Unfinished work of academic reforms

Updated on: Tuesday, July 07, 2009

The decision of the University of Kerala to wait for another year before implementing the credit and semester system for its degree courses

has, more than anything else, brought into sharp focus the ‘unfinished business’ of academic and administrative reforms in universities in the

State.

The first problem with implementing the restructured courses in any university is the lack of adequate numbers of permanent teachers—

something over which those who support these reforms initiated by the Kerala State Higher Education Council and those who oppose it

vehemently have no difference of opinion. The two camps only differ on the number of posts that are vacant. The former would put the

vacancies at “close to 1,000” and the latter would peg the figure at 1,500 to 2,000.

Even though Education minister M.A. Baby has announced in the Assembly that the government would make a “fast track” attempt to solve

this problem in July itself, the fact remains that even if the government were to finalise the number of vacancies and issue sanctions for the

same, the managements would still have to carry out a due process of recruitment. This is expected to take a couple of months.

At the same time, there are reforms that the universities could have done on their own, even if there was no restructuring of degree courses.

These relate to the conduct of examinations. No university is the State today runs its examination system in a fully-computerised mode; many

varsities only paid lip service to this cause for many years now. At the initiative of the HEC, the universities have formed a committee to study

computerisation of examinations. The system of ‘false numbering’ of answer sheets is widely acknowledged as the single biggest reason for

delays in the publication of results. This personnel-intensive work is also prone to errors. Again, no university till date has an up-and-running

alternative to this method of maintaining the anonymity of answer scripts. There have been proposals for providing bar codes for answer

sheets, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Kerala has mooted a ‘scratch card’ alternative.

Unending bundles of answer sheets waiting to be evaluated are a nightmare for teachers. For years now, academics, university syndicates and

educationists have spoken about separating the regular, college-going stream from the private registration-distance learning streams. The logic is

that the sheer numbers of the latter are a drag on the examination-evaluation system of a university. Even though every university save the

University of Kerala has decided to go ahead with the restructured degree courses this year itself, none of them are yet to functionally

separate the regular students from the private-distance mode candidates; at least in the case of evaluation.

At a policy level, all varsities are agreed on the need for such a separation. With the first of the examinations of the restructured courses only

a few months away the varsities are yet to take a final call on creating a panel of teachers for evaluating the answer scripts of the private

registration and distance-mode candidates. Further, there is also no clear cut decision on who all—retired teachers/those in unaided

colleges/NET-qualified teachers in parallel colleges/ research scholars—can be made part of such panels. There is also the question of the kind

of control that varsities would have over these persons.

Then, there is the question of teacher training. The HEC would argue that it held dozens of workshops across Kerala to disseminate the

message and thrust of the new degree programme and pedagogy. However, the universities cannot claim that they have, in a systematic

manner, reached these discussions and elaborations to each individual college under it.

More Education news