BARNAGAR COLLEGE, SORBHOG

(BARPETA, ASSAM)

SEMINAR PAPER ON

“CHALLENGES AND RESPONSIBITIES OF TEACHERS IN

HIGHER EDUCATION OF INDIA”

SUB TOPICES:

“ACADEMIC REFORMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION OF INDIA”

HELD ON 18th AND 19th OCTOBER, 2012

SUMBITTED BY

MD. AYNUL BARI

(M.A in Political Science)

VILL- DEWKURA, P/O- GHUGUBARI

P/S- KALGACHIA, DIST- BARPRTA, ASSAM

Abstract:

The system of higher education now existing in

India was originally implemented by the British rulers in the mid-

19th century to serve the colonial economic, political and

administrative interests, and in particular, to consolidate and

maintain their dominance in the country. It was inherited by the

state managers after independence (in 1947) as a colonial legacy,

and has been expanded phenomenally during the last five decades.

The massive system of higher education in India consists of 214

(198 state and 16 central) universities, 38 institutions ‘deemed-

to-be universities,’ 11 institutes of national importance, 9,703

colleges, and 887 polytechnics. The system now employs 321,000

teachers and caters to 6,755,000 students. The number of

institutions and enrollment in higher education continue their

rapid growth, but the quality of this education remains uncertain.

A small number of state subsidised institutions attract a thin top

layer of talent from each year’s cohort. High selectivity of

admission to these elite institutions provides a screen valued by

potential employers. Domestic and foreign demand for the services

of these few thousand students has created an inflated reputation

of the overall quality of India’s higher education. The number of

such graduates remains small relative to the population and the

demands of India’s economy for educated manpower. Reliable

estimates of value-added by higher education, beyond the screening

value of admission to elite institutions, are needed to assess

colleges and universities, and to guide educational policy.

Graduate education—the seed farm of higher education and

scholarship—continues in an alarming state of disarray with respect

to both quality and quantity. Pressed by budgetary constraints, the

government appears to have decided on profit-oriented privatization

of higher education as the solution. Political and business

classes, with significant overlap between the two, see higher

education as a source of lucrative private returns on investment.

There is little theoretical or empirical evidence that supports the

prospects of success of a for-profit model in building quality

higher education. Some recent proposals hold promise of radical

reform and renovation, including regulatory restructuring. It

remains unclear whether the government has the wisdom,

determination, financing, and power to push reforms past the

resistance from entrenched faculty and from the political and

business classes.

Introduction:

INDIA has seen a consistently high rate of economic

growth in the recent years. It has now become a major player in

the global knowledge economy. Skill-based activities have made

significant contribution to this growth. Such activities depend

on the large pool of qualified manpower that is fed by its large

higher education system. It is now widely accepted that higher

education has been critical to India’s emergence in the global

knowledge economy. Yet, it is believed that a crisis is plaguing

the Indian higher education system. While, the National Knowledge

Commission (NKC) set up by the Prime Minister calls it a ‘quiet

crisis’, the Human Resource Minister calls higher education ‘a

sick child’. Industries routinely point towards huge skill

shortages and are of the opinion that growth momentum may not be

sustained unless the problem of skill shortages is addressed.

There appear to be endless problems with the

Indian higher education system. The higher education system

produces graduates that are unemployable, though there are

mounting skill shortages in a number of sectors. The standards of

academic research are low and declining, an unwieldy affiliating

system, inflexible academic structure, uneven capacity across

subjects, eroding autonomy of academic institutions, low level of

public funding, archaic and dysfunctional regulatory environment

are some of its many problems. Finally, it is widely held that it

suffers from several systemic deficiencies and is driven by

populism, and in the absence of reliable data, there is little

informed public debate. More than 35 years ago, Nobel laureate

Amartya Sen, while analysing the crisis in Indian education,

rather than attributing the crisis in Indian education to

administrative neglect or to thoughtless action, pointed out that

the ‘grave failures in policy-making in the field of education

require the analysis of the characteristics of the economic and

social forces operating in India, and response of public policy

to these forces’ (Amartya Sen, ‘The Crisis in Indian education’,

Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lectures, 10–11 March 1970). He

emphasised that ‘due to the government’s tendency to formulate

educational policies based on public pressure, often wrong

policies are pursued.’ Unfortunately, it is believed that policy-

making suffers from similar failure even today. Rather than

pragmatism, it is populism, ideology and vested interests that

drive policy. It seeks to achieve arbitrarily set goals that are

often elusive and, more than that, pursued half-heartedly.

