‘un restrictions’ rigour resources

‘un restrictions’ rigour resources

Decentralised quality for higher education.

Not to stretch the point too far, but the brains working overtime to make India’s rickety higher education system foment and ferment academic and intellectual excellence could learn a thing or two from India’s attempt to achieving sporting excellence. Expecting sheer demographics to throw up the right conditions is futile. To achieve what the draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 hopes to create, requires rigour, removal of restrictions, and resources. The draft NEP has ticked the right boxes only for the last requirement.

While in the first section on school education, one is provided with details — incorporating pre-school education, going beyond ‘curricular’ learning, firming up the B.Ed teaching programme — the second section on higher education seems almost only focused on administrative track changes. These are not unimportant. But certain things do stand out in their absence. One, for a country supposedly pushing for a technology-driven future, scant mention is made of science education. This is surprising considering the NEP committee is headed by a scientist. Two, there are very few actual suggestions regarding pedagogy or syllabi. One hopes these will be spelt out later, rather than simply hinted at, sotto voce.

The draft makes decentralisation a mantra. Yet, suggesting a single regulatory body, National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA), sounds, well, ‘central command’-ish. Also, with quality having a quantity of its own, institutions should be accredited according to merit, not by capping numbers. Higher education is ‘best circulated’ when exchange of knowledge is unimpeded — more interaction with global academia, more research facilities and subjects. Which is where the suggestion of creating a constitutional body, Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog, to oversee higher education in full policy mode smacks of bureaucracy creep. Higher education is too important to be left to policy wonks alone. Let there be more inputs from scholars and academics — the report is quiet about who it consulted — before the July 31deadline for public feedback.