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| 'Universities in India need to wake up' |
| SREELATHA MENON / New Delhi Jun 14, 2009, 00:23 IST |
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 India needs foreign gurus, not foreign universities and degrees, Prof Yashpal, chairman, Committee on Higher Education and Research, tells SREELATHA MENON
You made recommendations on primary education nearly two decades ago, much before your recent stint as the chairman of the committee on higher education. Are you happy with the results?
That was in 1993. It had a slow effect. But those recommendations were taken up by the steering committee that I chaired in 2005. Books now produced are a tremendous improvement.
You talk of mingling arts and sciences. But at the school level, one finds total lack of emphasis on language and literature.
It is true that we don’t have enough of literature. That is why we wanted IITs and other institutes pursuing single specialities to introduce humanities. I was pleased to see during discussions with IITs that they were at pains to do that.
Aren’t there single-speciality institutes in the West?
There are single-speciality institutes everywhere. That is why the world is so much in trouble. Everyone is a specialist here. There are only divisions.
If the Higher Education Commission (HEC) is to be set up as a regulatory agency modelled on Sebi, leaving academic matters to universities, what is the difference between the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the HEC?
The AICTE is only meant to look at technical education. But how can you do architecture without aesthetics or literature? So the AICTE is wrong. The HEC is meant to be an independent regulator which does not meddle into day-to-day affairs of the institutes.
So you agree with the National Knowledge Commission (NKC)?
The NKC did not know what to do with the AICTE and the University Grants Commission (UGC) after finding them cumbersome. Its solution was to turn them into funding agencies. But for funding, all you need to do is to have an arrangement with a bank to make block payments to universities rather than devote a parallel infrastructure to deal with money. It will only lead to corruption.
The new government talks of the NKC and your committee in the same breath. Are they the same?
Not at all. For instance, public-private partnership is a fashionable word but look at the 100-odd deemed universities where the model has been implemented. Again, if you want foreign universities, we are all for inviting foreign academics and good Indian teachers and researchers from abroad and to let them create something new here. But that is not the same as allowing foreign universities to set up offices here and give degrees.
So you don’t support the foreign universities Bill?
There is no wisdom to be got from outside the country. Whatever is there, is on the net. Setting up a university is not buying office space and furnishing it. There is more to it, something that comes from the teacher-student interface. That can be imparted by imported teachers. The foreign university Bill is only about signing agreements between babus in India and abroad. It has little to do with education. Why did world-renowned radio astronomer Prof Govind Swarup start teaching here?
Jean Dreze teaches here.
Precisely. Aisa mauka kahaan milega (where will one get such a chance). This country is full of problems where the knowledge of these experts can be applied for solutions. So they come here, they create something new, and become famous.
So you don’t believe in dual degrees?
What is a dual degree? Today, textbooks should be banned. The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is open access, has its text books and notes on the net. So does that mean that you will get a degree from the MIT if you reproduce it?
How is the final draft of the report of your committee different from the draft?
I proposed at the last meeting that we should call it the National Commission for Higher Education and Research. Now, you may ask if I am suggesting a takeover of national research bodies by the HECR. I won’t rule that out. The idea is to break the barrier between education and research.
Since the new government has already declared that it will implement your recommendations even before you submitted your final report, are you optimistic?
They may say nice things, but may set up another committee to go over our recommendations.
You want universities to be on their own and have undergraduate courses. So do you see the JNU introducing undergraduate courses and the Delhi University making its own curriculum?
The JNU can have arrangements with other colleges. As for the curriculum, the UGC always floated a model curriculum, but universities considered that mandatory.
The report is silent on ways to make science and technology centres more innovation focussed. IITs have hardly earned any patents, though you regard them as your models.
We have called for connection with the outside world. Connection with the outside world also means connection with industry. The industry should also be connected with the institutes, with local crafts and skills. In agriculture, we are saying that people and universities should become collaborators. For, the wealth of knowledge with the grassroots worker cannot be had in any university.
Do you have any hope that this report on overhauling higher education will be implemented the way it should be?
I have hope. I get hope from what I hear from people who write to me regularly. Like this reader of Tribune who asked me the merits of putting thought into every action. I told him that many new things come when you are not thinking of them doggedly. For instance, while working on the committee on national framework for curriculum, I told members that knowledge is not delivered but constructed and created. And that teachers are not courier agents. In the HEC, my central thesis is that chance encounters of people of different streams lead to rich consequences, to pathbreaking fertilisation.
What was your subject as a teacher?
Physics.
And yet, you ask for a mingling of fine arts, theatre, music, science and literature.
I asked a member of the HEC who was a chemist if there were computer engineers in his department. He had none. So his knowledge of chemistry is limited by his lack of interaction with computer science.
What is your message to universities?
They must wake up. And the HEC will act as a catalyst to get different people together where they want to. People who can make changes are in a minority. But empowering those ten people in a university is as good as having those ten on a committee. You can look at this report and say it says nothing. And also say that it gives so much freedom, places so much faith in people.
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