Objectives:

1. To know the Indian present education system, 2. To find

out the basic needs of Indian higher education, 3. To

improve the quality of Indian higher education.

Methodology:

Methodology is based on secondary data and empirical

study only. All the data are collected from Internet,

Journals, and related books.

Government policy of Academic reforms in higher Education:

Affiliation systems:

It has been a cause of concern that a large number of

colleges, sometimes thousands, are affiliated to a university. Such

universities, most of the times, are busy with admissions and conduct

of examination and hardly find the time for quality interventions and

innovations. Thus, affiliating system causes tremendous pressure on

the universities and adversely affects the quality of higher

education. In the Conference of Vice Chancellors of Central

Universities and State Funded State Universities held in March, 2011,

it was recommended that the number of colleges affiliated to the

universities should be restricted to 50 – 60. Another Committee of

Experts constituted by UGC to suggest reforms in the system of

affiliation has suggested in its interim report that the number of

colleges affiliated to a university should not go beyond 100. There is

another dimension to affiliation problem. In certain cases the

universities keep the colleges on temporary affiliation even if the

college fulfils all the conditions for permanent affiliation. This

cuts both ways. On the one hand the university keeps charging hefty

affiliation fee from the colleges and on the other hand, the colleges

are deprived of the UGC assistance as they cannot be recognized by UGC

under Section 12-B for the want of permanent affiliation. The

Governments and the universities need to address this issue.

There is a dire need to undertake reforms in the entire higher

education sector beginning with regulatory structures and going down

to the institution level. The following approaches would inform the

entire reform agenda:

Independent quality assurance frameworks are essential to

address the quality deficit in the higher educational institutions. A

comprehensive reform agenda has to be relentlessly pursued in the XII

plan in order to bring the institutions at par with world quality

institutions.

Creating a single over-arching authority:

XI Plan noted that an apex regulatory institutional mechanism should

be created which must be at an arm’s-length from the government and

independent of all stakeholders. The main function of the regulatory

mechanism would be setting and maintenance of standards as also to

evaluate performance and outcomes. The Yash Pal Committee has also

given by the National Knowledge Commission and for an overarching body

for higher education & research recommendations on Independent

Regulator. Government has initiated the process for the establishment

of such an apex body. A bill for the "National Commission for Higher

Education and Research has been introduced in the Parliament for this

purposes. The new structure would ensure that future needs of the

country in terms of inter-disciplinary learning are met.

Autonomy of institutions: It is also proposed to re-align

the regulatory functioning in such a way as to promote autonomy of

institutions. This approach envisages that we embrace a paradigm shift

from to Facilitation rather than regulation; Single point clearances

for grants and clearances; encourage global quality institutions.

Autonomy of institutions would also be achieved by conferring degree-

granting powers to colleges and conferring autonomous status on

colleges. In order to ensure horizontal and vertical mobility of

students, we need to ensure that uniformity is achieving in terms of

syllabi and curricula through a framework; all institutions adopt

Choice Based Credit System (CBCS).

It is also proposed to move away from multiplicity of

entrance and eligibility examinations to a single national test.

Permitting foreign education providers in India for proper

regulation and internationalisation of education by enhanced

collaborations.

Norm based funding of higher education rather than subjective

demand based inspection governed funding.

Central Educational Institutions Reforms: the central

universities and central institutions like IITs and IIMs would be

further granted autonomy. The IIT Councils would be further

strengthened to provide requisite support and guidance to all

institutions.

Creation of National and State Educational Tribunals to deliver

speedy justice to all litigations arising in the higher education

sector.

Prevention and prohibition of unfair practices to ensure that

only merit plays a role in admissions. Capitation fees and misleading

advertisements to be punished severely.

