BENGALURU: “Access to quality education suggested in the National Education Policy 2020, will happen at the cost of denial of access to large majority of the poor and deprived sections,” said Prof Sukhadeo Thorat, Former chairman UGC on Saturday. He was speaking at the academic session of the two day Conference by the All India Save Education Committee.
Prof Thorat noted that the duration of a degree course (with an option of four year degree) not just increases the cost of education, making it inaccessible to the poor sections, but also creates a hierarchy within the degree — some will be a bachelor with three years, some with four years -- which disrupts the uniformity of 3 plus 2 years in higher education brought in by the Kothari commission.
“Unitary university is an American concept wherein all UG PG PhD are under one shed — as opposed to the existing system in India of affiliating system where we have a university and hundreds of colleges that are affiliated to it -- geographically limits students from higher education. At present students go to nearby colleges in small towns and larger villages.
Adding to this constraint is NEP’s proposal of a larger university in district places — 360 bigger universities to be setup in districts and putting colleges in cluster universities in medium term. On privatisation the NEP says it will continue with the policy of non profit university/ institution — which means they are not allowed to have profit but allowed to have surplus which is to be invested to be university itself — and we know what a surplus is — its indirectly a profit,” he said.
Meanwhile, Irfan Habib, a historian accused the the UGC syllabus of being racial because it begins with a concern to sprove that Indians were the original Aryans. “At the same time they bring the racial issue India by their manifestly, anti-Dravidian position in claiming the Indus civilisation for the Aryans,” he said.
Historian Romila Thapar said “An aspect of importance in a history textbook is training students to understand the meaning of what we call historical sources. Oral tradition is significant and should not be treated casually, but has to be tested for reliability.”