UGC: Intentions and outcomes

By Dr Duggaraju Srinivasa Rao

The University Grants Commission (UGC), the higher education regularity authority in India recently unveiled the draft under which the foreign universities will be given nod to set up their campuses in India. The UGC chairman Prof. M. Jagadesh Kumar tagged this new policy to the New Educational Policy (NEP) in which it was envisioned for such facilities for the foreign universities to operate in India. Though the rules and regulations regarding this new policy are yet to be framed the broad intention is claimed as “allowing the entry of high ranked universities from abroad to come and add international dimension to our higher education, enable the Indian students to obtain foreign qualifications at affordable cost, and make India an attractive global study destination”. There are so many ifs and buts in the final implementation of this scheme of UGC, however the track record of UGC’s policies to improve the quality of higher education and the final outcomes are totally different from the original intentions.
Prior to the UGC coming out with the policy of 55% at the post- graduation as the minimum qualification to teach in higher education institutions, those who passed MA/MSc/M.Com were in the teaching profession. Those were the days when teachers of very high caliber were heading the institutions. Their marks percentage may be less but their quality of teaching was very high. Instead of assessing the quality of teaching for the new recruits the UGC chose to depend on the percentage of Marks obtained by the candidates. Along with the 55% marks criterion came the implementation of high pay on par with the class I office of central government. The consequences of that UGC policy impacted the higher education in the negative way.
Instead of passion for teaching, which the earlier generation teachers had, a new crop of teachers who came into the profession because of attractive UGC scales became the norm. In the universities also the assessment of post-graduate students have changed. Earlier in the universities used to be strict in awarding the degrees and there used to be failures and award of third classes in the post-graduation. With the minimum 55% norm, the universities became liberal in awarding the high second classes to almost all the students. The failures and third classes at the PG level became rarity. Not the quality of higher education improved but the UGC guidelines liberalized the evaluation.
The next reform came in the form of conducting a National Eligibility Test (NET) for the prospective candidates who wish to join teaching profession. The NET was high standard examination and very few postgraduates used to clear that. Instead continuing that rigid test the UGC in its wisdom announced the exemption of Ph.D. holders from the NET qualification. That resulted in the dilution in awarding Ph.Ds. by the universities. Statistics available with the universities show the difference in the number of doctoral awards prior to NET and post NET. The UGC on its own diluted the standard of theses produced by the Indian universities. The quality gone down and qualntity sky rocketed in a short span.
The other intervention of UGC in improving the academic, infrastructure standards in the institutions was the creation of NAAC, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, an autonomous organisation to assess and award the ranks was maintaining standards in its work of assessment. Like earlier UGC interventions the NAAC, initially maintained standard but then declined with passing of time. The grades given by the NAAC to some of the institutions was debated in private by the peer institutions. Managing the NAAC peer time became a specialised art, mastered by some consultants and these consultants took over the responsibility of preparing the Self-Assessment Reports of the colleges/universities and were liaising with NAAC visiting team to obtain an expected grade. All were done for an agreed. The bubble of this underhand deals in the allotment of grades and the suspicious ways burst when someone leaked the fact of some of the private academic institutions from Odisha state scoring more points than the world acclaimed Indian Institute of Sciences (IISC) of Bangalore. The NAAC peer team credentials in honest assessment became questionable and NAAC was forced to come out with explanation for the lapses. The greed or other weaknesses of the NAAC peer committee and liberal assessment favouring the ‘paid institutions’ in the private sector the quality of ranks and grades it had offered over the years became questionable.
Mere policy assessment and intentions of regulatory authority is not going to serve the purpose. The policies framed and institutions created needs to be rigoursly administered and intervened to do a periodic assessment on the outcome to have a desired result. It the absence of such fact checking mechanism which failed to improve the quality of our higher educations. The ranks of Indian universities in the world scale continues to be disappointing.
Without plugging the existing loopholes in the system the UGC has taken the new initiative in offering the foreign universities to open the shops in India. Not that those standard world universities from USA and Europe will rush to India immediately. Even when they come those foreign universities will chose to associate with the campuses which have existing collaborative research or located in the metros. The state universities, which mushroomed in the country side, as the establishment of university became a political appeasing tool for a given area, will remain poor without support from national funding and foreign standard universities not collaborating.
The UGC proposed standing committee to examine the matters related to the setting up operations of foreign higher educational institutions should also examine the likely impact of few preferred universities benefitted by this new policy and other universities getting downward slide further.
This new initiative one hopes will not end as the earlier initiative where the result was exactly opposite of the intentions with disastrous academic consequences.

(The views expressed are personal)