Yashpal Committee report and its analysis

Yashpal Committee report and its analysis

Education is the beacon that guides a society to a better future.It is one sector to which the destiny of a nation is intrinsically linked.The better the quality of education at all its levels better educated are the people of a society and the more the the level of education higher the quality of human resources of a country.India which is the second most populous country in the world as well as one with a young population is considered to be one with an enormous demographic advantage.But this demographic advantage will become a disadvantage of India's vast young population is not given the quality of education that allows the country to fulfill its immense human resource potential.Keeping this in mind the government of India appointed a committee under the chairmanship of eminent educationist Prof.Yashpal to suggest possible reforms in the sphere of education.The committee finalized its report on 22nd June 2009 and handed it over to the Union Human Resource Development Minister on 24th June 2009.

Major recommendations:-
One of the important recommendations of the committee is that regulatory bodies like the University Grant Commission (UGC);the All India Council for Technical Education,the NCTE etc should be abolished and replaced by a seven-member Commission for Higher Education and Research (CHER) which would function as a super-regulator.It should be established through an Act of Parliament and should encompass within itself all the powers and duties of the regulatory bodies it will do away with.

The Committee also suggested that of the seven members of the CHER one should be an eminent personality from the world of industry.This is the very sensible suggestion indeed given that education in the times of job crisis must be appropriately oriented according to the needs and requirements of industry.

And who better can understand the demands of industry from fresh graduates other than a man from industry itself.Realizing that one single body with virtually all the powers of regulating the heigher education of India can be susceptible to political influence ,the committee recommeneded that the chairperson and the members of CHER should be selected by a committee constituting the PrimeMinister,Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India.The functional division of the CHER was also specified by the Yashpal committee.It specified five divisions for the CHER,one for future directions,one for accreditation ,for funding and development and finally for new institutions.An eminet person will head each division for five years,thus fixing their tenure in office.

This would give the heads of each devision the opportunity to work independently without succumbing to political pressure.The Chairperson and the members should be appointed by the President of India thus giving them additional prestige in keeping with their high office.State Higher Education Councils patterned on the ones existent in West Bengal,Andra Pradesh and Kerala will exist as the second tier of the system.In order to strengthen the position of the Chairperson,it has been made similer to that of the Election Commissioners of India.In addition to the abolition of bodies like the UGC and AICTE, the jurisdiction of other regulators like the Medical Council of India(MCI),the Bar Council of India etc must be restricted to only administrative matters.The accademic matters with which they deal must be made the sole preserve and resposibility of the concerned universities.

The Yashpal Committee feals that the Indian Institutes of Technology(IIT) and the Indian Institute of Management(IIM) being premier institutions for learning must not restrict themselves to the areas they deal with at present.They should diversify into subjects like humanitics,law and even arts there by expanding their scope of work and reach and must function as full-fledged Universities.While this appears to be a worthy suggestion,there is always the possibility that the IITs and IIMs may in the progress lose their core specialization for which they had earned international repute.However no one can blame the Yaspal Committee for recommending that these gaints of learning expand themselves from institutions to universities.After all the health of an organization is determined by its growth and the same is true for the IITs and IIMs.

The Committee also prescribed a national testing scheme for admissions to universites similar to the GRE which determines admissions to US universities.This national test should be open to all aspirants in India and it should be held more than once a year.This is an extremely good suggestion indeed as it seeks to do with many banes in the Indian heigher educational scenario.

Such a testing scheme would automatically get rid of any kind of quotas system,whether it is state and non-state quotas or NRI quotas,which have served no world while purpose other than increasing cut-throat commericailization in heigher education with some private colleges often charging exorbitant fees in exchange for sub-standard quality of education also selection will only be of meritorious students and not of moneyed ones.This will bring about an over all quality improvement in heigher education. As exams will be held more than ones,it will save students who could not qualify in a particular year from losing the whole year through commendable in this scheme of things the academic year has to be suitably adjusted.In fact it may result in more than once academic year with in a single calender year.In that case it should be seen that problems do not later on for getting jobs through campus interviews.To avoid any kind of confusion the American example may be followed.

The CHER will identify 1500 of India's best colleges so as to upgrade them to universities.At the same time it will create clusters of potentially good colleges which can evolve into universities.All levels to teacher education should also be brought under the purview of the heigher education regulator.Traning of teachers is an important area which needs to be focused upon.Unless teachers are well trained they cannot be expected to impart quality education among the students.Given that teacher's training remains a neglected area in India,the focus of the Yashpal Committee in improving it is welcome indeeded.

