in this category, five years into the launch of the Institute of Eminence scheme.

One of the objectives of the IoE scheme was to help ten public and as many private Indian higher education institutions break into the top 500 of reputed rankings such as QS within a decade, and in the top 100 “over time”. The scheme continues to languish in the absence of an empowered expert committee which is meant to drive it.

Among the eight public IoEs, five (IISc, IIT-B, IIT-D, IIT-Madras and IIT-Kharagpur) improved their rankings, while the University of Delhi and University of Hyderabad slipped from band 501-510 to 521-530 and 651-700 to 751-800, respectively.
Banaras Hindu University, the only other public IoE, has been ranked outside the top 1,000, in the 1,001-1,200 band.

Also, one of the three private IoEs, OP Jindal Global University, with a rank in the 651-700 band, is the highest-ranked private university in the country, according to QS. The other two private IoEs — Manipal Academy of Higher Education and BITS-Pilani — were placed in the 751-800 and 1,001-1,200 bands, respectively, same as last year.

The report was prepared on the basis of responses from 1,51,000 academics and 99,000 employers across the world.

Ben Sowter, QS Senior Vice President, said: “This edition of the QS World University Rankings reflects the excellent work that several Indian universities are doing to improve their research footprint, with positive consequences for their reputation on the global stage. Conversely, our dataset also suggests that the Indian higher education sector still struggles to provide adequate teaching capacity.”

Written by Sourav Roy Barman

Source: Indian Express, 9/06/22

THE Impact Rankings 2022: India fourth best-represented nation, 8 varsities in top 300

 THE Impact Rankings 2022: The Times Higher Education (THE), publisher of the globally recognised THE World University Rankings, released the 2022 edition of its Impact Rankings. In a record year, 1,524 universities from 110 countries/regions ranked on work towards the UN’s SDGs across 18 tables – an overall ranking and one for each of the 17 SDGs.

In South Asia, India breaks through into the world’s top 50, with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham claiming 41^st place in the overall table and eighth place for SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 5 (gender equality). Lovely Professional University makes the top 100 at joint 74^th place in the overall table and is sixth for SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy). India is the joint fourth most-represented nation across the rankings, with 64 universities featuring in total (the same number as Turkey).

Calcutta University has been ranked first among all the central and state-aided public universities in the country by Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings 2022. The varsity has been ranked 14th globally in the ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ sub-category.

At least 64 universities from the country featured in the rankings making India the fourth best-represented country. As many as eight universities from India made it into the top 300 list globally. OP Jindal Global University (JGU) has also featured in the 600-800 band. The university has achieved a score of 60.3 out of 100.

Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences is second in the world for SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), and sixth for SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), while KIIT University is joint eighth for SDG 10 (reduced inequalities).

THE Impact Rankings claim to be the “world’s only rankings measuring universities’ contributions to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” and it assesses university commitment to sustainability across four broad areas: research, stewardship, outreach and teaching. Progress is measured for each of the individual 17 SDGs, as well as across the goals as a whole.

A record 1,524 institutions from 110 countries/regions have participated across the rankings this year, a 23 per cent increase since last year, reflecting the growing importance of the SDGs within higher education institutions globally.

Australia’s Western Sydney University claims the top spot in the overall ranking, which includes 1,406 institutions, after topping the table for SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) and coming second in SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production).

Phil Baty, Chief Knowledge Officer, THE, said, “It is inspiring to see such a large, diverse and rapidly-growing community of universities from all continents committed to subjecting themselves to scrutiny, to measure and demonstrate their impact and to showcasing the best practice in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals. Students, as well as governments, are increasingly demanding such commitments and these demands will strengthen.”

He added, “It is particularly exciting to see that universities outside the traditional Western elites are shining out as beacons in this fresh approach to university rankings, giving an exciting new perspective on a diverse sector and broadening student choice.”

Source: Indian Express, 29/04/22

UGC directive to teach courses based on student demand misunderstands academic worth, university autonomy

 

That is not to say that departments must not align courses to “the marketplace of ideas”. But that presupposes a degree of autonomy — the freedom to design courses, and draw up syllabi — that few public universities in India enjoy.

The University Grants Commission (UGC)’s letter to central universities, asking them to teach courses based on student demand, is based on questionable academic logic. How many students queue up for a course often reflects how much it boosts the chances of their employment. While important, for a university, that must not be the only metric in determining the span of its academic ambition. The work of producing knowledge, training students in critical thinking and pushing ideas towards new frontiers — the reasons why societies invest in universities — cannot rest on a narrow, instrumentalist approach. That is to say, a university must make space for arcane philosophy as much as economics, even if there are few takers for the former. Seen in this light, the UGC’s insistence that courses be taught or stopped based on the number of enrolled students seems rather short-sighted. The Delhi University Democratic Teachers’ Front has said that it fears that “rationalising” courses in this manner would have grim consequences for social science and language departments, as well as job losses for those who teach in them.

That is not to say that departments must not align courses to “the marketplace of ideas”. But that presupposes a degree of autonomy — the freedom to design courses, and draw up syllabi — that few public universities in India enjoy. Universities also need resources as much as autonomy. The National Education Policy 2020’s ambitions for education and call for greater autonomy to higher educational institutions is undercut by several factors, from the slashing of funds to the challenges of inequality. The NEP’s emphasis on inter-disciplinary learning cannot also be served by shrinking the platter of courses on offer. The lack of autonomy is also reflected in the shrinking space for free thought in universities. The growing state hostility to debates and dissent shows up in the desire of governments to vet the subject of webinars or to sanitise classrooms of all contentious ideas in the name of nationalism.

