Published in the Hindustan Times
Much has been written about the NEP from the academic, political, and ideological lens. However, the student's perspective has been missing. This is in keeping with the public discourse on education as a whole, which also excludes students from discussion thus marginalising the most important stakeholder group for reform. The Policy itself makes some important omissions and conflations, which make it evident that it has simply bypassed the context, background, concerns and aspirations of young people who aspire to higher education, especially first-generation learners.
First, on the question of access. Young people from poor and marginalised backgrounds who want to study in college are completely dependent on external financial support because they neither have assets nor source of income. It is thus surprising that when the policy identifies the “major problems faced by the higher education system in India” (Section 9.2), it makes no mention of the crippling lack of funds for the higher education sector, which is directly responsible for putting quality education out of reach for the poor and marginalised.
It is this lack of public investment due to which almost 80% of colleges are private (AISHE 2018-19) and why even public universities are being privatised through the backdoor by transitioning to “self-financing” courses. It is because of lack of public investment that many public universities shockingly don’t hold classes cause there aren’t enough teachers to teach all the enrolled students. And it is lack of public investment that denies 6 out of 7 students enrolled in Central Universities affordable student accommodation. The policy barely mentions hostels and it may seem like a trivial issue to many academics, but for large numbers of first-generation learners who secure admission in state and central universities away from home, the lack of affordable accommodation is a significant barrier to completing education. For instance, average tuition fees in Allahabad University is about Rs 1000 annually, but room and board costs of Rs 45,000 to Rs 1 lakh annually continue to remain prohibitive for most poor students, especially those who lack parental support for higher education.
If education has to play its role in nation-building and socio-economic mobility for our aspirational young, it can only be on the back of publicly funded education. Yet when the policy talks of improving access to education, it says only that “there shall, by 2030, be at least one large multidisciplinary HEI in or near every district” without mandating that this HEI be publicly funded. The failure of the Education Policy to highlight the lack of funding as a central problem with the education system and the absence of any timebound redress, especially in the face of decliningexpenditure (from 4.14% of 2014 Budget to 3.3% in 2020) is a capitulation without justification.
The Policy’s blatant disregard of students and their perspective is evident also when it talks of governance of HEIs (Section 19). The Policy says that over the next 15 years, all HEIs will become “self-governing” through the institution of a “Board of Governors (BoG) […] consisting of a group of highly qualified, competent, and dedicated individuals having proven capabilities and a strong sense of commitment to the institution”. At no point in this section or throughout the Policy is there any mention of democratic student representation in academic and administrative decision-making. The Policy wants to promote critical thinking in the students, but fails to acknowledge that the first pre-requisite of critical thinking is a democratic atmosphere where the students are encouraged to ask questions of the authorities and participate in decision-making. This is all the more important because in universities across the country, the administration is cracking down on free speech and deploying disproportionately punitive measures to keep dissenting students in check, including blacklisting from university and throwing students out of hostels mid-semester. A Policy empathetic to students would have also acknowledged the wildly skewed balance of power between the students and the administration and faculty in most HEIs (especially in matters of discrimination) and underscored the need for transparency (beyond financial disclosures) and grievance redress measures. In this context, the NSUI has drafted a Students Rights Act, which codifies the minimum non-negotiable rights of a student studying in any college or university and series of escalating institutional measures to help students enforce these rights.
Finally, a Policy sensitive to the needs and interests of our youth would put online education in its place as a tool to supplement or enhance the university experience, and not supplant it altogether in the name of increasing the GER or access. The University is a place for learning more than information, it is the place where most young people get their first taste of independence, develop a sense of self and build networks. These extras are often a bigger determinant of a student’s future trajectory and it would be unfair to equate the dialectic of the university experience with the singular pursuit of education online. Last, the Policy would acknowledge that for many young people, the raison d'être for higher education is better employment opportunities. This leads to two imperatives: first, to eliminate the political-commercial nexus at the heart of our education system and rationalise the supply of third-rate colleges in fields such as engineering and MBA, which are churning out more untrained graduates than any possibility of employment in those fields; second, proactively using academia to structure and formalise emerging professions and employment instead of merely letting young people become fodder for the informal gig economy. Yet the Policy is silent on both these issues.
For too long, the education system in our country has talked at young people, treating them as passive recipients of top-down wisdom. This is one of the main reasons for the poor quality of education in our country. A Policy which aims to reform our education sector to produce “engaged, productive, and contributing citizens for building an equitable, inclusive, and plural society” does a great disservice to its own stated intent by bypassing students entirely.