Undergraduate
education has increasingly become single-field oriented, neglecting vital support
subjects
In 1948,
the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Commission on University Education said:”
Democracy depends for its very life on the high standard of general,
vocational and professional education.
“Dissemination
of learning, incessant search for new knowledge, increasing efforts
to plumb the meaning of life, and provision of professional
education to satisfy. occupational needs of our society are the vital
tasks of higher education.
This Radhakrishnan
Desideratum defines what India should demand of its university and colleges.
Today’s higher education has slid down in its purpose.
Effective
tool
We have
concentrated too much on professional education at the cost of vocational,
scientific and general education. We need to amend and invigorate
it so that it becomes an effective tool for the making of a just, vibrant
and advancing society.
Education
builds as a pyramid, with a broad base and an apex of excellence in
a chosen discipline of expertise, from where horizons are expanded. With
the mushrooming of cash-and-carry educational institutes, the pyramid
has thinned into a stick.
Summing
up
Undergraduate
education, which should provide the broad base, has increasingly become
single-field oriented, neglecting vital support subjects. Many PhD degree
holders in India today in, say biology, have not learnt physics. chemistry
and mathematics beyond high school level, and are ignorant in economics,
sociology, geography or languages. What is true of a PhD in biology is also true
of a PhD in economics, physics or
Urdu (with due variations).
Make undergraduate
education all-rounded.
The National
Knowledge Commission’s Report to the Nation 2006 admirably sums up
the deficiencies and recommends a variety of ways to set higher education
on its desired path (see
www.knowledgecommission.gov.in). It projects
expansion, excellence and inclusion as the three principal objectives.
In order to do so, it recommends an increase in the number of
universities from the present 370 to as many as 1500 by the year
2015, and the setting up of up to 50 National Universities as exemplars
of excellence. It has
further said that laws need to be changed so that universities can choose
their own financial instruments.
The setting
up of an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE),
out of reach of the tentacles of government, is a welcome idea
as also that of a Central Board of Undergraduate Education (CBUE), along
with its State equivalents (SBUEs).
It is clear that our undergraduate
education first needs an overhaul. Some welcome steps have been taken
already with the start of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research
(IISERs), which give a five-year comprehensive M.Sc. in Science.
The curriculum
they have devised is a composite one, inclusive of languages. humanities
and social sciences, increased hands-on work, and opportunity to do
research projects.
Likewise,
the Birla Institutes of Technology & Science (BITS) insist that
their students go through ‘practice schools’ (shop floor/laboratory/industry
experience). We need more such bold experiments in other major branches
of knowledge.
Inadequate
experience
If we
do not do so, we shall only be perpetuating the production of engineers,
managers and doctors of inadequate experience and practical skills,
while neglecting, at the same time, the much-needed expertise in sociology,
political science, humanities, arts and letters - leave alone the physical
and natural sciences.
Why are
there more theoreticians than experimentalists in India, particularly
in physical sciences and technology?
Many believe
this is because hands-on experimental experience is not offered to students
at the school and college levels. I have suggested that ‘practice
schools’ be offered during vacation time to students, starting from
the middle school level.
I am gratified
that the Department of Science & Technology (DST) is indeed
launching a sustained national program called INSPIRE Innovation in
Science Pursuit for Inspired Research). This scheme targets a
spectrum of age groups - right from ten to thirty-two years.
A
novel and insightful suggestion has been made by Professor M. A. Pai
of Illinois (who taught at IIT Kanpur for 20 years, and then at the
University of Illinois for another 20), and independently by Dr. Tushar
Chakraborty of IICT Hyderabad. This
is to make the undergradute courses in India into an 8-semester or 4-year
programme offering simply a Bachelor’s degree. This is a departure from current practice, but not quite that new; it
is reminiscent of the
earlier Honours degrees.
During
these four years, the students are expected to go through not only lecture
classes, but spend a good bit of time/in research/application/field
work.
Welcome
move
It is
in this context that the setting up of CBUE and SBUEs is welcome.
They can be effectively used to redraw the undergraduate degree programme
and curricula.
For a
start, they can (1) provide semester-based course programmes, with
a continuous grading scheme, rather than
just end-of-the course finals; (2) insist that the degree at the end
of eight semesters is not a specialised one but simply a Bachelor degree;
the specialisation would be in the subject course that the student chose
to take and pass in his/her course programme; (3) offer a vast menu
of courses, ranging from language and literature on one hand to specialised
science/social science courses on the other; (4) arrange such that of
the 40 courses during the undergraduate program, at least 10 be in humanities
and social sciences, 10 in physical/natural sciences. Every summer there
is an apprentice/ practice school, and the rest in subjects that the
student chooses.
Such a
programme prepares the graduate to enter the professional world just
as an MBBS/B.Tech/M.Sc does, or go straight for a doctorate program.
The current
3-year Bachelor’s degree, as it stands, is a half-way street, leading
the student to no meaningful career path. The Pai-Chakraborty idea is
thus a vast improvement, worthy of implementation across the board in
the country.
Ponder
over what Pandit Nehru said half a century ago. “India cannot go ahead
without scientific and technological knowledge.
“Yet,
the studies of humanities cannot be neglected for otherwise it would
become lopsided. The development of human resources is as essential
as the construction of big projects”.
D. Balasubramanian
dbala@lvpei.org
CB-CB
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