In a speech at a high school in Brooklyn, New York, a few months ago, US President Barack Obama is reported to have spoken about the need for reforms in education to enable students to innovate and compete in a global world in which jobs can go anywhere. He warned that billions of people from China and India were working hard to outsmart American students, especially in the field of mathematics and technology.

I don’t know about China but the good news for Obama is that he need not worry about India. The University Grants Commission (UGC) seems to work hard to prevent the kind of innovation that institutions need to be working on, by assuming that all institutions are crooked and need to be dealt a heavy hand.

On December 23, the UGC issued a new set of guidelines concerning professional institutions such as engineering and management colleges and wanted all the stakeholders to respond by December 30. That is perhaps unrealistic, for those in the field of education know educational institutions are usually in suspended animation during the holiday period.

The UGC in its public notice also says that comments were invited earlier from stakeholders, and a sub-committee considered them before these draft regulations were issued.

Yet, the Education Promotion Society of India that includes the heads of institutions that are affected by these guidelines, issued a statement that they were not consulted by the UGC while framing the regulations. Well, that is a matter between them.

Full of strictures My concern is that distrust seems to be the unstated theme of these regulations.

When regulations are designed, it is assumed that most would believe in and subscribe to the objectives, but a few would be likely to violate, and thereforepunitive action is included to address the violations.

Alternatively, it can be assumed that everyone is likely to violate the regulations, and they can be designed accordingly.

The UGC regulations seem firmly founded in the latter premise and are full of warnings and threats of what should not be done.

Let me take the example of a few of the rules that I found. A list of course names are given that institutions need to use. There is no logic to this kind of standardisation.

An institution is also required to declare a model curriculum. I assume that will tell you what the content of the course will be, which is more meaningful. Now, if you wish to design a new course, “prior approval by the university shall be necessary” although there is no information if the UGC is bound to clear a new proposal within any stipulated time.

Shouldn’t we want our institutions to quickly innovate and design new courses to meet market needs than fit them into straitjackets?

Another regulation deals with part-time programmes and defines part-time as “activities conducted in evening time, i.e. 5.30 pm to 9.30 pm (six days a week) wherever first/general shift working exits (sic)”.

I dread to think of what happens to an institution that feels the need to run classes from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. because its students find that more convenient. Can’t institutions be trusted to plan their own time schedule?

Learn to trust Let us take one more example. The rules say, “Grant of approval is based on self disclosure of required facilities and infrastructure availability as submitted in the application. An affidavit sworn before First class Judicial Magistrate or Notary or an Oath Commissioner that the technical and/or professional college has required facilities and infrastructure as per the provisions of this (sic) regulations and in the absence of which the university is liable to invoke the provisions, both civil and/or criminal as per the regulations in place, is to be submitted.”

These are institutions that are set up to educate individuals, grant degrees and diplomas, and prepare our youth for the future. And we don’t trust the leadership of the institution enough to assume they must be telling the truth about what facilities they have. Does swearing before a judicial magistrate make a dean more likely to tell the truth?

An alternative way of dealing with this would be to say that anybody submitting information that is found to be untrue would be punished.

In this case, you assume trust but penalise those who violate that trust, rather than assume every institution will cheat and require them to get some judicial magistrate to endorse this.

Similarly, every institution is expected to send a compliance report every year. A system of trust would say that once approved, you maintain records every year, but inspection will take place every five years or so; or if you have doubts about some institutions at the start, put them on probation and require them to submit more frequently.

Innovate and prosper The field of education is one that must seriously foster innovation for that is the need of the hour. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are attracting large numbers of students around the world. People are wondering if degrees are relevant anymore. The student of the future may only be looking to see what knowledge she can obtain, or skills he can build, rather than acquire a degree certificate. This generation of school and college students accesses information in completely different ways from the previous, thanks to the ubiquitous web that can be reached from a phone, a tablet, and perhaps some other device that is in the process of discovery. Instructors are having to re-learn how they will foster learning.

Even Obama, who has been complaining about the high cost of education and the need to improve access, has been facing complaints and resistance from institutions in the US who see increasing regulations hampering their ability to operate and meet desired objectives.

Our universities need to innovate, invent and excel. We need regulations that give them this freedom while certainly helping to ensure that certain minimum standards are met, rather than requiring all institutions to race to the bottom.

( The author is a professor and Dean of the Jindal Global Business School, Sonepat, Delhi NCR.)

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