The draft NEP-2019 is a unilateral script of the Government, systematically unfolding, to Privatise Higher Education and withdraw from the funding of public institutions. It has utter disregard for the marginalized sections as well as women, lacking the vision for the youth, in the rich demographic variations in our country. All the top scientists, leaders, entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, lawyers and even generals of the army have benefited from the public funded institutions at one stage or another. As per the policy document (page 373), India still has 26.5 crore adult non-literates (15 years and above) and in this situation, the NEP seeks to withdraw higher education from the bounds of our millions of youth, women and marginalised section. A small trailer of this can be seen in the 10 folds increase of fees in the IITs recently along with the introduction of tenure track appointments.
The policy proposes three types of Higher Educational institutions: Research Universities, Teaching Universities, Teaching Universities and Autonomous degree granting colleges.
NEP is a frontal attack on the basic idea of higher education which is embedded with the concept of scholarship itself. The word scholar has its origin in the Greek word schole which means leisure that is to pursue knowledge in an atmosphere which is free from tensions and material pressures of life. NEP seeks to materialise and monetise higher education for the benefit of private operators. The first step towards it is doing away with the UGC and instead of forming NHERA (National Higher Education Regulatory Authority) which would be purely a non-academic financial arm of the Government. NHERA shall be the sole regulator for all higher education, including professional education (P 18.1.4, page 326). The NEP states in unambiguous terms that it will treat both the public and the private institutions “equally”, which means a massive withdrawal from public funding education (P18.6, page 334). This will accentuate the growth of the private universities which will again receive funding from a government institution ” NHERA” while these private institutions will be empowered to set up any amount of fees for their programmes “independently” (P 18.6.3, page 334). To facilitate privatisation, NEP proposes to implement a uniform administrative structure designed to execute the industrial policy of hire and fire. These intensions are made amply clear where the NEP talks about the “tenure track” appointment. To quote extensively from the draft ” A robust and merit based tenure track, promotion and salary structure will be developed, with multiple levels within each faculty rank to incentivize and recognise excellent and “committed” faculty through tenure, promotions and salary increases” (P 13.1, page 258). This system of tenure track appointment will keep the teachers permanently temporary and at the service of their masters where extra academic considerations will replace academics and free and fearless pursuit of knowledge, “An appropriately designed tenure track system for faculty will be introduced for all college and university staff, including the faculty” (P13.1.6, page 260).
If the tenure track appointments will be an instrument of uncertainty among the faculty than unusually long periods of probation will completely take out the rigor and zeal from the trapped academia. “The probation period will typically be five years, which may be reduced or increased upon evaluation. Confirmation will be based on a rigorous and comprehensive assessment process with multiple sources of data. This could include 360-degree feedback (supervisor, peer and student review) (P13.1.6).” In such a situation critical thinking and innovative teaching in higher education would be a sure casualty.
The lack of commitment of the Government in higher education is reflected through NEP proposal to double the student-teacher ratio from 15:1 to 30:1 (P 13.1.2). Internationally, small teaching learning groups are the core strength of the performance and eminence. NEP further seeks to muddle up the higher education through its idea to encourage lateral recruitments of “field practitioners” in each institution without considering any criteria of educational qualifications (P13.1.3, page 259).
The NEP envisages institutes of higher education on the corporate model with ”independent” board of governors with complete autonomy by 2020 (P17.1.2, page 313 onwards) This all powerful BOG would replace the ”Executive Council” (the highest decision making body of the University with a considerable elected components from different stakeholders (p310). The BOG will have no provision of representation from other stakeholders such as students, teachers and non-teaching staff (P 17.1.6). Statutory bodies like Court and Academic council will have only VC-nominated members, with no provision of any elected representatives (P. 17.1.16) and staff council will disappear into thin air.
The BOG will comprise of few nominated members from the society and would be accountable only to Rashtriya Shiksha Ayog(RSA), which would be headed by the PM at the centre and CM at the states. These BOG’s will be self-renewing and self-extending with a power to weed out inconvenient members whenever needed. (P. 17.1.8) BOG’s will have the sweeping powers to appoint teachers and to decide about their tenure, promotions along with salary and compensation of individual teachers. (P 17.1.7). The introduction of compensation in academics is the horrifying reality of corporatization. Perhaps this push for corporatization of higher education is only to be expected in a situation when 66% of all college and university students attend private institutions as compared to almost 0% a mere 25 years ago.
This means these BOG’s are designed as a corporate tool of human resource management in academics i.e. they will have absolute powers to implement variable pay structure within the same rank and grade. For example, an assistant professor in the pay scale of 7000-8000 may have a different salary than a colleague who joined with him on the same day in the same scale having the same experience and qualification. This will be a death knell in the free pursuit of knowledge specially in the pure sciences where the research is not directly linked with the industry or immediate results. This attitude would further make all the fine arts and humanities appear as useless vestigial organs which would eventually dry up in the absence of Government funding and corporate greed.
The implementation of NEP would delink colleges from the universities vertically, handing over both, forcibly to private players. The NEP, in fact, has a timeline to dismantle the federal structure of the University and to hand it over its constituents to corporates.
The NEP is a fatal script with a horrifying timeline to be implemented with an unusual hurry. November 2019 would see the constitution of the apex bodies like RSA and NHERA. While 2020 would be the doomsday year for higher education as the constitution and operations of BOG’s will start in all public-funded institutions whereas in private funded the implementation date is 2030 which is ridiculous because private institutions inherently operate with the mentality and instrumentality of BOG’s.(page 213 onwards)
Government claim of spending up to 6% of GDP on education is a misnomer as Government wants to camouflage its withdrawal from the funding of public institutions by including the loans given by the government to the private players and valuation of their private properties into GDP expenditure on education.
The draft NEP recommended doubling of public funding to 6% of the GDP and increasing overall expenditure on education to 20% from the current 10%, which doesn’t seem to be feasible as most of the funding has to come from the States. The policy emphasized the role of philanthropists and companies to route their corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds to supplement government efforts, but it ignores the fact that such funds will not be ideologically neutral and free from corporate greed (page 406).
Seen thus the draft NEP is a classic push towards Governments withdrawal of funding from public institutions in the name of increasing GDP share towards education while quoting from UN charter on higher education and emphasizing “excellence”, “competence” only to throttle the long-standing organs of higher education by replacing the representative electoral components with nominated once. And at the same time delinking the free pursuit of knowledge in humanity and pure sciences by changing grants into loans and breaking the permanent into tenures with absurdly revisable probations of “5 years and more”.
