Indian higher education is suffering from a number of systemic problems. Some of them are unique because of their historical background while others are on account of their arbitrary and haphazard growth. A problem of great importance that has been allowed to linger too long is the affiliation system which is in vogue since 1857. It was in 1854 when Sir Charles Wood, the president of the Board of Control of the British East India Company, sent a formal dispatch to Lord Dalhousie, the then Governor General of India, recommending to setting up three universities in the port cities of India on the pattern of University of London, which was functioning as an examining board for affiliated colleges. Three years later, the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were established with the power to grant affiliation to those forty-odd colleges which until then were awarding only the completion or finishing certificates to their graduates.
While the University of London reconfigured as a teaching university granting complete autonomy to its affiliate institutions a year later, Indian universities continued to operate as places for testing the value of education imparted through their affiliated colleges for a long time and thus remained bogged down with bureaucratic rules and regulations compromising autonomy and leaving little scope for research and innovation. It was the wisdom and supreme courage of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee which transformed the university of Calcutta into the first teaching university in 1906, despite strong opposition from British colonial rule. Others joined the Calcutta league much later.
It was evidently known from early days that the continuation of affiliating system would lead to undesirable and far-reaching consequences of vital bearing on both autonomy and quality. Therefore, the issue has neither gone unnoticed nor remained uncommented upon by every single Commission and Committee set up during the post-independence period. Each one had consistently observed that the system of affiliation should have been done away with years ago and suggested measures to overcome current difficulties. The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 has made a very specific recommendation to get rid of the affiliation system by transforming all colleges into autonomous degree-granting colleges. It is an internationally acknowledged fact that institutions of higher learning can discharge their duties well only when they enjoy autonomy both constitutionally and in practice. Because it is the autonomy that provides structural solutions by creating enabling environment to achieve excellence in teaching and learning and research and engagement.
It is known that there are a large number of public universities with several hundred colleges affiliated with them. Such a situation neither opens up possibilities for ground-breaking innovations in universities and colleges nor promotes autonomy which is of paramount significance for attaining academic excellence. Pursuant to the recommendations of the Education Commission (1964-66), the UGC had introduced the scheme of autonomous colleges in 1969 with the sole objective of gradually doing away with the affiliating system by granting them autonomy in designing curriculum, prescribing syllabi, and conducting their own examinations. The basic idea behind this innovative measure was to promote their professional growth and help them develop the necessary wherewithal to perform independently the role and functions of a university. Despite a good deal of academic and financial support from the UGC, the scheme remained a non-starter, to begin with, because the forces for change were not sufficient to overcome bureaucratic inertia, the indifference of the majority of teachers, and indifferent attitude of affiliating universities. It is noted that out of 418 affiliating universities, 302 had not taken any proactive steps in support of the scheme. Such a poor performance, among others, may be related to intrinsic limitations especially the mindset of teachers to maintain the status quo and the fear of universities not to lose out financially.
Evidently, the scheme met with an uninspiring response from most places barring a few states and universities. The reality is that even after a long period of 53 years there are only 871 autonomous colleges with maximum concentration in the States of Tamil Nadu (228) followed by Maharashtra (137), Andhra (121), Telangana & Karnataka (85). There are some states like Haryana, Himachal, and Gujarat with very little footprints and some others like Arunachal, Meghalaya, and Mizoram with no footprints. When the scheme was introduced in 1969 there were only 3,297 colleges. The universal coverage would have been safely achieved within a short span of time had the final goal of the annual transformation of 500 colleges into autonomous colleges been vigorously pursued. A great deal of time has, indeed, been lost that of course can never be retrieved.
The problem of affiliation grew complicated beyond all reasons because of continued inaction on the part of successive dispensations. But now the NEP, 2020 has given the opportunity to discontinue this age-old problem. It has envisaged that there would be only three broad categories of multidisciplinary institutions of higher education. One would be research-intensive universities another would be teaching-intensive universities and the third would be autonomous degree-granting colleges. By implication, it means that all institutions of higher learning, which also includes about 39,937 colleges, would be autonomous and self-regulating. It is a welcome move in the right direction. But implementation of this proposal is expected to raise concerns about the parity of academic standards especially across such a large number of colleges having many shades of public opinion. Although it appears to be an insurmountable problem today because of the vastness of the number, it is still solvable with credible interventions.