EXPECTED ACTION BY STATE GOVT: States may, in consultation with

higher education institutions, take up Governance and Academic

Reforms particularly reforms in the affiliation system.

Challenges of Higher Education:

Attracting More Talent to Teaching and Scholarship:

That Indian academia is not attractive to talented

youth is apparent in many ways. During visits to Indian campuses,

when one requests student audiences to raise their hands if they

plan to pursue a career of teaching and scholarship, barely a

hand or two goes up in auditoriums filled with a few hundred

undergraduate and graduate students. The occasional lonely raised

hand attracts curious and surprised looks, and derisive giggles

fill the room. The raised hand drops back to the lap, as the pity

and ridicule of friends and colleagues sink in, making clear the

oppressive social contempt of an academic career path. Inquiries

from vice-chancellors, directors, deans, and department heads

reveal the persistent difficulty of filling academic positions

with individuals who have the promise of being inspiring teachers

and innovative scholars. There are plenty of applications, but

few are drawn from the top half of their undergraduate class.

More often, academic jobs are the last resort for those who find

no other options. Although data on the quality of talent

entering the teaching profession are hard to come by, there is

plenty of anecdotal evidence. A conversation with a student on a

visit to a well-known national university revealed that the

compensation expected by members of his master’s class was less

than the average compensation of his erstwhile classmates who

took a job after receiving their bachelor’s degree. Only those

who wish to teach, he sheepishly explained, enroll in the

master’s program. Apparently, the better students get picked for

other jobs first. Compensation of teachers often does not compare

favorably with the compensation their students get in their first

jobs upon graduation. While compensation is not the only reward

of learning and scholarship, it is important. Until the Sixth Pay

Commission Report led the University Grants Commission to raise

government academic pay by 70 percent in 2008, teachers barely

had a toehold on the lower middle class rung of the social

ladder. Beyond the individual satisfaction such a career may

bring them, the middle class ethos in India does not accord

teachers a social status as an extra reward. Matrimonial

advertisements—that ultimate indicator of social status in India—

often include searches for engineers, MBAs, green card holders,

etc., but hardly ever for teachers. The Hindi adjective pitiable

is aptly used for teachers. Nor do the mass media portrayals of

teachers as mean-spirited, bumbling fools (e.g., the head of an

elite engineering college in the 2009 Hindi film Three Idiots)

help to attract the young to academic careers.

The Pharmacy Council of India expresses its concern

about the graduates of M. Pharm programs being hired to teach not

only bachelors but also master’s and doctoral students

immediately upon graduation with this entry at its website: “The

Pharmacy Council of India has noted with concern that several

Universities/institutions are offering PG programmes in Pharmacy

(M.Pharm) without having necessary infrastructure and qualified

faculty. The pass outs from such universities/institutions are

appointed as teaching faculty in pharmacy institutions to teach

D.Pharm/B.Pharm/ M.Pharm/Pharm.D. students.” Similar stories are

common about engineering schools hiring their own jobless

bachelor’s degree holders to teach the following year’s classes.

Even in the elite universities, not all who teach a class are

necessarily qualified to be admitted as its member. It is an

inconvenient truth that India lags in innovation, is falling

further behind, and is in a state of largely unrecognized crisis.

Like carbon monoxide, this slow creep is unannounced and

unnoticed, yet potentially lethal for India's economic progress.

Research, scholarship, creativity, and inspirational teaching

occupy the narrow top of the educational pyramid. Education of

educators is the “seed farm” of knowledge. A wise farmer saves

his best grain to be used as seed for planting the next crop,

even if it means having to bear the hunger pangs in a bad harvest

year. A wise society, too, sends its best brains to think,

create, and teach the next generation. India does not.

How many higher education teachers does India need? A simple

“back of the envelope” calculation shows the need for

approximately 510,000 teachers for higher education at the low

current level of enrollments. If the system were already in a

steady state, and assuming 35 years as the average length of a

teaching career, this would mean a demand for about 15,000 new

teachers each year. In 2007, 20,131 PhD degrees were granted in

India, of which a mere 6,918 were in science and engineering.