True, one of the biggest challenges of the higher education system is its inability to produce employable graduates in sufficiently large numbers. While universities and colleges must do more on this front, the decision of how to maximise their resources, how to hit the sweet spot between academic ambition and market pragmatism, must be left to the teaching community. Each university will find the answer to that question on its own terms. The UGC must not impose top-down criteria that further shrink the space for experimentation and innovation in higher education.

Source: Indian Express, 6/01/22

NIRF ranking does not give full picture of higher education in India

 

S S Mantha, Ashok Thakur writes: It is based on limited parameters and seems to be committing the same sin that the global rankings systems were once accused of — a one-size-fits-all approach.

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of universities and colleges for the year 2021 was released on September 9 by the Ministry of Education (MoE). There has been a big upset with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) being dislodged by IIT Madras as the top institute in the country. Apart from this, the rest seemed business as usual. How seriously should we take this annual educational tournoi and how does it compare with the global systems?

The world over, ranking educational institutes is a matter of debate and research. There are at least 20 global ranking agencies that measure quality on various parameters. Australia has the Research Performance Index that measures universities’ performance. The Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University maintains European and worldwide rankings of the top 500 universities based on the number and impact of Web of Science-indexed publications per year. The QS World University Rankings have been published annually since 2004. In 2009, QS even launched the QS Asian University Rankings in partnership with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper in South Korea. Times Higher Education (THE), a British publication, and Thomson Reuters have been providing a new set of world university rankings since 2011.

Interestingly, there is also a “Ranking of Rankings”, UniRanks, launched in 2017. It aggregates the results of five global rankings, combining them to form a single rank. It uses THE World University Ranking (22.5 per cent), QS World University Ranking (22.5 per cent), US News Best Global University (22.5 per cent), Academic Ranking of World Universities (22.5 per cent), and Reuters World Top 100 Innovative Universities (10 per cent).

NIRF ranking is based on six parameters — teaching-learning and resources, research and professional practice, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusivity and perception about the institution. The overall score is computed based on the weightage allotted to each parameter and sub-parameter. Some data is provided by the institutions themselves and the rest is sourced from third-party sites.

The quality of an institution is a function of several inputs and the above indicators alone may not be sufficient. How can we include the skills that an institution/university imparts to its students as one of the important ingredients? Should the financial health and size of the institution not be a criterion? Should the financial benefits that accrue to the stakeholders, especially the students, not be linked to the ranking? Ideally, an objective function must be defined for an institution, with the desired attributes as variables and weightage apportioned to each such attribute that depends on their importance in the overall value pWhereas IISc, with 464 faculty members for 4,000 students, has a faculty ratio of 1:8.6, and receives about Rs 350 crore in central grants, BHU with 2,000 teachers for 32,000 students has a ratio of 1:16 and receives a grant of about Rs 200 crore. In the Union Budget 2021, whereas the government allocation was Rs 7,686 crore to the IITs, the total outlay for all Central Universities was Rs 7,643.26 crore. Some departments in the IITs have even better faculty ratios since they are not bound by the cadre rules applicable to state universities. While state university budgets are ridiculously low, they are all competing on the same quality parameters and are expected to outperform the better-endowed ones. Is it not time to also check the return on investment (ROI), especially when several of our students from elite institutions, educated on public money, don’t even serve within the country? Surely, ROI is an important parameter missed out in the NIRF Rankings.

The diversity in the Indian education system is large. There are fresh as well as old institutions offering degrees/diplomas/certifications. There are also technology vs social sciences institutions, multi-disciplinary vs single discipline, private vs public, research-based, innovation-based, language-based or even special-purpose institutions/universities. The boundary conditions in which they operate are very different. NIRF seems to be committing the same sin that the global rankings systems were once accused of — a one-size-fits-all approach.

Another glaring oversight is the disconnect that exists between the ranking and accreditation. Several universities have earned a NAAC A grade but figure poorly in the ranking system. NIRF must take into consideration the NAAC and NBA scores. Though the government has no role in the business of either ranking or accreditation, the least one can expect from the NBA or NAAC is that their left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

Ranking is a numbers game as after two iterations, institutes become adept at giving the data that maximise scores. Accreditation, on the other hand, is a peer-reviewed process and is often accused of subjectivity. Though both are imperfect, accreditation and Quality Assurance (QA) would probably be the de facto standard in the future, like in the US, as they allow stakeholders to sue the universities if they renege on delivering what they claim. A Bill to introduce such accountability was introduced in 2011 but it never saw the light of day.

Two factors that are absent and differentiate us from the global ranking systems are our lack of international faculty and students and the inadequacy of our research to connect with the industry. International faculty and students will come only if they see a value proposition in our institutions, an indicator of quality. Industry connect will happen only when the research translates into improved or new processes and products. Patents translated to products have value, not patents that are just filed. To make this happen, NIRF has to have top experts not only from the country but also from outside in its core committees.

Our institutions have been falling short on global expectations on both these counts from the beginning. Though, as a consequence, NIRF arrived post-2014 with parameters to assuage our ruffled egos, we must be pragmatic and realise that quality cannot be measured in a silo. Having let go of being compared on a global scale, our universities can choose to be rank insiders or rank outsiders.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 6, 2021 under the title ‘How not to test quality’.
Mantha is former chairman, AICTE and Thakur is former Secretary, MHRD, GoI

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21