DU's Venture

The DU’s venture:

Delhi University (DU) is going to introduce from AY 2013-14, 4 years degree programmes for non-professional courses. At present, 77 colleges including both professional and non-professional courses are affiliated to DU. In case of non-professional programmes the degree duration is of 3 year in 10+2 pattern as followed all over the country. DU has very prestigious colleges like Hans Raj College, Hindu College, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Lady Irwin College, St. Stephen’s College, etc. Obtaining admission is very tough and only the cream all over the country joins such colleges and some foreign students do get admitted. These students are the cream, mostly coming from elite class. Such bright students, it appears, find it difficult to get admission for PG programmes in developed countries that run 4 years’ courses for transfer of credits blocks their access. Hopefully such issues can be overcome to a great extent if like US DU-programmes are of 4 years’ duration facilitating these students to move abroad for higher studies. Thus, this DU’s pattern is different from that run by the rest of the country.

DU is well funded by State/Central/UGC. By increasing course duration by one year, the number of faculty required will increase say by 25%, course structure needs to be thorough, and full proof, and the mechanism and operational execution must be robust and sound. And more importantly, the said mechanism also shall see to it that the cream talent thus nurtured in India is retained in India for nation-building, and not high jacked by developed countries. Else the DU’s venture will be abortive serving no national interests.

The Indian Scenario

1.       In ancient Indian system there were four Ashramas:

·         Brahmacharyashrama: 25 yrs.

·         Grihasthshrama: 25 yrs

·         Vanaprasthashrama: 25 yrs

·         Sanyasashrama: 25 yrs  (Life span 100 yrs)

2.      During Brahmacharyashrama a kid in the age group 4 to 8 years was admitted in Gurukul for education and then after the age of 25 years, one used to enter into Grihasthashrama.

3.      I am a product of engineering stream with the pattern 11+2+3, admitted in primary school at the age 6 years, i.e., I completed BE at the age of 22 years.  Today, BE takes 10+2+4 on admission to preliminary school at the 5 or 6^th years of age. Other non-engineering graduates, save medical, spend 10+2+3 (i.e., 15 yrs) to earn the first degree.

4.      If we consider PG in engineering, one spends 16+2 years. For programmes like MBA engineering graduate spends 18 yrs and other graduates 17 yrs

5.      As per Indian culture, kid is fully dependent upon parents during student-ship. The practice of earn while learn is rarely observed. As against this Indian tradition, in developed countries like US, a kid of 14-15 years old starts earning his lively hood.  By 2030 or so 65% of Indian population is expected to be in the age group of 15 to 59 years, the largest youth power in the world. The issue before us is how to provide work to so many hands and food to so many bellies.

6.      The status of our literacy rate, GER, graduates, etc., lies at the world-bottom position. Dropout rate is very high and hardly 7% student-population goes for graduation, most of them to non-professional programmes.

7.      In the domain of Higher Education, the quality and cost of education is debatable and needs thorough overhauling. The employability rate of graduates varies from 5 to 15%.

8.     Developed countries like US have realized that to achieve total development of a nation, it is important to tackle 98% student’s population that has no opportunity to study in top institutes of national importance. To bring them in the main stream for national prosperity, concepts like disruptive innovating colleges, flipped classrooms, virtual universities, People’s University, MOOC, etc., have been introduced by developed countries since one decade or so.

9.      A few decades ago, teachers and books were the only access for information. However, the new education e-technology that uses extensively ICT tools has totally revolutionized the education process as more than 100% information is now accessible just at a click away. Blending approach is widely adopted reducing the load on faculty and students as the present approach is education at anytime, anywhere, any by anybody.

10.  RTE is found to face several issues in India because of such reasons as diversification and divides in terms of economic status, religion, region, language, caste, etc. It is a Herculean task to take our society to the state of knowledge society in near future.

Some queries and suggestions:

In view of the above and ground reality, the proposal of the Delhi University for starting four years degree programmes needs to be investigated. Some points and queries for consideration are:

1.       Whether the proposal is made to take the country on global education map? Or we want to make changes just for the sake of change only?

2.      Is it a craze for elite class that constitutes less than 0.5% of Indian population making them more divide?

3.      Will the programmes of the World Class Education status attract foreign students to India? What is the expected revenue generated thereby?

4.      Is the quality of education linearly proportional to the years of a degree programme after 12+ levels?

5.      Can the 4 yrs programme be really of worth if we do not have in place a right mechanism, in right hands at right time?

6.      Are we ready for: faculty floating self-designed market driven courses, flexible, liberal and cafeteria approach with a large/liberal scope for subjects-selection/choice, etc.?

7.      What are our achievements after introducing courses, like, for example, Communication skills, Social Sciences (earlier), Environmental Sciences (now)?  

8.     Whether all the stakeholders are duly involved in the decision making process?

9.      Whether scientific approach is adopted?

10.  What is the real market demand?

11.   When all over the world the trend is downsizing both faculty and contact hours, what are we achieving by increasing this?

12.  Normally, all institutes spend 60% to 80% of their revenue on the compensation of employees. Whether such institutes can be termed as efficient, effective and economical organizations? To me the compensation needs not exceed 30% of revenue so that institute’s development and R & D can be achieved in a real sense.

13.  Youth power is a very invaluable resource in building the nation.  Saving of youth power is its generation. Is it wise to misuse, underutilizes and abuse this power?

14.  Even if we strictly stick to our University Acts and Statutes, our achievements would have been great. A skeleton without soul has no meaning, so on and so forth.

To conclude, it is not desirable to copy and implement some body’s model half-hearted without any regard to national needs and ground reality. Let us develop our own model and to see to it that it works positively within 5 years. Enough is enough.

Aurangabad                                                                       Dr. P H Waghodekar,

Dated: 2/5/2013                                   Advisor (HR) IBS & PME (PG), MIT, Aurangabad.

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