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 | Higher education: Sickness sans cure Our Correspondent It is not very often that our political masters call a spade a spade. So, when Human Resource Minister Arjun Singh calls higher education as a "sick child," he should be commended for his honesty in at least recognising that such sickness does exist. "Higher education is a sick child of education. It is not serving the cause of the young people of India," Singh said on Wednesday at a two-day national conference of vice-chancellors. The problem, however, is that the medicine that he has in mind is spurious, for his cure has been tried earlier and found wanting. He continues to parrot the shibboleths of a bygone era; one such is the supposedly big divide between the rich and poor in terms of access to education. "Keeping the divide in view, you should define what should be the content, extent, methodology and basic ingredients of higher education," the HRD Minister told vice-chancellors. Later, responding to their suggestions, Singh said, "Inclusion and access with equity are the core issues that confront us today." But, Mr Minister, since Independence "inclusion and access with equity" were never ignored by any government. Efforts have been made to allow people from all communities and regions to have equal access to higher education. In fact, it is because of the excessive emphasis on these two issues that the fees in universities are ludicrously low. The need of the hour is, what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is fond of saying, out-of-the-box thinking. As for action, it has to be much more than sloganeering; slogans and hackneyed terms like equity and inclusion will not help anybody. Arjun Singh and his cronies in the government are not capable of innovative thinking and effective action. For his statist approach prevents him looking at the real solution—that is, opening up of the education sector. Education is one of the few areas that have not seen any major reform since the commencement of liberalisation in 1991. By design or coincidence, the concerned ministry too has been presided over by most statist men in various governments, men like Arjun Singh and Murli Manohar Joshi. Commercialisation of education has been anathema for such politicians, the introduction of market principles in this sector a taboo. As Planning Commission member B Mungekar, "Today, not more than 9 to 10 per cent graduates are employable. There is a totally diverse economic and social reality. The task is to drastically restructure the education system." But the issue is: would the HRD Ministry let this happen? Arjun Singh has given no signals. One has to be an incorrigible optimist to hope for a cure. Posted on : 10/15/2007 Mail this article to your friend |