Choice Based Credit System will corrode Indian education
India's higher education is in throes of change. The Smriti Irani-led HRD ministry has been abuzz with activities aimed at making Indian universities "world-class". As a part of the drive has been two moves, intricately related to each other, which has at best been controversial. One, the enforcement of the Central Universities of India (Teaching, Research and Administration) Act, 2013 which encompasses curriculum homogenisation, common admission, transferable faculty, in all the Central Universities; and the other being across the board implementation of Choice Based Credit System in all universities in India.
The Central Universities of India Act, first tabled in 2009 and revived by the current dispensation, aims to subsume various Acts of Parliament that created the autonomous Central Universities into one Model Act. It also requires all Central Universities to have a "common" curriculum. For example the curriculum of an English Honours programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University will be similar to that of say Central University of Karnataka.
The Act also proposes a "common" entrance test for admissions into Central Universities, setting up a Central University Recruitment Board which will make centralised appointments of personnel and to have "transferable" faculty.
In order to bring "equity, efficiency and excellence" in higher education, the UGC has pushed for implementation of a Choice Based Credit System (CBCS). It envisions a departure from the single-discipline approach in undergraduate education by allowing students to select courses of different disciplines, having a semester system rather than a yearly system and permitting mobility of students across institutions by allowing transfer of credits.
The "common" syllabus mooted thus forms a prerequisite for effective implementation of the CBCS for if there is no commonality, awarding, equating and transfer of credits would lose its meaning. While the provisions of the Central University Act have not been implemented, as many as 18 central universities have already introduced Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) at undergraduate level and 37 in postgraduate level in the current academic year.
Bones of contention
The very idea of bringing in equity by establishing a common curriculum is flawed. If the powers that be intend to raise the quality of substandard institutions, ushering in homogenous curriculum is not the solution. There is broad consensus on what entails an undergraduate curriculum across universities and the scope of its delivery has solely been the domain of universities and its affiliated institutions. In trying to force a common curriculum over all the Central Universities, the MHRD is attempting to impede a core value of all universities, their autonomy.
A common curriculum across universities will stifle diversity, affect critical thinking, a prerequisite for good research and innovative creation. It will also prevent universities to deploy newer pedagogical approaches and courses. In a diverse country like India such a move is neither feasible nor is warranted for it will hinder growth of disciplines that are local and unique to a university.
The proposed Central Recruitment Board for faculty and administrative staff appointment will add another layer of bureaucracy to an already politically-mired system. It is anyone's guess what chaos transfer of faculty across universities in India would create. Beginning from derailing research which is a long term vocation it could turn to be a tool to harass people not toeing the line of the power centers, ultimately fostering bribery to stop or effectuate "transfers".
As regards the CBCS, it is perhaps from the Bologna Process experiment in the European Union from which themes of standardisation, seamless transfer by credit transfer, enhanced employability have been borrowed in order to make Indian higher education skill-based. But this overlooks the fundamental difference that while in the West it was lack of public funding which decreased enrolment rates, in India it is a classic case of demand-supply gap which lies at the root of the problem.
While credit transfer is a welcome idea, uniformity in curriculum need not be a prerequisite for it. Since there isn't sufficient data on student mobility, the volume, reasons and pattern of it, it would be prudent to permit transfer of credits to an institution which provides similar courses, often with a course equivalence system agreed to by universities.
The heart might be in the right place regarding skill-based education but with a gross lack of infrastructure, both material and human resource, which haunts both our public and private institutions; it will just end up as a farcical exercise where few batches of students become guinea pigs in the experiments of those perched in ivory towers of higher education.
Best university system
There must be something inherently right, much beyond merely funding, with universities in the US, for American universities grab half the spots in the top hundred universities and secure eight out of top ten in rankings. They employ almost two-thirds of world's Nobel Prize winners and churn out one-third of all research papers in the world on science and engineering with a very high citation rate.
The secret of success perhaps lies in the core academic principles, of Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom. The following statement by the American Association of University Professors, in the year 1940, is a testament to the fact that academic freedom is a means to an end and not an end in itself:
"Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research."
Their universities derive greater institutional autonomy because of three factors as described by former President of American Council on Education, Molly Corbett Broad. Firstly a federated system with responsibility vested in states; secondly a peer-reviewed quality assurance system and thirdly a robust institutional governance system insulated from political and market forces.
The reasons for unprecedented and sustained success of the US universities include less governance; there isn't a central plan that rules them all. It also includes a unique competition among universities beginning from federal grants to celebrity students and a strong industry-academia link.
Institutional autonomy and academic freedom
The US Supreme Court in 1957 described institutional autonomy as "the right of the university to determine for itself, on academic grounds, who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study". Such a stance intended to insulate academic and governance issues in university from federal and state governments as well as industry and other interested stakeholders. Autonomy is the foundation on which diversity develops which in turn is a great strength of any higher education system. Autonomy also is bedrock for the other principle - academic freedom which permits a faculty to produce and disseminate knowledge without undue constraint and with due academic responsibility.
While it is a fact that in developing countries like India where the state sponsorship of higher education does not effectively bestow wide-ranging autonomy to universities, it should be the endeavour of teaching and civil society to make rightful demand for it. After all universities are enduring institutions, which takes great effort and time to create, and it is imperative that they be built on sound values. It should also not be forgotten that internal democracy and sound governance structures in universities themselves should precede any such demand, for government, funders and importantly universities themselves are huge obstacles for autonomy.
Conclusion
The Central Universities of India Act along with Choice Based Credit System effectively thwarts these two academic principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. While few of its intentions like student-centric education, choice of subject selection, creation of a post of ombudsman in each university is laudable, the lack of infrastructure, personnel, structures that are essential in functioning of a healthy university are lacking in many Central Universities and thus negates these intents.
There are several ills that public higher education in India faces. A shortage of about 700 universities, abysmal teacher student ratio of 1:23 against the proposed 1:12, a 19.4 per cent GER, well below world average of 30 per cent, obsolete pedagogical tools, gross lack of infrastructure, poor research environment, universities operating in silos, are just to name a few.
In attempting to impose common curriculum in all Central Universities, in wresting power for appointment and transfers of faculty members with a central body, in pushing the CBCS across board, the recent autonomy-stifling moves by HRD ministry only aims at increased state interference, bureaucratisation and overregulation, which are precisely what Indian higher education needs to get rid of.