However, this picture of higher education faculty is deceptively

comforting, and there are good reasons not to be too sanguine

about it. On the whole, the quality of talent entering the

faculty and PhD programs is not high. In most disciplines,

talented students from the top half of the undergraduate or

master’s class tend not to choose to pursue doctoral education or

scholarly careers. From the research published by the supervising

faculty of most PhD granting departments, and from a small sample

of theses, the work approved for doctoral degrees does not

necessarily compare to the international standards of

accomplishment and quality. Few doctoral theses from India earn

scholarly reputations for their authors, or publication in

prestigious research journals. Although India’s population is 80

percent of China’s, and 375 percent of the United States', even

ignoring the quality differentials, the PhD output of Indian

universities is only about 55 percent of China’s, and 40 percent

of the United States'. Finally, given the high current

enrollments and the anticipated rates of growth, the current and

projected demand for new teachers is at least twice as high as

the estimate given above under the steady-state assumption. Of

course, all these PhDs do not go to work in academia. Brilliant

minds who are capable of earning the PhD by doing original work

contribute to the vitality of the economy in many ways, including

work in industry. In India, this is especially true in such

disciplines as chemistry, where industry demand and higher

salaries have helped raise and sustain the quality of PhD

programs.

According to UNESCO statistics, of all regions of the world,

India has the lowest enrollment ratio and the fewest teachers in

higher education per capita. While the enrollment ratio is

growing, India is not making up the deficit in teachers. In the

2000 UNESCO World Education Report, India had about 434 teachers

in higher education per million populations, as compared to 3,612

in North America, and 3,205 in East Asia. It was also far behind

the Arab (730) and Latin American countries (1,608). According to

the figure of 457,000 college and university teachers given on

the website of the Ministry of Human Resource Development in July

2010, the number of such teachers in India dropped to about 400

in 2008. The website of the Ministry of Education in China

discloses that the higher education teacher/population ratio

there had tripled, from 401 in 1999 to 1,199 in 2008.

In year 2006-2007, [the latest year for which the annual report

of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) is

available in mid-2010], faculty development programs affected a

total of about 1,350 individuals, nationwide (Section 2.5). The

Council received 25 proposals for Nationally Coordinated Projects

to promote research, and awarded `50,000 each to 10 of these

proposals. The Council also approved grants of `160 million for

195 proposal for “modernization and removal of obsolescence” and

`18 million for 211 research promotion proposals.10 Considering

the size of the education system overseen by AICTE, it is

difficult not to be surprised by the small magnitude of these

numbers in a country of 1.20 billion population and half-a-

million college teachers. India’s rapid economic growth of the

past two decades followed investments made in education during

the previous fifty years. Today, most of the system is focused on

undergraduate education to meet the current demand. Few of the

top students in India are attracted to careers of scholarship.

With its inability to attract even the top one percent of each

year’s class into PhD programs, the quality of instruction and

scholarship in Indian higher education is in decline. India is

enjoying the fruit of the educational trees planted long ago, but

is not planting enough new trees. Unless it invests heavily in

research scholarship and doctoral education today (as the U.S.,

Europe, and China do), the quality of its higher education will

continue to decline, with serious consequences for its economy.

There is evidence that this decline has been continuing for some

time. The technology boom may lose steam as Indian firms move

their operations to other countries where they can find well-

educated employees in large numbers.

Policy measures: facilitate recruitment and appointment, flexibility

in engaging a variety of teachers, inter alia, such as part-time,

contractual, adjunct, visiting etc., teaching assistantships, faculty

mobility, incentivisation; Programmatic and scheme based

interventions; pre-service & in-service training, new academic

programmes & courses, pre-scheduling yearlong training calendars,

online training; Project based activities; ICT based training,

training of Mathematics, Science, Language teachers for schools, Core

science & engineering courses in technical education, general courses

in social science, humanities and vocational courses. Creating

capacity in Central and State Universities for preparation of teacher

educators and establishment of Schools of Education (SOEs) in

Universities:

The Government has assessed the need for increasing the

institutional capacity of preparing teacher educators for transacting

the various teacher education courses run by institutions across the

country. Table I below gives details of the number of teacher

education courses recognized by the NCTE for the various teacher

education courses, which indicates that at present 892 institutions

with an approved intake of 28,957 students prepare teacher education.

