Yashpal Committee Report
The Full text of the 94 page report of the The
Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education is
up on the education ministry's site. The 24 member committee chaired by Prof.
Yashpal included amongst others the Chairpersons of UGC, AICTE, and NAAC, Vice
Chancellors (current and former) of publicly funded universities, Directors of
IIT (Madras), IIM (Bangalore) and NCERT, economists and bureacrats from the
Planning Commission, the Finance, Education and other ministries. Dr. Ramdas
Pai, Chancellor of Manipal University, was the sole member on the committee
from a private university. A few others from outside the education sector
include Kiran Karnik (former President of NASSCOM) and legal expert N.R.
Madhava Menon who is a member on the commission of Centre-State Relations.
Apparently, Prof Kaushik Basu, an Economics
Professor at Cornell University, and a member of the Yashpal Committee, has
penned a dissent note to the report. There is no mention of the dissent note by
Kaushik Basu in the copy of the 94 page report put up online at the education ministry's
web site.
Here is a summary of
the main points from the full text of the Yashpal Committee Report (extracted
and paraphrased by me as I have understood it, with references provided to the
page numbers on the report).
1. All universities must
be teaching cum research universities. All research bodies must connect with
universities in their vicinity and create teaching opportunities for their
researchers. (p14)
2. We must prevent
isolation of study of engineering or management. We should look forward to the
day when IITs and IIMs also produce scholars in areas like literature,
linguistics and politics. Institutions must be given the freedom to expand and
diversify as they see fit rather than thrusting an uniform diktat on all
institutions. (p15)
3. All syllabi should
require teachers and students to apply what they have learnt in their courses,
on studying a local situation, issue or problem. There should be sufficient
room for the use of local data and resources to make the knowledge covered in
the syllabus come alive as experience. (p18)
4. Minimum set of occupational
exposure to be made compulsory for all students, irrespective of discipline, in
the form of summer jobs or internships, with evaluation of the students on this
front. (p19)
5. Need to expose
students at the undergraduate level to various disciplines like humanities,
social sciences, aesthetics, irrespective of the discipline they would like to
specialise in subsequently. (p21)
6. Teacher training for
all levels of school education (from primary to higher secondary) must be
carried out by institutions of higher educations. The absence of
university-level interest in teacher training has resulted in poor academic
quality. (p21-22)
7. We need to build
strong bridges between different fields of professional education and the
disciplines of science, social sciences and humanities, All professional
institutions must be part of a comprehensive university in a complete
administrative and academic sense. We must abolish intermediary bodies that
have been set up solely to issue licenses to professional colleges alone and
inspect them. This will also help new interdisciplinary courses and research to
evolve in the comprehensive universities. (p23)
8. All vocational
institutions must also be part of universities. (p24)
9. It should be mandatory
for all universities to have undergraduate programes. All teachers in
universities must teach at the undergraduate level. (p26)
10.
Universities must take steps to reduce gender, class and caste
asymmetries. (p27)
11.
Universities must study areas that are relevant in their
immediate social and natural milieu and create knowledge bases in those areas.
(p28)
12.
Universities must be motivated to identify and prioritise areas
for reform and initiate and implement the reform themselves from within rather
than having the reform thrust on them top-down by a national or state-level
body. This will be true autonomy. (p28)
13.
There should be no discrimination between Central and State
funded universities. All benefits extended to Central Universities must also be
extended by State Governments to the state universities and the Centre must
incentivise the States to do so. (p30)
14.
There is an optimum size for a University in terms of the number
of affiliated colleges, which must be maintained. (p31-32)
15.
The inability of the state to drastically increase capacity in
higher education has led to growth of the private sector in higher education.
To double higher education capacity, we need all three kinds of universities:
state-funded and run universities, private universities and those funded and
run by public-private partnerships. All of them should work efficiently
overseen by a transparent regulatory mechanism. (p32-34)
16.
All private universities must submit to a national accreditation
system. Private degree-granting universities must not be confined to select
areas like technology, medicine, management, finance etc.. They must be
required to be comprehensive universities covering the arts and social and
natural sciences too. (p35)
17.
