You have spent six years as the VC of JNU, during which you have also faced many controversies…
My stay in JNU has been wonderful for the simple reason that JNU has excellent scholars and highly aspirational students. That is why it was possible for us to introduce very diverse academic and research programs and to reform the university’s administrative restructuring and admission policies.
In any organization, including educational institutions, growth and improvement must be an intrinsic part. When changes are introduced, it is quite likely that people are not used to those changes. But once the changes have happened and the results are visible, people will surely appreciate those changes. And something similar has happened in JNU as well. I would not say that I had nothing to do with the controversies as most of the students and faculty members were open to many of the changes we introduced. For example, going for a computer based test for JNU entrance exam. Today as part of the National Policy on Education (NEP) we are talking about a Common Entrance Test and it becomes easier for us to make the transition.
Your plans as UGC chief?
There are many challenges, for example, building new educational institutions takes time and then you have limited options for aspiring students, as there is a lot of competition for limited seats, access and lack of equality. So now, more than ever, there is a greater need to integrate our education with the knowledge economy that will address many of these challenges. And today the digital technology which is coming in different areas of our life, education sector also cannot remain separate from it. We need to re-imagine our teaching-learning processes in universities, we have to restructure our governance system for better efficiency. That is why my first priority would be to implement the NEP.
What changes are needed in our universities?
They need to re-examine the way they are providing teaching and learning, financial capabilities and diverse cognitive abilities of students. We need to flexibly adapt our education to the students we provide. India is at the forefront of introducing digital technology, be it the healthcare system or the facilities provided to citizens using online platforms. So why can’t digital technologies be a part of our educational system to deliver education anytime, anywhere at the doorstep of our students?
Your priority areas will be…
To ensure that higher educational institutions are ready to absorb this digital technology so that students get better access to higher education.
The NEP talks about providing education in Indian languages including vocational education. And there are scientific reasons for this as well. How can we create a system where students have access to lectures, to materials that are essential for their learning in a multilingual format? We should also encourage states and other educational institutions to offer their educational programs in local languages and these materials should be available free of cost on digital platforms. So, that’s going to be another important area that I’ll be working on.
We also need to seriously consider reforming graduate education in our universities. Thanks to the NEP, we can now offer a truly four-year degree program. The idea is to provide flexibility for the student and provide students with a wider range of options.
Aren’t we putting more emphasis on online education? According to critics, the four-year undergraduate program and graded autonomy to institutions would promote commercialization of education. your thoughts?
The introduction of technologies into a four-year program or education is something that is happening as a part of the evolutionary process. Technologies are a part of our lives, we cannot just wish and education sector cannot remain separate from the rest of the development that is happening. As a teacher myself, I agree that physical contact cannot yet be replaced by technology. But who knows in the future, if we introduce Artificial Intelligence and Virtual and Augmented Reality. But that’s for the future. Now, what we are trying to do is two things – in the physical classroom the students need help in terms of resource material. So how do you provide it? Now we have various digital platforms. So to enhance the learning process taking place in the physical classroom, you will need to provide all these facilities to the students.
There are 30 crore students in the country. And currently only about 40 million students are part of the higher education system. What about the remaining students who would like to take admission in these colleges? There are many reasons for being unable to get admission in these colleges including limited number of seats in limited physical universities, financial and personal reasons. But imagine, the same child registers for an online degree program from his home, uses some of these digital platforms and TV channels and gets educated and gets the degree and becomes employable. So don’t we want to impart these skills to our students who are unable to come to physical campus? And that’s why I think we need to focus on both things, develop infrastructure both physical and digital.
As announced in the budget, with the kind of digital universities that are about to come, it will be very difficult to commercialize education to provide flexible access to high quality education. When is education commercialised? When there are limited resources, and there are too many people competing, there are chances that people may abuse that position. But let me tell you that we will not allow commercialization of education in our country.
Is the Common Entrance Test also being viewed with great suspicion by the critics?
Since it is a computer based exam, there is going to be a lot of flexibility in terms of taking care of the diverse requirements of different institutes. Any online test is completely error free. Already some state universities in remote areas are saying that this test will be helpful. So the interested students of these universities can also participate in the Common University Entrance Test. And once the scores are available for the local university, and when local students apply, use the scores to rank them. We know that admission on the basis of these class XII exam marks is creating a challenge for us, as there are so many boards across the country. And there are many ways of evaluating students and the percentage varies across the country. Many are willing to appear in the university board.
Internationalization of Indian education is another focus area of the NEP. what is the situation?
There is so much talent in our country and high quality educational institutions. There are many countries that highly regard India’s education system, for example, in some countries in the African region, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, even in Southeast Asia. We have many candidates who want to get access to higher educational resources available here. And it is headed by space scientist Dr. Radhakrishnan. I am also a part of that committee and we are working and discussing with the ambassadors of our country in different cities and we are planning to discuss with the ambassadors of those countries which are in India that we are on our own How can we set up educational institutions? these countries.
Many countries are interested in providing full funding to these institutions in terms of building infrastructure and providing equipment. So, we can ask the host country to fully fund the educational institution and our teachers can go there and teach their students and give degrees. There are some countries which are not well equipped in terms of providing full assistance. So, in those cases, they are willing to provide a part of their university to run our programs. Another interesting model and this is where digital technology comes in handy, with some countries interested in pursuing a fully online education. Our teachers will sit in India, teach the students through online mode in the host country, may be a joint degree or it may be a degree awarded by our institution or their institution. So, you can see that through this process India can become a center for providing higher education.
And the other thing we are working on is to invite the best educational institutions from all over the world to come and set up campuses and there is a lot of progress in approaching these institutions and we hope to have them soon Such campuses in India
The issue of vacancies is troubling our institutions for a long time?
This is an ongoing challenge, as you do not want to select someone who is not well prepared in the sense that they should have a good academic background, demonstrate their research abilities through their PhD. Therefore, both things will go hand in hand, the academic and research standards in universities will have to be improved so that more high quality PhD students can come out of these institutions. Also universities had to actively advertise and shortlist and recruit faculty in a short span of time. And this is another area where I will definitely sit with all the Central University Vice Chancellors, and ensure that the vacancies are filled as soon as possible.
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