Centre for Pre-service Teacher Education:

Undergraduate four year integrated programme of Elementary

Teacher Education

(BElEd) as per the framework and norms notified by the NCTE (in-take

will vary as per the needs of each state). Two year B.Ed programme of

Secondary Teacher Education, including a 6-8 months placement in

schools during internship. Undergraduate four year integrated

programme of Early Childhood Education Separate units for early

childhood, elementary and secondary education.

Curriculum Research Policy and Educational Development:

Undertake content analysis of existing school curricula

across national and international experiences. Develop school

curricula across various disciplines of the sciences, social sciences,

language and mathematics within the frame of local contexts and needs

Develop simple conceptual materials for teacher-trainees and teacher

practitioners and link with SCERT Language Units for translation.

Undertake research in critical areas such as: tracing the educational

divide: caste, class, gender and identity; gender differentiation and

educational aspirations; social and political participation of women;

social exclusion and education across cultures: cross cultural

studies; sociological and anthropological perspectives on learning and

diversity; the political economy of educational provision; programme

and policy analysis from a human rights perspective; public and

private schooling: comparative historical research on universalisation

in different countries and the role of public education.

Centre for Learning and Pedagogic Studies:

Undertake systematic and large scale research on children’s

thinking and learning processes; their conceptual understanding in

specific areas of social sciences, sciences, languages and

mathematics.

Undertake research and in-depth enquiry into teachers’ conceptual

levels in core disciplinary areas, their understanding of pedagogical

content knowledge, assumptions about children, learning processes and

strategies and notions of knowledge.

Undertake research on the construction and transmission of knowledge

in different social systems; indigenous and unschooled knowledge;

systems of apprenticeship; perspectives on curricula for out-of-school

adolescents and adults.

Develop materials that enable an integrated understanding of pedagogy

knowledge domains and assessment.

Centre for the Professional Development of Teacher Educators and

Teacher

Education Curricula:

Masters programme in Elementary Education with specialization

in curriculum and pedagogic studies in mathematics education, social

science and science education and assessment.

Masters programme in Secondary Education with specialization in

curriculum and pedagogic studies in mathematics education, social

science and science education and assessment.

Re-orientation of select secondary school teachers for elementary

school teaching through an Advance Diploma in Elementary Education

under a scheme of continuing education.

Redesign the DIET D.Ed course to bring it into the frame suggested in

the NCFTE

Focused programmes of professional development for the DIET

and SCERT faculty across the state, including curriculum and pedagogic

studies and disciplinary knowledge-base.

Periodic monthly academic enrichment activities for teacher educators

including public lecture series, film and book discussion sessions and

need based issues and concerns identified and initiated by teacher

educators themselves. Offer short-term orientation programmes/courses

for teacher educators on teaching–learning skills, meta-learning

strategies related to different curricular areas and child

development; pedagogical aspects related to reading, writing, thinking

and instructional design theories for curriculum developers. Institute

teacher educator and teacher fellowships to enable young teachers and

teacher educators to undertake research with provision of mentoring.

Centre for Teacher Resource and Academic Support:

Provision of teacher resources, children’s literature,

variety of school curricula and textbooks, multimedia materials,

internet access for use across different centers of the School of

Education.

Platform for hands-on experience with materials, children, teacher

practitioners

(In-service teacher education and continued professional support) and

teacher trainees.

Platform for teacher interaction, teacher exchange, seminars and study

sessions, academic support – face to face as well as through ICT.

Development of learning and teaching materials for use in schools and

sharing across schools.

Establishing Regional Centre’s of Educational Management:

Another recommendation of the Working Group on Teacher

Education is establishing four Regional Centre’s of Educational

Management. This will be implemented by the Dept. of Higher Education.

These Regional Centre’s are proposed to be established in the IIM’s to

provide a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education Management for heads of

DIETs, SCERTs and other in-service practitioners. These courses can be

designed to include credit courses across institutions with

specialisations in curriculum and pedagogic studies.

