NEP recommends, but who can follow?

With over 1,000 university-level higher education institutions (HEIs), 40,000 colleges and several standalone institutions, we have an extremely diversified higher education ecosystem. It consists of state universities (public and private), deemed to be universities (public and private), central universities, IISERs & NISER, IITs, IIITs, NITs, IIMs, Institutions of Eminence, the CSIR academy, cluster colleges as universities, autonomous colleges upgrades as universities, multidisciplinary and single-stream universities etc. Among them are institutions that are over 150 years old and those that have recently been established.

There exists a pronounced rural and urban divide among these HEIs. Further, institutions of diverse nature with different missions, mandates etc. have also arrived. The diversity extends beyond their nomenclature. It is also evident in the way they are funded, administered, faculty quality, the infrastructure for teaching and research, student admission patterns etc. There are wide differences among central, state-funded and private HEIs. 

This is just an overview of the extent of diversity of our HEIs. In order to reduce this diversity, the National Education Policy (NEP) has suggested to categorise institutions as research-intensive, teaching with research, and teaching HEIs. Even with such a classification, the built-in differences among these HEIs persist.

The NEP-2020 was conceived with an objective of enhancing the quality of universities and colleges. It has proposed a forward-looking vision for the higher education system. The policy has a host of suggestions to improve administration and restructure institutions, and advocates for multidisciplinary campuses, academic programmes with multiple choice of courses, four-year degree programmes with multiple entry, exit and reentry provisions — extendable to fifth-year PG and research programmes. It also focuses on the mobility of students, credit transfers, academic bank of credits, faculty improvement programmes, a total revamp of teacher education and a research foundation to provide grants to promote research.

Now the question is: Which of the above-listed HEIs are capable of successfully integrating the recommendations of the NEP? A few of the centrally-funded HEIs have claimed that they have implemented a few prescriptions of the NEP. It is premature to draw any conclusion since the first batch of students is yet to graduate from these HEIs.

If the higher education ecosystem of the country has to be strengthened, it has to happen to the state universities and colleges, often regarded as the backbone of the system.  

Let us look at the four-year undergraduate programme. Currently, due to acute faculty shortages and infrastructure limitations, colleges are struggling to meet the demands of three-year degree programmes. With the four-year UG programme, the institutions have an additional batch of students which demands additional faculty, infrastructure etc. There is a provision for research during the fourth year and the students may prefer this since it comes with certain advantages while they pursue PG and research degrees. The NEP has suggested that HEIs will have the flexibility to offer three different designs of Master’s programmes. Although such flexibility is desirable, it should not be imposed on institutions in view of their constraints and shortcomings. Since this has the ‘research’ component, institutions may be willing to opt for it as a brand-building exercise. But care has to be taken in the interest of students and the subject, by way of stipulating the eligibility criteria to be satisfied by the HEIs to avail themselves of this option.

One of the buzz words of the NEP is multidisciplinary HEIs capable of offering sufficient choices to students. Many state universities were multidisciplinary with social sciences, literature, humanities, law, education, health sciences, engineering, physical education, and sciences programmes. But during the last three decades, many disciplines were removed to establish ‘single stream’ universities. Several states have carved out smaller universities from larger ones. Both the parent and the new universities are starved of funds, faculty, disciplines and research. For many decades, Teacher Education (TE) is existing in single-stream institutions. The NEP has duly realised that TE has to be an interdisciplinary programme with inputs from other subject domains and has suggested that henceforth, TE has to be a part of multidisciplinary institutions. 

The State Higher Education Council has to take the lead with multiple strategies to strengthen state universities and colleges. Also, one has to remember that state HEIs have to adopt the norms to be provided by the regulatory bodies which will be enacted through Parliament. Instead of vying for dominance, both NEP and SEP should work in tandem to ensure that the students graduating from state-funded HEIs are as competent as any other HEIs. Finally, the futuristic recommendations of the NEP have to be judiciously implemented so that the aspirations of younger generations are met.

(The writer is former vice chancellor, Bangalore University, and former NAAC director)