There must be tight regulation of private universities in terms
of auditing of accounts, payment of minimum salaries to teachers, certain
percentage of seats reserved for meritorious students who are to be provided
scholarships etc.. (p35)
18.
Granting of Deemed University status to be put on hold. All
existing Deemed Universities to be given three years to shape up (to have
strong research programmes, and become a comprehensive university as defined in
this report) failing which their Deemed University status is to be withdrawn.
(p37)
19.
Education must be made affordable for all through scholarships or
loans provided by the State. Every student who gains admission must get an
assured loan or a scholarship (for the needy) from the State. (p39)
20.
Do we need foreign universities? Can the best learning
experiences not be provided to our students by opening our doors to foreign
scholars? p(40)
21.
If the best of foreign universities (amongst the top 200 in the
world) want to come to India, they should be welcomed. Such institutions should
award an Indian degree and be subject to all the rules and regulations that
would apply to any Indian university. (p40)
22.
State funding, though increasing, will not be enough to expand
supply and progress towards excellence. Complementary sources of funding will
have to be found even for state funded universities. Philanthropy from society
and alumni as a source of funding needs to be encouraged, with appropriate
changes in regulation. Universities must be able to hire professional
fundraisers and professional investors to attract funding from non-government
sources. (p41)
23.
Universities must be freed from the constraints imposed by
funding agencies to obtain approvals for every single post. Funding agencies
must provide block grants against a plan and universities must be allowed to
spend them according to their priorities, subject to the plan. (p42)
24.
There are a large number of students who can afford to pay for
their education. Absence of differential fees has led to subsidising students
who can actually afford to pay. Those who can afford to pay must pay higher
fees for which they will be offered guarateed student loans. Free education
will be provided only to those who cannot afford it. (p42)
25.
National tests like the GRE must be organised round the year.
Students from all over India must be allowed to take the tests as many times as
they like and their best score can be sent to the universities for admission.
Currently the CBSE and the State Board exams are a means of normalising school
level competencies - this can be done by the National tests. We must seriously
think of reviving our faith in each school and its teachers to credibly
evaluate their own students. (p42-43)
26.
India can provide affordable higher education to foreign
students, if we remove systemic impediments. It will also enrich the ethos of
our universities. (p43)
27.
Urgent measures are needed to attract good people who enjoy
teaching and research back to the university and offer them a positive and
motivating environment. Resources in terms of libraries, laboratories and
research assistance as well as competitive remuneration will need to be
provided to retain good people. (p43-44)
28.
Student assessment of teachers needs to be instituted. Students
can provide an experiential assessment of the quality of teaching. Parameters
of student feedback can be drawn up to avoid distorted assessments by students.
Teachers whose feedback record remains poor in successive years should be
required to face formal precedures which might allow a university or college to
shed them.
29.
We need to improve governance of universities by developing
expertise in educational management, and avoid burdening good academics with
administrative chores. We must have a separation between academic
administration and overall management (including fund raising). State
governments must abandon the trend of appointing civil servants as university
administrators. (p45)
30.
Teachers and students must have autonomy. In academic matters,
the teacher should have the autonomy to frame his/her course and the way he/she
would like to assess his/her students. Students should be allowed to take
courses of their choice from different universities and then be awarded a
degree on the basis of credits earned. (p46)
31.
We should not blame private initiative, political interference,
and other forces for the loss of autonomy of universities. There was no
rigorous resistance, indeed there was willing abdication, from the academic
community to the subversion in matters of policy implementation, appointments
and day-to-day functioning of the universities. Education was made subservient
to ideological compulsions, which led to its loss of respect. (p49)
32.
We need a De Novo regulatory body - the National Commission for
Higher Education and Research (NCHER) under which the various functions of the
existing regulatory agencies would be subsumed. The new body would also take
over the powers vested in the existing regulatory bodies in terms of creation
of new institutions as well as their content/sylallbi. (p52)
33.
The 13 existing professional councils created under various acts
of Parliament may after divesting their existing regulatory functions to NCHER
look at conducting tests for practicisng professionals affiliated to the
councils, prescribing syllabi for such tests and leave it to the universities
to design their curriculum based on such syllabi. (p55).
