Haryana must raise the bar for higher education
It is said that destroying any nation or community does not require the use of atomic bombs or long-range missiles. It only requires lowering the quality of education. The result will be that patients will die at the hands of such doctors. Buildings will collapse at the hands of such engineers. Money will be lost at the hands of such accountants and economists and justice will be lost at the hands of such judges. In short, the collapse of education is the collapse of the state. In this competitive age, knowledge or education is the only means to ameliorate the conditions of future generations.
It is an undeniable fact that any society cannot progress and prosper without a good education for its coming generation. This is particularly true in this age of knowledge and competition. A society will be relegated to a position of inferior or subordinate status without excelling in education and skill. It will be suffering the perpetual pain of being left behind.
Unfortunately, the quality of higher education is deteriorating in the state and this fact is impacting the employability of the youth, resulting in the highest unemployment in country.
The state has about three scores of functional universities, including about two dozen state government-run universities. The National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) report 2021 has ranked National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra, 44th under the engineering category, a drop of four ranks in comparison with its ranking in 2020. Likewise, Maharshi Dayanand University’s (MDU) ranking has slipped from 76th position to this year’s 78th. Likewise, Kurukshetra University’s rank has gone down from 99th to 119th, as per the 2021 report. One of the major reasons for this degeneration in the quality of education in the State is that the universities and colleges are being established without adequate teachers, funds and infrastructure. Political interference in their autonomous functioning has spoiled the academic atmosphere in the state.
The aim of the government appears not to ensure improvement of the excellence of the higher education institutions but to score political points or simply to improve the statistics. The conditions of government-run colleges in the state are poor and pathetic. The facts reveal the callousness of the government towards the future of our young generation. In Haryana, there are 173 government colleges, of which about 50 run in make-shift buildings with minimal infrastructure. Some colleges are being run from three-four rooms of a school or any outside building. There are about 8,000 sanctioned posts for teachers against the workload of about 8,800 posts in the colleges. At present, about 3,600 regular teachers, which come to about 46% of the sanctioned posts, are working. About 54% of posts of college teachers are vacant for a long time. Only two scores of colleges have regular principals out of the 173 colleges. One can easily imagine the academic atmosphere and level of education in our colleges without required teachers. To aggravate the already grim situation, the policy of recruiting ‘extension lecturers’ against the existing vacancies has been abandoned since 2018. It implies that the posts of college teachers are deliberately being kept vacant.
The condition of the existing infrastructure i.e. laboratories, libraries, sports facilities is dismally poor and that hampers the all-round development of the students in the colleges. The objective of higher education should be to equip the students with the necessary knowledge and skills for their employability in the constantly changing and competitive job market. A more shocking fact about higher education in Haryana is that 15 colleges out of the 20 opened last year offer only two main subjects of humanities i.e., history and political science along with English and Hindi, the language subjects. The students have to compulsorily opt out of these subjects which have very limited scope for employment. Or else, they have to seek college admission away from their homes which defeats the purpose of opening the college in that area.
The expectations from the New Education Policy have been dampened by the pandemic crisis, making the situation worse for the students. There has been a huge learning loss during this period and the digital divide between the urban and the rural areas added to the growing disarray. Due to paucity of resources, the rural poor students have no or little access to quality higher education. The New Education Policy envisions and recommends that the state expend at least 6% of the GDP on education. Unfortunately, the Haryana government has allocated only 2% of the GSDP for education. British educationist Andy McIntyre wittingly said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
There is no doubt that the decline in the standards of higher education results in horrendous wastage of human resources, which leads to frustration among the youth. Consequently, the social milieu is vitiated with several grave implications for the coming generations.
