Not surprised St Stephen’s College fared lower than even Zakir Hussain College

St Stephen’s College has fared poorly in the recently concluded National Assessment and Accreditation Council  (NAAC) accreditation in which it has been rated lower than even Zakir Hussain College and Acharya Narendra Dev College. Am I surprised?

No, I am not. Nor am I altogether convinced.

The NAAC Peer Team that assessed St Stephen’s College did a professional job and their findings cannot be faulted. Yet there is a problem.

Twice I was invited to join the pool of National Assessment and Accreditation Council experts: in 2007 and in 2016. On both occasions I declined.  There is a reason for it and it needs to be stated. 

NAAC accreditation relies heavily on an imperfect, to an extent retrograde, instrument for assessing institutions. It has no margin for the uniqueness of institutions which, in my considered opinion, needs to be encouraged, not penalised.

The effect, otherwise, would be that of squeezing all institutions into a narrow mold of conformity, resulting in homogenisation of features which stifles uniqueness and distinctiveness. The extent of harm this does is too huge and multifarious to be detailed here.

No thought is given to the fact that assessment and accreditation are potentially coercive, even if the element of coercion is immanent and not obtrusive. The format is fixed and rigid. And all institutions have to conform to it, without any heed to their founding vision or distinctive strengths, if they have any.

How is this different from how children are assessed in schools?

What happened years ago to my daughter in a school in Delhi illustrates the point.

She came home looking sad for getting an answer wrong in the class test. The question was, “What does Maruti factory manufacture?” She answered, “vans”. (We had a Maruti van in those days.) According to the teacher the answer was “cars”. Her answer was judged wrong. She was assessed and accredited, if you like, accordingly.

The NAAC process, believe me, is disturbingly similar!

So, vis-à-vis St Stephen’s, part of what the NAAC score reflects is the price an institution has to pay for being unique.

What makes this interesting is that this happens at a time when there is so much talk about promoting innovation through education. We talk about innovation, but we enforce conformity in the garb of regulation. We progress by going backwards!

I would not have pointed this out except that this is hugely symptomatic of much of what we do in education and elsewhere.

The Peer Team, I said, did a good and honest job. Here is why I agree with their findings.

1) St Stephen’s has stayed frozen in time. Imagine an institution of excellence offering only 11 courses in all? In an age of avowed inter-disciplinarity in higher education? This is something that the Team took serious note of; rightly too.

But what they did not consider is that this results from a choice on the part of the college to offer only a limited number of courses, in order to excel in them. This was the core strength of the college which has, in a changed scenario, become its major weakness.

This choice has also to do with the emphasis St Stephen’s has traditionally laid on student-teacher relationship. I have said often in the past that while English is the medium of instruction in the college, relationship is the medium of the education we practice.

The quality of attention a scholar receives from teachers is inversely proportionate to the size of the class and institution. This ideal, however, is alien to NAAC, which rewards quantity and discounts quality!

2) Over the years, St Stephen’s has allowed its native strengths to weaken. I mention the following as illustrative, not exhaustive, instances.

(a) The faculty, barring a handful, are really mediocre. In saying this, I keep in mind my professional knowledge of the college over four decades. There is a distinct decline in scholarship, stature and sense of vocation. During my tenure as Principal, I struggled hard to enliven the intellectual and scholastic substance of the institution.

I have to say, many of the initiatives were smothered by the faculty, who are so stuck in the birdlime of professional insecurity that they do not want to be exposed to academic challenges.

A mere look at the list of publications by over 80 teachers will prove this point. Hardly anyone is doing any serious research or study. The meagre requirements of undergraduate teaching are met and that too under an air of being burdened! The NAAC team did take serious note of this.

Things cannot improve unless accountability is enforced. There is no feedback of any kind on teachers. They are free from accountability.

I remember being approached by the principal investigator of a project on methodologies of teaching. She wanted to record a few English (Hons) lectures. The idea was to showcase them as the national norm. I was excited. But the then head of the department reacted vehemently against it. The inference does not have to be belaboured. This is the reality.

(b) The faculty is used to the luxury of getting away with doing the minimum. Though the terms of appointment stipulate that they do such extra work as they are assigned by the head of the institution, not even 25 per cent of teachers in St Stephen’s volunteer to take on extra responsibilities. Most among them do not apply themselves to the extra-curricular responsibilities accepted. As a result, they stay shrivelled.

This also means that they become negative. Theirs is a vocal, militant minority who oppose every innovative and progressive initiative, lest they be required to do something extra and, in the process, get exposed. The rest of the faculty are in solidarity with them.

The NAAC team was seriously disappointed that the faculty was not doing enough, compared to their peers in other colleges. I agree.

In my final interactions with the Team, the members told me that they would go soft on the college, but that these deficiencies should be rectified the soonest.

(c) The college has a uniquely beautiful campus; but the infrastructure is woefully inadequate.

Imagine an institution managing with just 14 lecture rooms! Go to a government school in Delhi. It will have more classrooms.

When I took over as Principal, St Stephen’s did not even have an LCD projector!

The campus is large enough to accommodate at least 5,000 students, in place of the current 1,200. There is land enough to create another 1. 3 million sqft of educational infrastructure. The potential for growth and upgradation is immense.

But regulations come in the way. There are two massive hindrances to the growth of the college.

The first is the University of Delhi. Every effort made in the last nine years to introduce new courses and to enlarge the basket of offering was frustrated by the university, even though its own assessment teams certified that the college has everything it takes to implement its plans. 

The second Himalayan stumbling block is the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). It will take me a whole book to tell the story of how I managed to get the master plan of the college passed without paying bribes. I would even qualify for a bravery award!

I would challenge PM Narendra Modi to reform the MCD and reduce corruption there by, say, 25 per cent. The processes of sanction/approval are made deliberately cumbersome to crown corruption.

St Stephen’s suffered in NAAC scores also because of the negativity of the university and the systemic cussedness and corruption of the MCD. 

After trying for years, I finally decided to fall back on what little capacity for innovation I have. I created aparnasala, or house of leaves: a green classroom with creepers as walls and roof.

That was the only way I could circumvent the MCD. For humble people like us, who want to keep our hands clean, creativity is the only possible response to the oppression of corruption.

A serious issue that underlies much of what I have pointed out above is that institutions have no control over teachers. I can vouch for the fact that in most colleges, Principals live in fear of their colleagues!

How will they enforce discipline? How will work culture be upheld? How will teacher truancy  - which is as high as 30 per cent - be curtailed?

Also read: I, Valson Thampu, blame the teachers of St Stephen's College for academic rot