Setting the course for crucial changes

Updated on: Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Committee for the State Policy on Higher Education has suggested rapid changes in the higher education sector including the setting up of a College Service Commission for the recruitment of teachers and establishment of clusters of colleges.

Led by renowned academician U. R. Ananthamurthy, the committee has submitted its final report to the State Higher Education Council. The council would soon forward the report to the government for follow-up action.

According to the committee, the College Service Commission can be constituted to create a pool of potential teachers through a transparent and academically relevant selection process in accordance with the UGC norms. Aided colleges can select teachers from among applicants in the merit list approved by the commission, while teachers could be appointed to government colleges on the basis of merit and reservation by the commission, the committee noted.

“Unaided college managements should also be persuaded to appoint teachers from the commission's list. The admission of students could be held centrally by the universities. Besides ensuring merit, a system of open, transparent, non-exploitative recruitment and admission process could inculcate a sense of self-respect among teachers and students, which is an essential component of academic work culture,” the report said.

The cluster of colleges could be given more autonomy with an aim to transform it later into full-fledged universities. The report said that the programmes that would be undertaken by the clusters could vary from cluster to cluster, depending on the needs and facilities available or proposed to be set up by the partnering colleges. “The principles of equality and mutual sharing should be observed both in the distribution of powers and responsibilities among the institutions that constitute the cluster. The State may set up as many viable clusters as possible within the next few years. The possibility of such clusters eventually developing into universities could be an added reason for promoting the scheme of cluster of colleges,” it said.

Suggesting a five-year programme of action, the committee said that public spending on education should be increased to six per cent of the State Gross Domestic Product and 30 per cent of the State budget, of which one-third should be set apart for higher and technical education.

The 19-point programme of action includes expansion and diversification of educational facilities to levels adequate enough to provide access to at least 30 per cent of the relevant age group, covering diverse areas in higher and technical education.

The committee has said that priority should be given to the co-operative and government controlled institutions in the self-financing sector. The report said that public-private-partnership could be permitted in such a way where private resources would be available for public use. It has suggested that all existing vacancies of teachers should be filled on a priority basis while recommending that the system of guest/ contract faculty should be scrapped.

Other highlights of the programme of action include setting up Academic Staff Colleges (ASCs) in all universities, a centralised system of admission of students through universities, modernisation of infrastructure in existing institutions, and improving the use of ICT in all educational institutions.

The report has recommended that government, aided and unaided streams should be separated from one another, spatially and administratively. The universities need to continuously update curriculum and syllabi and review the system of grading, semester, credit, continuous internal evaluation and student feedback to consolidate and improve the reforms.

The committee has suggested opening up avenues for academic collaboration between higher education institutions in the State and with those outside the State and the country besides implementing the Right to Information Act in all higher education institutions.

Some of the other major recommendations include setting up a comprehensive State-level data bank on higher education, establishing an open university and de-linking distance/private learning/continuing education from regular universities, setting up extensive scholarship and interest free loans schemes with a view to providing equitable access and improvement of quality in higher education, revision of Acts and statutes of universities to make the governance structures of universities and colleges more academically oriented and socially accountable, and protection and strengthening the democratic and organisational rights of students, teachers and non-teaching staff.

Describing that expansion, excellence and equity should form the tripod of reforms in higher education in the State, the report said that a comprehensive scheme for expansion of facilities with equitable sharing of opportunities for the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes/ Other Backward Classes / minorities/physically challenged/ women/the poor is a pre-requisite for excellence in this critical sector of development.

“Appropriate mechanism for ensuring access through positive discrimination in admission and financial support through a scholarship scheme should be put in place immediately. Strengthening the public funded system and ensuring that private initiatives are in conformity with social justice should be recognised as central features of the policy,” it said.

Stating that the method of evaluation should be progressively changed to continuous internal evaluation by evolving an open, transparent and fool-proof system with an appropriate mechanism for effective grievance redressal, the committee suggested that evaluation should be made holistic by making provisions for assessment of aptitudes and disposition, along with acquired knowledge and skills.

“The choice-based credit/semester mode should be preferable to the uniform/annual mode, as the former would give the students an opportunity to select subject combinations of their choice and to encourage more focused learning by dividing the content into manageable chunks,” the report said.

Recommending the promotion of mother tongue in the creation of knowledge and its dissemination in the university system, the committee pointed out that there is a greater possibility for the knowledge creation, especially in humanities and social sciences, in the mother tongue than in other languages. There is also a growing need to disseminate knowledge produced in other languages through the mother tongue, it said. Suggesting that each institution and each individual teacher should maintain a web site in which basic data regarding the institution/individual and self-assessment reports should be compulsorily posted and updated at regular intervals, the report said that institutional information could include details about infrastructure, curriculum, human resources, admission norms, and fees.

“Such information provided by all institutions including universities and colleges should be codified to develop a State Data Bank on Higher Education which should be annually updated. The database should be comprehensive enough to provide adequate data support for State level policy planning and administration of higher education,” it said.

Details about the curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular activities undertaken by each individual teacher could be posted on his/ her web site.

An appropriate system of student feedback should be developed, the findings of which should also be posted on the web site, with adequate remarks by the head of the institution or the individual concerned. Admission

Setting the course for crucial changes

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