The national education policy (NEP) 2020, resembles a dream plan designed in the mould of educational models of developed nations and hence, much like demonetization, some of its proposed clauses are removed from the practicality of its functioning in a country like India. MALABIKA ROY analyzes.
- Dream policy, suitable for developed countries with near 100% literate adult population.
- Multidisciplinary Higher Education Institutions (HEI) likely to face space problem and end up in fragmented campuses not conducive to interdisciplinary approach to undergraduate studies.
- No mention of fundamental research.
- Role of additional funding agency not specified.
- Centralization of governance of education downplays the function of states in the governance structure.
- Board of Governors (BoG) set up to administrate HEIs, is likely to erode away the democratic administrative structure of Universities.
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In this piece, I focus on some specific caveats of the proposed policies on Higher Education which I thought should be highlighted.
The first set of problems I find are implementation issues:
The school education policy in National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is indeed very detailed and well developed. However, while reading the section on intended reforms in school education, I had a feeling as if I was reading some kind of a fantasy story. It is a model suitable for a country where the existing adult population has a near 100% literacy rate, (in India it’s 74.04%, varying between 63% to 93%), with close to zero poverty level. This will be appropriate for a country, where parents do not force their children to go to work to ensure survival and where there is no corruption, political clientelism and administrative failures. Unfortunately, none of it is true for India. While provision for educational infrastructure has been discussed in great detail (which incidentally will entail a huge cost much beyond the current level of government expenditure on education in India), the basic problem of getting the students to school and keeping them attached has been addressed rather cursorily. It is not quite clear how the four tier structure, as suggested in the policy, going by the US and European models, will improve upon the existing two tier structure. So my feel is, like demonetization, we are going to adopt a policy structure appropriate for a far more developed country.
In the higher education policy attention to certain ground realities are missing. I mention just two:
The policy visualizes a multi-disciplinary Higher Education Institution (HEI) , which offers subjects from Music to Physics. To a limited extent many of our Universities are multi-disciplinary. However, fine arts are offered only in two Universities in West Bengal, to the best of my knowledge. One is located in a University town much like an American or European University, where space is not a constraint while the other one has separate campuses across the city. If other Universities decide to expand in this manner, assuming the initial funding is available, space is going to be a big problem and, very likely, result in fragmented campuses, which will not at all be conducive to interdisciplinary approach to undergraduate studies. May be, allowing students to take minor papers across universities and allowing them credit transfer facilities would have been more beneficial for the proposed interdisciplinary approach.
Broadly speaking, the policy uses a supply side approach, where a wide variety of choices are offered to the students in a system. This does not take into account the demand side, that is, what majority of the students will actually choose. For instance, question may be raised if a student will opt for vocational training at all rather than going for an engineering degree. The same reasoning applies for offering a language course. So, without proper incentives in place, which is mostly driven by market opportunities, offering a variety of courses may be an exercise in futility.
The second set of problems I discuss here are related to the justification of the approach:
First, in the entire discussion regarding research, the areas mostly mentioned are either related to digital economy or are basically applied research often with a possibility of immediate economic benefit. I did not find any mention of fundamental research, which need maximum government support as they do not generate immediate benefit, sometimes with no visible benefit at all. But this kind of research is the foundation stone of future knowledge. We should not forget that today’s digital world is the result of some such research in the past carried out by so called non-utilitarian researchers. Also the policy has added another funding agency, which will operate across disciplines without eliminating any of the existing ones. It’s again not very clear, what additional function this agency will perform that the existing bodies cannot do.
Secondly, in the governance structure the policy is strongly focused on centralizing the governance to eliminate inefficiencies in the existing system due to duplication of efforts. But given that education is a subject in the concurrent list and states fund a part of educational expenditures of the Universities, it’s not at all clear what will be the role of the states in this governance structure. Will they just be funding the HEIs according to the instructions and rankings of the central organisations or will they have some substantial role in the decision making process? This needs further clarification.
Finally, I would like to draw attention to another aspect regarding the governance of the HEIs. Though the policy prescribes greater autonomy to the institutions, the governance structure developed in NEP is extremely unitary. The governance of the HEIs will be delegated to a body called Board of Governors (BoG) which would be fully empowered to oversee all the activities of the HEIs – again an adoption from foreign models. It is not at all clear whether the BoG will be constituted in such a manner that the interest of the stake holders, that is the students and teachers, will be fully represented in this body. Also if implemented, it will mean that many Universities will have to give up their existing administrative structures, which are broad based as well as democratic and in which all stake holders find their representations at different levels.
So like a typical academic, my opinion is, the policy needs more deliberation and inputs from different stake holders before it can be finalised, rather than implementing it in haste in its current form specially when a pandemic is raging across the country.
MALABIKA ROY is Professor, Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She can be reached at malabikar@gmail.com
Opinions expressed in this article are of the author’s and do not represent the policy of The Edition. The writers are solely responsible for any claim arising out of the contents of their articles.
Tags: #NationalEducationPolicy2020 #HigherEducationInstitutiom #BoardofGovernors #LiteracyRate #PovertyLevel #FundamentalResearch #AppliedResearch #VocationalTraining #PoliticalClienteleism #Demonetisation #DigitalEconomy
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