Death by degrees

The ongoing controversy over scrapping Delhi University’s Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) and the resultant stand-off over admissions reflect poorly on all the parties concerned. Worse, it puts the future of lakhs of students — those seeking admission to this year’s programmes at India’s premier university, as well as the over 55,000 students who are already part-way through the FYUP — at risk. The human resources development ministry, which used its might to push through the FYUP programme last year and is now using the same muscle to scrap it, must bear a bulk of the blame. However, the actions of the supposedly autonomous University Grants Commission (UGC), Delhi University’s Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh, as well as its politicised teaching staff, deserve the strongest condemnation. Academics are expected to resolve differences through dialogue and discussion, not intrigue and street action.

Any resolution now attempted needs to bear in mind some key issues. First, the idea of the FYUP is not inherently flawed. The option of exiting after a two-year tertiary programme which will equip students with basic skills required in a variety of jobs without necessarily adding academic specialisation in areas that are unlikely to find widespread application outside the world of academics has the potential of addressing India’s growing skills shortage in the labour market. Critics have rightly pointed out the huge shortfalls in the programme as it was implemented — the foundation courses were laughably basic, and the colleges simply did not have the physical or academic infrastructure to cope with the additional load. However, the solution was to try and improve the shortcomings, not dumping it unceremoniously.

More disturbing is the politicisation of higher education. The UGC is supposedly autonomous but is in fact a rubber stamp for the political dispensation in power. Politicisation of appointments of vice-chancellors, chopping and changing courses and programmes at the behest of political whims and fancies, and an increasing recourse to courts or street politics over issues which need to be settled through consultation, have all combined to erode the quality of higher education and undermine the few centres of excellence which do exist. It is no coincidence that many top politicians are majorly invested in the education business. But allowing political capture of higher education puts the future of our society at peril. “Upon the education of the people of this country, the fate of this country depends,” said British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli while arguing the case for appointment to the British Civil Services on the basis of competitive examinations, thus changing the equation from patronage to educational merit as the route to success. It is a dictum which the current day inheritors of his legacy in India will do well to remember.

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