Rise and decline of India's state university system: Neglect, design or neglect by design?

Current Science

Volumn 97, Issue 7, 2009, Pages 1013-1021

  Kanhere, Dilip G ^a   Arjunwadkar, Mihir ^a   Vichare, Abhijat M ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PUNE   (India)

^b Research and Innovation Group   (India)

Author keywords

Education policy; Globalization; Higher education; Reform; State university system

Indexed keywords

EID: 71849087639     PISSN: 00113891     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. Gardner, J. W., Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too?, Harper, New York, 1961. For biographical details on John W. Gardner (1912-2002), see http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John W. Gardner.
2. An extreme and purist version of this point of view goes as far as saying that the purpose of a university is 'to give the society what it needs, and not what it wants'; see Dijkstra, E. W., The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise (1994), available as http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd11xx/EWD1175.PDF. A problem with this view is that it is at best difficult to draw a clean boundary line between needs and wants.
3. Over the next two decades, the country's middle class will grow from about 5% of the population to more than 40% and create the world's fifth-largest consumer market. The McKinsey Quarterly, August 2007; http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Tracking_the_growth_of_Indias_middle_cl ass_2032). See also: Baensch, R. E., India: Demographics for Publishers, Publishing Research Quarterly, 2007, 23, 262-269.
4. We consider all post-10 + 2 education as higher education.
5. This also includes many extensive discussions by serious individuals who are deeply concerned about the situation. See, e.g. the Education in India blog; http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/higher_education/), or http://www.deeshaa.org/.
6. Gardner, J. W., Self-Renewal: The Individual and The Innovative Society, Harper and Row, New York, 1964.
7. Case in point: recent fiascoes over the attempted deployment of the ATKT and the 90: 10 admission policies with an eye on the upcoming assembly elections.
8. The University of Pune is generally considered one of the better/best State Universities in India. For example, it has the NAAC (http://naacindia.org/) 5-star status, and it is No. 2 for technology amongst Indian Universities according to the THES-QS 2008 World University Rankings; http://www.topuniversities.com/worldUniversityrankings/results/2008/subj ect_rankings/technology/.
9. The word 'academician' is used throughout this article with the following connotation: Academician is to academics what mathematician is to mathematics. By academics, we imply 'scholarly activities of a school or university, as classroom studies or research projects'; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/academics.
10. Durant, W., The Story of Civilization (Vol. 3: Caesar and Christ; Epilogue: Why Rome Fell), Simon and Schuster, New York, 1935.
11. A critique of this model of academics can be found in a perceptive article by Sunil Mukhi that appeared in the Times of India, Pune Edition, 15 January 2006. As of the date of this article, this article can be found at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/SUNDAY SPECIALS/All_That_Matters/Academic_partnership/articleshow/msid-1372152, curpg-1.cms. It is interesting to note that Sunil Mukhi, well-known physicist/string theorist, belongs to the very institute, the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, that was founded by Homi J. Bhabha himself.
12. Irawati Karve (1905-70), anthropologist. R. N. Dandekar (1909-2001), vedic scholar and indologist; V. S. Huzurbazar (1919-91), statistician; M. R. Bhide (1923-94), physicist.
13. This is intended as a statement of fact and not of judgment, and we harbour no enemity for the Government or its agencies, or the IISERs and IUCs. In fact, even isolated pockets of excellence are welcome in the present state of affairs! The key point here is the neglect of the state university system, and not the formation of additional elite institutions.
14. Quote attributed to Norman Douglas (1868-1952), British writer.
15. The Nobel prize, yet another Indian (pipe)dream, provides (to those in power) a convenient, popular, and unfalsifiable proof of lack of quality output from our scientific community. What is either not realized (or conveniently ignored) is the fact that a Nobel is an incidental statistical outcome of a sufficient-sized, quality-driven system that enshrines excellence as one of the core values.
16. The credit for coining this apt term, to the best of our knowledge, belongs to Prof. Padmakar V. Panat (1943-2009), physicist and teacher par excellence.
17. Which is as pathetic as Suresh Kalmadi covertly claiming credit for Abhinav Bindra's Olympic gold medal: see, e.g. http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Give-credit-to-SFI-too-for-Abhin av-success-Kalmadi/363022/.
18. The Knowledge Commission (http://knowledgecommission. gov.in/) reports are a clear example. Another example is industrysupported community efforts for education; e.g. a Forbes-Marshall sponsored community centre for underprivileged children in Kasarwadi, Pune, another similar effort supported by Veritas/Cognizant, the Aundh area, Pune, etc.
19. Highly respectable and well-known examples of such NGOs include Eklavya (http://eklavya.in/) in Madhya Pradesh, and the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad (http://www.kssp.org.in/) in Kerala.
20. Quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist. An acerbic variant of the same, but specific to the Indian context, reads '10 + 2 + n = 0 for all n > 0'.
21. Quote attributed to Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher, logician, mathematician.
22. Gardner, J. W., in his 1996 US Civil Service Commission Anniversary Speech, as quoted at http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/.
23. Quote attributed to Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer and humorist.
24. Richard Stallman (1953), American software freedom activist and founder of the GNU Project (http://www.gnu.org/) and the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/). The word 'free' here is to be interpreted as in 'freedom'. For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman and http://www.stallman.org/.