A Critique of Yashpal Committee Report on Higher Education from the

Perspective of Self Reliance and Freedom

V.K. Tripathi
The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher
Education, headed by Prof. Yashpal, has submitted its draft report to MHRD on
March 1, 2009. The report has some innovative suggestions that may help
substantative quality improvement in higher education. It proposes research
laboratories to engage in teaching in neighbouring universities, universities to have
on-campus undergraduate (UG) programs so that top ranking professors and
researchers could teach and interact with younger minds, single discipline institutes
like IITs and IIMs to be converted into sort of universities where horizontal mobility
and cross-discipline knowledge could be acquired, projects become an integral part of
learning by which students apply knowledge to problems on ground, subsidiary
courses (in honours programs) be replaced by elective courses from among the main
courses of other departments, every needy student be provided with loan or
scholarship, the university teachers be trained through full fledged orientation
programs, and so on. It proposes full autonomy to universities with democratization of
their functioning and recommends creation of National Commission for Higher
Education and Research by dissolving bodies like UGC and AICTE.
These are useful recommendations. Yet the report oversights the cause of
affiliated colleges, where 80% of our UG students study, and of those who have no
access to higher education. There are two distinct streams of students in higher
education, one, those coming from government schools or low tuition schools with
weak command on English and lack of worldly exposure, and second, those coming
from public schools with strong career motivation. How would the two fit in the same
program of study? How would they gain self reliance and how would they commit
themselves to the uplift of those left behind? These are serious issues and it is in their
context that the vision of ‘university’ needs to be revisited.

The Vision of ‘University’

The report views university as a place where new ideas germinate, strike roots
and grow tall and sturdy. It is a unique space, which covers the entire universe of
knowledge. It is a place where creative minds converge, interact with each other and
construct visions of new realities, where established notions of truth are challenged in
the pursuit of knowledge.
This is a noble vision. However, only a few universities in the world would
qualify on this scale. There are severe constraints on researchers and teachers. In
USA, for instance, faculty is under constant pressure, for its tenure, survival and
promotion, to bring research contracts. Many of them end up working on defence
 projects despite having strong reservations about government defence policies.
Seldom have universities risen in support of freedom when their government launched
invasions against other nations. Gandhi would not call for boycott of Indian
universities had they been active in freedom movement.
I think a more down to earth notion of universities is to be developed. The
education at all levels must keep three vital objectives in focus:
i) To develop the capacity to understand and think,
ii) To impart technical and professional skills to every child, so that, in future,
she/he can stand on her/his own and fulfil the needs of the nation.
iii) To develop sensitivity and commitment to freedom (of oneself as well as
others) so that exploitation, discrimination and inequality could be diminished.

Quality Improvement
The report makes innovative suggestions in relation to the first objective.
One can add a tutorial component to lectures to develop conceptual clarity. A major
problem is that a majority of the colleges are away from university campuses, hence, how
could the UG students have the privilege of lectures by university professors/ researchers
as do the students of IITs have? Computer aided lecturing could be an option (though a
distant second best) but the tutorials must be conducted locally. A reorientation program
must run for students having deficiency in the medium of instruction and exposure. The
major responsibility for teaching should lie on local faculty. Ten years ago the total
number of teachers, spread in 11,000 colleges of the country, was above 2.5 lakh. For
quality teaching they need to be activated/ involved in research. Five years ago only 3%
of research money was being used for extramural research (the research conducted in
colleges, universities and IITs), rest was used in research laboratories with hardly any
teaching component. A very major shift in the distribution of research funding and
research policy is required. The teachers also need to be trained for tutorials and projects.

Access to Technical/ Professional Education

In order to impart technical/ professional skills to every student, from the
perspective of his/ her self reliance, the walls between professional/ technical and non-
professional colleges must fall. Every B.A., B.Sc, student should have access to technical
courses and these courses must form about one third of their curriculum. In March 2007,
the country had 2439 engineering colleges and 1917 polytechnics with respective intake
of 6.36 lakh (B.Tech. first year) and 3.38 lakh (diploma first year). Besides these 996
institutes offered MCA and 1119 offered MBA programs with annual intake of 53,000
and 89,500 respectively. These institutes can be galvanised to give access to B.A./ B.Sc.
students of non-professional colleges in their professional courses at reasonable cost. The
prime responsibility of premiere institutes like IITs is to strengthen the base of technical
education in the country. So far they have evaded this responsibility, despite government
spending over ten times more money per student per year in these institutions as
compared to a college student. This must change.

Sensitivity and Freedom

The biggest deficiency of higher education is that it is not developing
sensitivity and commitment to freedom. The social science subjects, economics, history,
linguistics etc. are specially meant to help students see exploitation and discrimination
with clarity. From among the students of these disciplines emerge civil servants, judges,
lawyers, businessmen, economists, etc. who can assert their authority but can not see the
realities of living of the masses. May the concepts of surplus value and per capita GDP be
ingrained in their psyche so that they could quantify exploitation and feel for the masses.
The per student annual cost of education, assuming teacher to student ratio of
1:15 and other costs being 100% of teachers’ salaries, would amount to Rs, 50,000. This
is about two times the per capita GDP. As one envisions to bring all the interested senior
secondary graduates into the realm of higher education, the tuition fees for any UG
program of study must remain below per capita GDP, hence, half the cost of education
must be borne by the state. In the courses where cost is high, the institute may charge the
entire cost of education from prospective employers (who are the real beneficiaries) rather
than burdening the parents.