For students who can’t afford education after school or who do not finish schooling for lack of academic and financial support, community colleges give a new lease of life. Community colleges (CC), as the inclusive name suggests, cater to a diverse cross section of society — school dropouts, single mothers, orphans, children from broken families, victims of domestic or substance abuse, rape survivors, alcoholics seeking rehabilitation and prisoners, among many others.
Bogged down by social and economic burdens, given a chance, there are many who would take the opportunity to improve their situation using education as a tool. According to the All India Status of Higher Education Report 2012-13 (Provisional) released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, the total enrolment in higher education is estimated at three crore students. As for the provisional data from the All India Education Survey 2013 conducted by NCERT, around 23 crore students are studying in schools across the country. This massive gap between school and college enrolment begs the question: What happens to the 20 crore school dropouts?
“They don’t even have $1 (the basis of the international poverty line) a day for sustenance; how will they spend for education, health, hygiene? We need to bring these people on the fringes of society who are economically and socially backward into the mainstream. Otherwise we will be creating more ‘leftouts’. Community college to me is a democratic, equal opportunity and people’s college; it is a democratic answer to globalisation in India,” says Rev Xavier Alphonse, Founder Director, Indian Centre for Research and Development of Community Education (ICRDCE), Chennai.
ICRDCE is a unit of the Chennai Jesuit Society, Chennai Mission. Started in 1999, it is a facilitating and coordinating agency for CCs in India and has been involved in the preparation, establishment, monitoring and evaluation of 336 CCs in 17 States of India.
The Indian Community College system comprises UGC Community Colleges, 150 in number, which offer one-year diploma courses and two-year advanced diploma courses, and NGO Community Colleges that offer certificate (three months or above) and diploma courses run by non-government organisations and education societies across the country. Also, there are 127 colleges (existing Arts and Science colleges) in the country that offer three-year Bachelor of Vocational Education (BVoc) degrees.
While the UGC Community Colleges admit only those who have cleared Class XII, NGO Community Colleges give a fillip to dropouts from classes below that as well.
UGC Community Colleges
As part of the 12th five-year plan, UGC introduced a scheme for setting up community colleges in 2013. Until then, community colleges were run only by non-government organisations and education societies in various parts of the country. Colleges and universities recognised under the UGC Act of 1956 and receiving what is classified as General Development Assistance are eligible for implementing the Community College scheme. Under this scheme, courses only up to the advanced diploma are offered.
Eligibility
The minimum educational qualification for admission into CC under this scheme is Class XII or equivalent from any recognised board or university. For admission to the programmes offered by the CCs, students living in the local community are given preference. Students of SC, ST, OBC and PwD (Persons with Disabilities) categories are provided reservation according to the State policy. There is no age bar for admission in the CCs.
Scenario in Chennai
There are 13 private colleges in Tamil Nadu that run UGC Community Colleges in their campus, three of them are in Chennai — DG Vaishnav College, Loyola College and Madras Christian College (MCC). MCC Community College functions out of a separate campus in West Tambaram.
Courses offered
Vaishnav Community College (part of DG Vaishnav) started Diploma in Computer Applications last December and will be starting Diploma in Hardware and Networking in June. While Loyola started Diploma in Multimedia and Animation last November, MCC has been offering Diploma in Health Assistance and Computer Hardware Services from the past two years even before the UGC CC scheme was introduced.
Fees
Loyola and MCC charge Rs 6,000 per annum that is payable in instalments of Rs 500 per month. Students are, however, required to pay Rs 1,000 in advance at the time of admission. Vaishnav Community College charges Rs 9,000 per annum.
UGC Grants
UGC Community Colleges offering courses up to advanced diploma level are eligible for grants up to Rs 1 crore per college for a period of two years. In order to motivate students to join courses under the scheme, UGC stipulates that an amount of Rs 1,000 per month is provided to students based on satisfactory attendance. Loyola is awaiting guidelines from UGC on whether to pay students Rs 1,000 on a monthly basis or Rs 3,000 on a quarterly basis. MCC is awaiting funds from UGC for payment while Vaishnav college is in the process of collecting bank account details of the students enrolled. In essence, fees paid by the students is compensated for by this UGC student scholarship.
“If the course is provided for free, students cannot be retained. They will not value the course,” says Vinod Kannan, Coordinator, Loyola Community College, explaining the rationale behind the process.
NGO Community Colleges
While UGC CCs only admit students who have completed Class XII, the NGO Community Colleges admit students who have cleared Class VIII. By a Government Order in 2008, 185 Community Colleges in Tamil Nadu were recognised by the Tamil Nadu Open University.
The Intermission Industrial Development Association (IIDA), for example, first started a CC in Vadapalani, Chennai, in 2002. Now with branches in Aminjikarai, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, Pallavaram, Perungudi and Mamallapuram, all places in and around the city, it offers men and women six-month certificate programmes (if they are school dropouts) to make them eligible for secondary and higher secondary education, and offers TNOU diplomas and advanced diplomas (if they have passed or failed Class X and have cleared Class IX) in Computer Application, Computer Hardware and Networking and Commerce (Secretaryship). The college charges Rs 6,000 per annum.
It trains them to be Electrical Technicians, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Technicians, and offers courses in Fashion Designing and Garment Making, Herbal Beauty Therapy, and Medical Laboratory Technology and also trains them to become health care assistants. Some modules like Life skills, Functional English and Computer Basics are common to all the courses.