Changing Policy on Higher Education in India:

From the early 20th century, there have been several high

level commissions set up to provide policy orientation to the

development of higher education in India. On the basis of the report

of the Sadler Commission (1917–19), also referred to as the Calcutta

University Commission, the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE)

was set up to define the general aims of educational policy and

coordinate the work of various provinces and universities by guarding

against needless

duplication and overlapping in the provision of the more costly forms

of education. The University Education Commission, presided over by Dr

S. Radhakrishnan, in its report in 1949 recommended that university

education should be placed in the Concurrent List so that there is a

national guarantee of minimum standards of university education. The

constituent assembly did not agree to it. It was much later, in 1976

that education was made a concurrent subject with the 42nd Amendment

of the Constitution.

The Kothari Commission (1964–66) examined various aspects

of education at all levels and gave a very comprehensive report full

of insight and wisdom. This report became the basis of the National

Policy on Education, 1968. With this, a common structure of education

(10+2+3) was introduced and implemented by most states over a period

of time. In the school curricula, in addition to laying down a common

scheme of studies for boys and girls, science and mathematics were

incorporated as compulsory subjects and work experience assigned a

place of importance. A beginning was also made in restructuring of

courses at the undergraduate level. Centres of advanced studies were

set up for post-graduate education and research. Detailed estimates

were made to meet requirements of educated manpower in the country.

In 1985, a comprehensive appraisal of the existing educational scene

was made. This was followed by a countrywide debate. It was noted that

while the achievements were impressive in themselves,

the general formulations incorporated in the 1968 policy did not,

however, get translated into a detailed strategy of implementation,

accompanied by the assignment of specific responsibilities and

financial and organisational support. It was further noted that

problems of access, quality, quantity, utility and financial outlay,

accumulated over the years, had assumed such massive proportions that

these required to be tackled with the utmost urgency.

Recent Developments in Indian Higher Education:

Higher education has received a lot of attention in India

over the past few years. There are four reasons for this recent focus.

First, country’s weak higher education system is being blamed for

skill shortages in several sectors of economy. Second, reservation

quotas in higher education

institutions, particularly the more reputed ones that provide access

to high status and best-paid jobs became a highly divisive issue,

central to the policy of inclusive growth and distributive justice,

and hence politically very important. Third, in the backdrop of the

first two developments, it began to be argued that the country would

not be able to sustain its growth momentum and maintain

competitiveness unless problems with higher education are fixed. Last,

demand for higher

education continues to outpace the supply due to growing population of

young people, gains in school education, the growing middle class and

their rising aspirations. With ambiguity in defining its purpose and

vagueness about its quality, debate on higher education is usually

full of rhetoric. As pointed out by Kapur and Crowley, for the higher

education ‘sector whose main purpose is to train people with strong

analytical skills, it is ironical that its own self-analysis is

replete with homilies and platitudes, rather than strong evidence’

(Kapur and Crowley, 2008). Institutions of higher education today are

an integral organ of the state and economy.

Findings: There is essential address the quality deficit in higher

educational institutions. There is extremely lack of educational

infrastructure in India, like research and development institution.

Government of India cannot success to develop human resources from

different aspect of technical and non-technical education. There is

lowest enrollment ratio and fewest teachers in higher education in per

capita. More over for social status includes searches for engineers,

MBAs, MBBS, green card holders etc, but hardly ever for teachers.

According to UNESCO, curriculum in Indian Universities lack challenge

and opportunities for advance learners. In comparison globally India

is lack behind in education system for due to proper academic reforms.

Conclusion: In the conclusion we can mention that India is recently

developed of higher education system, yet India can not facing the

demand from various kind of educational and professional sectors, to

fulfill the present needs, constitute some educational commission and

give empowerment to reform present academic system of higher

education.

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2007

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evaluation and open book examination”, University News Volume 45,

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education”, University News Volume 45, No: 2, Jan 8 -14, 2007

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University News, Volume 44 no 46, November 13-19, 2006

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Perception of Quality in Higher Education : A Case study.”,

University News 44 No: 46, Nov 13-19, 2006

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universities “ University News Volume 44, no: 50 Dec 11-17,2006

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November 2006, published by

National Knowledge Commission, Government of India, Dharma

Marg, Chanakyapuri, New

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