Delhi University used to be a premier centre of excellence in higher education. The academic stature of this university, with which I have been associated for over four decades, has been plummeting over the years. A cloud of pedagogic mediocrity has been gathering over the university. This is not merely a matter of compromising merit in teacher appointments. It is a result, more fundamentally, of the growing degradation of the human ambience – especially the caring attitude necessary to build up lives – of the university.
In the nine years that I was principal of St. Stephen’s College, I used to be astonished how an institution, administered as Delhi University was, could survive at all. Let me be specific in the interest of clarity. St. Stephen’s admits 50 students to first-year Economic Hons. We get over 7500 applications for this course alone. It was a crying need to increase intake. An application was moved with the university in 2012 for permission to increase the intake to 100 students. An inspection team came, assessed the college and submitted a favourable report. No action ensued for years. I wrote on several occasions to the university, besides contacting the then Vice-Chancellor repeatedly. No decision has been taken till date! I can cite instance after instance of a similar kind.
What all stakeholders of education refuse to realize is the importance of the learning environment. You may put brilliant teachers in a university. But, if the learning environment is inhospitable to the pursuit of academic excellence, they will deliver mediocre services. The tragedy, which is today pan-Indian, is that learning becomes a torment, endured impassively by students for want of alternatives. It was rarely that I used to see happy students even in St. Stephen’s College.
Now the avalanche has hit. Massive frustration has erupted in Delhi University. Postgraduate students are protesting against the humiliation inflicted on them through semester examinations. The grievance is, reportedly, more acute among Mathematics and Physics postgraduate students. Out of 279 first-year MSc Physics students, 262 failed in theory examinations, internal testing or both in at least one subject. In the Electro-Magnetic Theory paper as many as 258 students failed in the internal theory examination. 28 students out of 30 from Miranda House, 7 out of 7 from SGBT Khalsa College, 48 out of 50 from Hindu College and 5 out of 7 from St. Stephen’s, to take a few examples.
What about Mathematics postgraduate students? 35 out of 39 students failed in the third-semester Computational Fluid Dynamics Paper. 150 out of 300 students failed in the first semester Field Theory Paper.
To discourage aggrieved students from applying for re-evaluation, the corresponding fee was jacked up to ₹1000 per application. Even then they are kept waiting in agony and helplessness for months on end. This is sadistic, to say the least.
Delhi University admits only students of proven academic aptitude to its postgraduate courses. The seats available are limited and competition for admission is tough. That given, the university owes an explanation to the public, at whose expense it is funded and maintained, how this massive epidemic of mediocrity has overtaken a set of potentially competent students.
Going by past experiences, it is unlikely that any attempt is made to face the realities to which these distressing outcomes draw our attention. It is only in religion, if at all, that things happen in a supernatural fashion and individuals are fated to succeed or fail irrespective of their merits and efforts. Ordinary life is governed by a cause-effect relationship. So, if there is an effect, there surely is a cause. The inability to face the cause and the inclination to disown responsibility characterize academia today. As a result, eradicable maladies remain endemic in the domain of higher education.
Fixing accountability is the weakest link in the educational chain. The reigning mindset is configured on power. Requiring those ‘in power’ – not those ‘in authority’ – to be accountable, is perceived as an insult. Bureaucratic vanity stands in the way of responding remedially to situations of disarray, as in the present instance. Most administrators in education go out of their way to cultivate political godfathers. This, they know, is sufficient to ensure their continuation in office in spite of thunder.
My own experiences in academic administration convince me that the learning environment that prevails in centres of higher education, including colleges, is inhospitable to the pursuit of excellence. There are many facets to this, which need careful study and proactive intervention. All aspects of this worrisome tragedy are cultural. We don’t believe in ourselves. We are not excited about, or motivated to, developing our huge potential. Rather, we feel unhappy when someone excels and outshines. St. Stephen’s College, for instance, is enveloped by a thick fog of love-hate ambivalence. This is due largely to the uniqueness and the distinction of the institution. It is as if it is an impertinence to excel.
The public has no expectations from our universities. As a result, the self-perception of our universities is overladen with a sense of underprivilege which feeds mediocrity in service. To be in academics is deemed to be consigned to a shadowy existence on the periphery of public life. The negativity immanent in this outlook is aggravated by a near-total absence of accountability, which teachers have come to treat as a professional perk. They know no one cares. They too don’t.
Why is it that our students – and not always the best – begin to excel as soon as they join an overseas university? Why is it that we don’t have a single university among the world’s top two hundred? Why is it that we don’t have instances of academicians recognized at the global levels? It is not that our professors don’t travel and attend conferences. They do. But a key determinant in this, in most instances, is networking sustained by reciprocal courtesies.
Based on my experiences with Delhi University it is clear to me that the human element, much more than technical and financial inputs, is the critical factor. It is naïve to assume that by pumping a few hundred cores into a university it can be nudged up to global standards! The pursuit of excellence is a spiritual thing, in the universal and humane senses of the word. Spirituality is light. The goal of education is enlightenment. It is to activate the inner light of students. The various aspects of the curriculum, including the role of teachers, need to be conducive to this goal.
The teaching of Physics or Mathematics – or any subject, for that matter – will not improve, nor will learning become joyful, so long as the learning environment does not become conducive to effecting enlightenment through education. A human being is far more than a brain. Excellence is not merely cerebral. Excellence results when the fullness of an individual responds to the fullness of a system. Today, higher education in our country is an unhappily choreographed encounter between burdened students and burdensome teachers. The outcome, as in the present instance, is entirely predictable and, alas, lamentable.