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| Photo Credit: L. Balachandar
West Bengal’s last-minute implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) in State-run/aided colleges from the academic year 2023-24 — after remaining indecisive on the matter for a year — has caused unhappiness in the teaching community, which is not sure how to adopt the new system, and then so quickly.
This delayed decision on the adoption of a four-year undergraduate course has also delayed admissions to colleges. According to an order issued by the State government on Friday, the admission process will begin on July 1 — even though Class 12 results were declared on May 25 — and will have to end by August 31. As a result, the first semester of the new academic year will last barely four months.
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“Colleges are still to finalise the skill enhancement and value added courses that they will offer in the first semester. Teaching such courses will require professionally trained teachers. Colleges will have to recruit them. Also, the course structure as prescribed by the UGC (University Grants Commission), being circulated in several groups, cannot be clearly understood by the colleges,” a professor of a Kolkata college, who did wish to be named, said.
The State government, while announcing the implementation of a four-year undergraduate course, also made it clear that colleges would do the same “through optimum utilisation of existing resources or self-mobilisation of additional resources, pending receipt of additional financial assistance”. This, too, is something that’s worrying institutions and teachers.
“Self-financing is a means of withdrawal of the government from its responsibility of providing public education and maintaining public-funded institutions. This invites privatisation of education that would automatically exclude students from marginalised communities from the educational system itself. Not only will this widen social inequalities, the additional year for undergraduate courses would prove to be a burden even for middle class families,” Maroona Murmu, Professor of History, Jadavpur University, said.
“The preconditions for introducing the new undergraduate programme entail total revamping of infrastructure, including laboratory expansion, increase in classrooms, more academic resources in the library and, of course, a major recruitment drive. With increasing budget cuts on education every year, this seems too big a challenge to overcome,” Prof. Murmu said.
This vital transformation in the education system is happening at a time when most universities run or aided by the State government are without full-time Vice-Chancellors (V-C) — the result of a tussle between the State government and the Governor, who is also the Chancellor of these universities. The absence of full-time V-Cs would mean the institutions would be unable to take key decisions.
“It just seems the Governor is trying to destabilise higher education in the State when such a crucial reform is underway,” Prof. Om Prakash Mishra, former V-C of North Bengal University, said.
Prof. Mishra was part of the committee that was set up by the State government to study the implementation of NEP. “Despite [lack of proper] infrastructure and other constraints, we decided to go ahead with a four-year degree course in the interest of students,” he said.