34.
The NCHER would not interfere with academic freedom and
institutional autonomy. It would not follow
the current inspection-based
approval method, it but would use move to a verification
and authentication system. Universities will put out mandatory self-declarations
in the public domain.(corrected)
35.
a.
Given the federal nature of our country and the role of states
in education, there must be Higher Education Councils (HECs) in the states
which will co-ordinate with the NCHER, to allow different institutions created
and funded by the Centre and States to grow on equal footing. These HECs would
also insulate the State universities from outside interference. (p57).
36.
There should be a fast-track statutory mechanism in place for
the adjudication of disputes between teachers, employees and management of
institutions and universities in respect of matters concerning service
conditions, as well as in matters of disputes relating to fee, admissions etc.
A suitable law should be enacted to establish a National Education Tribunal
along with State Education Tribunals or appropriate number of Benches of the
Apex Tribunal in place for such adjudication. This would be in line with the
observations of the Supreme Court of India in the TMA Pai matter, where such Tribunals
were recommended. (p 60)
37.
Any agency whose intention is to protect students from sub-par
education is better off by providing information on the programmes and
univerisites to the student rather than walk the slippery path of establishing
minimum standards of quality (for education is about academic over-reach rather
than reaching the minimum). (p63)
38.
Curricular reform to be the topmost priority of the newly
created NCHER which would create a curricular framework based on the principles
of mobility within a full range of curricular areas and integration of skills
with academic depth. (p64)
39.
The NCHER should galvanize research in the university system
through the creation of a National Research Foundation. (p64)
40.
The NCHER should identify the best 1,500 colleges across India
to upgrade them as universities, and create clusters of other potentially good
colleges to evolve as universities. (p66)
41.
The NCHER too should be subject to external review once in five
years. (p66)
42.
The NCHER should prepare and present a Report on the State of
Higher Education in India annually to Parliament. (p68)
43.
a.
The NCHER shall establish transparent norms and process for
entry and exit of institutions. The need is to make the process easy for good
and serious proposals for setting up new institutions. (p68)
44.
The NCHER would be an autonomous body created by making a
suitable amendment to the Constitution, accountable only to the Indian
parliament and drawing its budgetary resources from the Ministry of Finance. It
would have a seven-member board with a full-time Chairperson. Of the seven
members, one would be an eminent professional from the world of industry and
one with the background of a long and consistent social engagement. All other
five members would be academic people of eminence, representing broad areas of
knowledge. The status of the Chairperson of the commission should be analogous
to that of the Chief Election Commissioner and that of the members should be
comparable to the Election Commissioners. The Commission will be independent of
all ministries of the Government of India. It will have the autonomy to hire
talent at various levels within and outside the government. It will also have
the autonomy to define the compensation of its employees.
45.
The NCHER may initially consist of five divisions: (p70)
· Future Directions: Developing global
benchmarks on student performance; university performance; salaries, potential
programmers; new research directions; and articulation of needs of the
government in terms of manpower etc.
· Accreditation
Management: Creating norms for
accreditation and certifyingmultiple accreditation agencies which would be
independent of the government .Institutions and universities may like to get
accreditation from one or more than one agencies depending on their reputation.
They would be also providing annual feedback to universities, and organizing
workshops etc.
· Funding &
Development:
Developing funding needs of universities, developing mechanisms for funding
institutions, helping universities with development of corpus and good
endowment management, managing the guaranteed student loan/scholarship
programme, and funding the requirements of universities etc.
· New Institutions &
Incubation: Including training
workshops for first-time VCs as well as on themes like accounting, investing
the corpus, communication within & outside the university, negotiations
& managing vendors, good office practices, human resource management etc.
· Information &
Governance: This division will
focus on managing the data needs of the commission, display of information on
universities, develop performance parameters on the governance of universities,
support other divisions with information as well as provide students with
information on each university. This division w ill also inform the
Accreditation and Funding & Development divisions of the performance or
lack thereof, for each university, each year.
There's a lot of
interesting stuff in the report! Enough fodder for a separate post to follow
looking at the prognosis, suggestions and recommendations.
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