The Committee noted with concern the mushrooming of large no of engineering and management colleges many of which it felt had "largely become business entities dispensing very poor quality education".It also criticized the sharp growth of deemed universities.It felt that there should be a complete ban on deemed university status.As far as the existing deemed Universities are concerned if they are suddenly deprived of their status,then that would definitely create student unrest.Hence the committee recommended that these universities be given three years time to develop as universities and fullfill the requisite accreditation norms.However if any of the present deemed universities do not fulfill the accreditation norms the it is clear unclear as to what would happen top them.The committee spoke about the gross missuse of section 3 of the UGC Act which frames the guidlines lines providing the status of deemed universities.According to the interim report of the committee "in the last 5 years 36 institutions excluding the REC have been notified as deemed universities,raising concerns that a majority of these institutions are not established with any educational purpose".In fact the statistics say it all.From 1956 to 1990,29 institutions in all were conferred deemed status whereas in the last 15 years itself as many as 63 institutes were made deemed.

Clearly the deemed status has become rather less weighty in the last one and and a decades and this is what has made the Yashpal Committee worried.In many cases it cannot be denied that politics plays a part in the granting of deemed status.There are colleges in parts of India where student strife and politics result in examinations not taking place on time and yet these colleges have got the coveted label of deemed universities.

The committee questioned the sources of funding of many of the private education providers and said that it was either "unaccounted wealth from business and political enterprises or from capitation fees".Such funding made these private colleges no better than money making enterprises.It also noted with alarm that many of these educational institutes did not even give full salaries to their teachers and at times carried out "unethical practices" such as impounding certificates and passports of their faculty members.Some could not even provide the requisite faculty strength in their institutes.

"An institute working with motive of profit did not have the right to be called a university" was the moral declaration made by the Yashpal Committee.However in the same breath the committee also acknowledged the need for private investment in heigher education.It has to be admitted that given the country's huge higher education demand there is, realistically speaking no alternative to private sector investment in it.Huge fund are required to provide every student with a heigher education degree and the government alone cannot that amount of fund.There seems to be a candid admission of this fact by the committee.There is one aspect though which the committee left unsaid.When there is private investment, some amount of profit motive cannot be ruled out.The committee didnot spell out exactly how to strike a balance between private investment and the quality of education.

Conferring academic designations as Chancellors and Vice-Chancellors to members of the promoter's family is another practice the committee looked down upon.This practice should be completely scrapped and in its place the conferring of designations should submit to a national accreditation system.Setting up too many IITs,IIMs and other educational institutes, felt the committee is not a good thing as it tends to dilute the quality of the institute.

Numerical increase with out an understanding of the symptoms of poor education doesnot serve any purpose.The committee criticized the government's indiscriminate establishment of educational institutions as a "nervous and hurried response" and added that the "creation of a few institutions of excellence and some central universities with out addressing the issue of deprivation that state- funded universities are suffering from,would only sharpen the existing inequalities." By saying this, the committee has brought forth a different perspective and pointed out that simply increasing quantity is not good enough without paying adequate attention to the quality factor as well.

Need for curricular reform also caught the eye of the Yaspal Committee.It said that teachers should be given the freedom to design courses and students should have the option of studying subjects outside their courses as well.The committe probably missed out a chance of giving even a say to students in shaping up the curriculum.Another worthwhile recommendation put forth by the committee is that research bodies around the country should tie up with the universities in their vicinity.This would give fillip to research work at the college and university level and attract more students towards research.Also it would improve the overall intellectual climate in universities.

The committee said that universites should not only be centers for teaching and learning but also for research.Such an approach can also help to increase the number of patents coming out of india.At the same time the committee also spoke about focusing greater attention to undergradute programs and recommended a multi-disciplinary approach to learnings for the entry of foreign universities into India,the committee had this to say "giving an open license to all and sundry carrying a foreign ownership tag to function like universities into India,most of them not even known in their countries,would help them to earn profit for their parent institutes located outside or accrue profit to the shareholders.Such institutes must give an Indian degree and be subject to all rules and regulations that would apply to any Indian university".

The Yaspal Committee has undoubtedly come up with many good recommendations.But the implementation of these recommendations would require a large measure of political will from the Central government.Already the chairman of UGC and AICTE have objected to the recommendation which calls for their scrapping.Many more such objections may follow.How much of the recommendations are actually acted upon remains to be seen.

United Nations

Secretaries-General of the UN

1 Trygve Lie : Norway
2 Dag Hammarskjöld : Sweden
3 U Thant : Burma (First from Asia)
4 Kurt Waldheim : Austria
5 Javier Pérez de Cuéllar : Peru ( First from South America)
6 Boutros Boutros-Ghali : Egypt First from Africa
7 Kofi Annan : Ghana
8 Ban Ki-moon : South Korea