The parity of academic standards has remained a central issue even across those premier institutions which have standardised their curricular as well as admissions and recruitment procedures, let alone affiliating universities. It is going to be highly problematic for a number of academic and administrative reasons when such a large number of colleges including the ones from mofussil areas would be given the powers to grant their own degrees. In the absence of an explicitly articulated national framework and pedagogical processes, the students graduating from the majority of such colleges would be in a disadvantageous position compared to their counterparts from universities in the job market.
The idea of transforming about 39,937 colleges into multidisciplinary degree-granting autonomous colleges is, indeed, a tall order from an administrative as well as professional point of view, and to some of it may even seem impossible within the stipulated timeframe. Although the proposal is not perfect in every way because of wide variations in terms of curricular provisions and academic standards in as heterogenous a system as ours, it might at least be a worthy endeavour to make a new beginning to resolve this issue on some scale that has been pending for a considerably long time. But it would require utmost caution and new forms of apparatus to address the concern of parity of academic standards across all autonomous degree-granting colleges, otherwise, similar degrees awarded by different colleges would be perceived quite differently by different people in the world of work.
This is one situation where the first sensible course of action is to bring out the National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF), without any further delay in order to have an integrated framework of outcome-based learning along with a specific description of what a student should know, understand and be able to perform after the successful completion of a program. Such level descriptors can only provide measurable indicators of learning achievements with respect to a particular criterion. Unless these descriptors are laid down in each area of study and are made clear to all stakeholders, parity of academic standards will continue to be an elusive goal, creating enormous problems for the graduates of these institutions in the job market. That is not to say that the NHEQF alone will be the panacea for parity since it would set out only the broad framework. Of course, it will be a necessary condition for ensuring parity but not a sufficient one.
The second course of action would be to carry through subject-specific benchmarking of learning outcomes wherein subject statements need to be written by subject experts in the form of a matrix. The matrix for benchmarking of learning outcomes can only lead to a better-defined focus on measurable learning outcomes which eventually can lessen disparities in academic standards across the various college. Interestingly, the subject statements can be changed with the advancement of knowledge resulting in continuous improvement in standards of teaching and learning. The biggest advantage of subject-specific benchmarking is that it will provide a clear-cut break up of all curricular, pedagogical, and assessment procedures making it explicitly clear to teachers and students about their duties and responsibilities. It would help individual teachers know about the scope of the subject, specification of expected cognitive and non-cognitive learning outcomes, appropriateness of specific pedagogies and pedagogical support required, experiments and demonstrations to be shown during classroom processes, tools, and techniques to be employed for ascertaining acquisition of competencies and skills and methods of documentation of learners’ potential. Similarly, it would also enumerate expected activities to be performed by individual students in the form of home assignments, project work, group activities, quizzes, etc. If these tasks are judiciously carried out across the colleges, it would significantly ensure parity of academic standards.
In the absence of the NHEQF and subject-specific benchmarking, the present practice of conferment of autonomous status upon colleges based on accreditation and ranking will be nowhere near good enough to ensure parity of academic standards across colleges. It is, therefore, imperative that before embarking upon the mammoth task of transforming 39,937 colleges into autonomous degree-granting colleges, it is necessary to put in place in time the NHEQF as also the subject-specific benchmarking of learning outcomes in each domain of knowledge at all levels of higher education. Sure enough, it would provide demonstrable improvements in overall learning outcomes and encourage best practices amongst both the privileged and not-so-privileged institutions. This exercise of course would not be as easy as it seems. It would require a great deal of expertise and commitment out-of-the-ordinary along the way. This is the time to act as “inaction creates nothing, action creates success”.
The writer is former Chairman, UGC. The views expressed are the writer’s personal.