JNU is indeed elitist
M Rajivlochan
HISTORIAN
Yet another hungama at JNU draws our attention to the comprehensive mess in higher education. JNU, like Panjab University (PU), selects only a small fraction of all those who apply for admission and rejects those whom it does not consider academically sound. The JNU struggle, supported by its vocal faculty and students, though, is demanding that higher education be a right and not a privilege. The focus on privileges is an indicator of two interconnected points: inability of the university to explain its worth to society; and the inability of society to understand the worth of the university. Each inability feeds the other. The result is a conflict that focuses on frivolous issues like fee or the time when a student should be inside of the hostel or the prohibition on people of a different gender from entering a hostel room.
All societies agree that education is important. Societies, throughout history, have eagerly funded school education. The value of higher education, though, is understood only in those societies which wish to translate their desire to achieve greatness into something concrete. Even in earlier times, before the British ruled India, a large body of students went to school—pathshala, maqtab, madrasa. In the province of Bengal, in the 1790s, some 3.5 lakh students were enrolled in such institutions. In Punjab, as late as the 1830s, around three lakh students were reported. These were schools liberally funded by the local gentry. Sheikh Chilli’s madrasa at Thanesar (present-day Kurukshetra) flourished during the times of Dara Shikoh and taught a variety of life skills. In the madrasa at Lal Bagh Masjid (Dhaka) in the 1760s, the last maulvi to get a regular salary, Maulvi Asadullah, was paid a salary of Rs 60 per month, equivalent to Rs 7.5 lakh today. Students were taught languages, logic, argumentation and basic account keeping. This equipped them well for the job of a shopkeeper, accountant or clerk. Neither did society need any more formal learning nor were there any other facilities for higher learning. Military craft and superior artisanal skills were learnt mostly on the job.
Formal learning has always been subsidised heavily, everywhere. Even Harvard University, one of the costliest places of learning, is mostly run on grants and donations. Student fee covers only a small fraction of the costs, even in highly paying professional courses.
Universities are repositories of knowledge and it is their role to equip students with learning skills. Only universities that are in tune with the changing requirements of society, and which continuously generate new knowledge, would be able to discharge these roles adequately. So, the question to be asked is whether Indian universities have been able to perform these roles. Has JNU?
The issue about funding tuition and hostel fee is relatively less important. As of today, higher education is not an entitlement or a right. It is elitist. The IITs, IIMs and JNU put together take away 50% of state funds and teach just a per cent or so of students in higher education. It is because of this elitism that knowledge institutions reserve the right to test students for admission.
It is also important that apart from the government and students, key stakeholders in any knowledge institution would be those who create wealth, the alumni, business and industry. Currently, they are missing. Even worse, they don’t care.
JNU remains one of the most privileged higher education institutions. The campus is over 1,000 acre, and has 600 faculty, 1,200 non-teaching staff, 3,100 UG/PG students and 5,200 PhD researchers. Less than half these researchers succeed in competing for a fellowship. Their research output, publicly available data shows, is way behind the research output of universities like PU. Almost the entire faculty and half the non-teaching staff have campus housing. Of the 8,300 students enrolled at JNU, 6,900 have hostel facility. About 83% students live in university hostels. Despite all these privileges (or is it because of them?), JNU chooses to live mostly on government handouts.
This becomes its greatest weakness. JNU makes no effort to raise funds from its alumni nor does it involve its alumni in decision-making. This also means that JNU, by and large, remains cut off from society. One of the standard statements heard from its faculty and students is that ‘society does not understand us’. Society repays the indifference in spades.
The problem is made worse because Indian society in general has shown indifference to the connection between learning and earning. People find it convenient to politicise each issue and to talk about ideology. Ideologies are crutches used to avoid the act of thinking. In the modern world, the pace of change is such that many studies say that 65% jobs in the future workplace do not even exist today. To equip students to re-skill themselves requires a much greater engagement with society.
A study conducted by Scottish colleges calculated the parameters of benefit of a college education: earning to the student, greater earning to businesses and society at large, and the value of taxes that the resulting increase in economic activity generated. The study showed that against an expenditure of £665.8 million on supporting the colleges of Scotland, the colleges contributed £14.9 billion and added 8.8% to the total economic output of Scotland for 2013-14.
Higher education institutions in India do not seem equally convinced of their own value to society. Nor is the government. Maybe that is why the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for higher education remains 25%, in stark contrast to 48% in China. Only Tamil Nadu, Sikkim and Chandigarh have surpassed China’s figure.
India has lost tremendously because of allowing higher education to deteriorate. An education system that focuses merely on critiquing this and that, with no care for providing solutions, needs to change. Higher education has to provide solutions to problems in society. It cannot be the problem.
