Careers 360 English Edition – July 2019

National Education Policy OPINION

Prof. Ramamurthy Natarajan, former Director of IIT

Madras and former Chairman of AICTE, takes a look at

the proposal of restructuring higher education into three

categories in the draft NEP...

REVAMPING

THE HIGHER

EDUCATION

T SYSTEM

he National Education Poli-
cy (NEP) gives the nation an
opportunity to review the past
and chart out a future in conso-
nance with the emerging global envi-
ronment and the national aspirations.
In fact, it can be employed to introduce
new features and reforms. For example,
the 1986/1991 policy served to combine
technical and management education
and create AICTE and the accredita-
tion systems for quality assurance.

NEP 2019 - Intent
The overarching intent of NEP 2019 is
to revamp the higher education system,
create world class multi-disciplinary
higher education institutions (HEIs)
across the country; and increase the
GER to at least 50% by 2035. The
guiding goals are access, equity, qual-
ity, affordability and accountability. The
policy recommends consolidating HEIs
from about 900 universities and 40,000
colleges to about 15,000 high-quality
multi-disciplinary institutions. These
are to be classified into three types;
combining research and teaching in dif-
ferent proportions: Type I with primary
focus on research, Type II focussing on
both research and Type III focussing
on teaching.
Another important recommenda-
tion is the setting up of the National
Research Foundation (NRF) on the
lines of the National Science Founda-
tion in the United States. This is intend-
ed to create and sustain a research-
promoting ambience in our higher edu-
cation institutions.

National and global rankings
In the recent global QS and THE rank-
ings, we have managed to secure only
three positions in the top 200. Every
year, there is a lot of sadness among the

Indian academics at our inability to do

better. The NIRF rankings were intro-

duced to have a national system of rank-

ing of our HEIs, with the avowed intent

to prepare national institutions to fare

better in the global rankings, although

there is little correlation between the

two.

What do we have to create world class

universities? Renowned scientist R.A.

Mashelkar has analysed the character-

istics of WCUs and the necessary con-

ditions for creating them. He identifies

five key factors as prevalent in WCUs:

OAbsolutely uncompromising pursuit

of excellence both in teaching and

research.

OContinuous thrust on not only “work-

ing ” at the frontiers of research, but

“creating ” new frontiers. An aggres-

sive and relentless thrust on saying

the “first and the last word in S&T”.

Or doing S&T that will “lead” and

not “follow”.

OAn uncompromising attitude

towards selection of both faculty as

well as students – going for the very

best and that too on a globally com-

petitive basis. Rigor to be employed

rigorously in the promotion and

retention of the most talented and

accomplished faculty.

OUndying commitment to the true

institutional autonomy without any

political interference whatsoever.

OFull understanding of the route to

“Lakshmi” through “Saraswathi”.

Not only understanding the wealth

creation potential of knowledge, but

also creating an “ecosystem” for this

to happen most effectively.

The NIRF has introduced a compari-

son and competition between the Indian

institutions without any contribution to

improvement in international competi-

tiveness. We need to study how other

countries, such as China, Singapore or

Hong Kong, have improved their global

rankings over the past few years. The

best we have been able to do is to intro-

duce the NIRF rankings which have no

relationship with the global rankings.

Job mismatch

In the recent past, the western econo-

mies have been experiencing econom-

ic growth, but fell short of job crea-

tion, characterized as jobless growth.

Whereas India has been experiencing

both slowdown of the economy as well

as job creation. Not only do we not have

enough jobs for the graduating students,

there is a serious mismatch between

the disciplines in which the students

graduate and the availability and quality

of employment. This has serious con-

sequences for education planning and

industrial and technology development.

PROF.

RAMAMURTHY

NATARAJAN,

Former Chairman,

AICTE