Champions and survivors
Enduring stories of grit, love, first generation graduates and domestic abuse survivors are amply found in these colleges. Forty-one-year-old Alagu Lakshmi, mother of two college-going sons is pursuing a Diploma in Medical Lab Technology at IIDA’s IID Community College, Aminjikarai. Being the oldest in her class, her excitement of hitting books more than a decade after clearing Class XII is palpable.
“I was a Science student and was interested about learning about the human anatomy. I always wanted to work and serve, that is why I chose this stream. I was shy and scared when I first joined. Later I realised even I have capabilities that can be put to use and became much more confident. I realised that even I can achieve something in life,” says Alagu who finished Class XII in 1998. Her husband is a civil engineer in Nigeria. When it’s exam time, she’s not the doting mother nudging her kids to study. “We all sit together and study, I feel young being a student again,” she smiles.
E Thamizharasi, 30, graduated in 2004 and returned to IID as a Computer Science teacher. After getting an advanced diploma in computer application at IID, she went on to do her BA and MBA.
“I am the first graduate in my family. I have four younger sisters. If it hadn’t been for this college, I would have stopped with Class XII,” she says. A mother of two, today she comes to work leaving behind her 11-month-old baby girl in the care of her mother-in-law. “I have support from my husband and family to work, only because of the education I received,” she says proudly.
G Ravi, another alumnus of IID, teaches web designing at the college. Along with landing a job here, he also found the love of his life at the institute. “I am from the 2005 batch, she was from the next batch. We fell in love and got married,” he says, happily.
Beating the odds
In MCC Community College, two batches of more than 120 students have already graduated and the third batch is a few months away from graduating. The students hail from localities in Tambaram on Chennai city’s outskirts where the college is located. On completion of their diploma, the remuneration that students receive from their jobs is Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,500 per month.
Rev Alphonse says, “Our target group is very clear — urban poor, rural poor, tribal poor, women and other marginalised sections of the society, including prisoners, those who are living in nine central prisons in Tamil Nadu, nearly about 25,000 of them,” he says. The network promotes 50 trades in these colleges. These colleges have 2,500 industrial partners of varying degrees. Six community college students were sent to Washington and Hawaii among other places abroad with the help of the US
Consulate recently.
A Samson, coordinator of the MCC college says, “Most students come from disoriented families, many of them kids of daily wage labourers. We do not focus on academics for the first three months of the course. Instead, we teach them basic concepts of sexual orientation, and how to conduct themselves with the opposite sex in the first semester.”
Samson, a social worker who has over 10 years of experience of working with HIV/AIDS patients says that many of the students have been victims of incestuous abuse. Lenin Marx, the college counsellor says they have four life-skill papers and the main focus areas of his sessions are coping with lack of affection, loneliness and failure.
Challenges of the Indian Community College system
The IGNOU fiasco R Muthukumar, Principal, IID Community College, Aminjikarai, says the lack of funding is a huge roadblock for NGO Community Colleges. Though the college collects Rs 6,000 pa as fees, he says, it does not cover operational costs of the college.
Owing to the scrapping of the Indira Gandhi National Open University’s (IGNOU) Community College scheme which ran only for three years from 2009 to 2012, students from three academic years are left with no certificates from his college. “Students from 2009-12 are left with no certificates from IGNOU for the courses they pursued. The case is still pending in the courts. They charged heftily for inspections of community colleges and now left the students hanging in a balance,” Muthukumar says.
IGNOU started the community college scheme in 2009 where, according to a news report, 43,000 students were enrolled in 465 colleges under its aegis with a promise of getting recognition for their skill. In 2012, it suspended the scheme owing to corruption allegations against IGNOU and non-performance of colleges.
Support to NGO CCs
The ICRDCE is opening dialogue with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to extend financial support to NGO Community Colleges, and an amount of Rs 10,000 per student per year for training. They are also seeking vertical mobility for these students by recognising skills and prior learning of these students.
Are UGC CCs inclusive?
If the idea behind community college education is inclusiveness, the colleges are not able to fulfil it to a 100 per cent, as students from lesser privileged backgrounds may not have had the chance to study up to Class XII in the first place. This arrangement still leaves lakhs of school dropouts out of the mainstream education system, instead of integrating them. However, the UGC Community College scheme has, on paper, spoken of the need for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and has put together a National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) to address this need.
RPL
The UGC guidelines state, “Currently, India’s Vocational Education Training system has almost no arrangement where the prior learning of someone who may have worked in the unorganised sector for decades is recognised and certified. This is specifically relevant to the diverse traditional occupations of the people in various parts of the country. Institutions with requisite experience will be authorised by the certifying body to conduct assessment for RPL.”
NSQF
Under NSQF, those students who were unable to go to college after Class XII can approach Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) and get certified for the level of skills acquired through a vocation or formal education. The National Skill Development Agency, an autonomous body under the Government of India, anchored the NSQF that aims to provide a link between general and vocational education.
SSCs operate as autonomous bodies. They can be registered as a Public Limited Company. Funding is initially done by the government. As they grow, the SSCs become self-funded, for-profit organisations. Currently there are 31 SSCs affiliated to the National Skill Development Corporation. Some of the sectors include Construction, Plumbing, Power, Mining, Handicrafts and Carpets, Textile and Handloom, Health Care, Rubber Sector, Leather, Agriculture, Gems and Jewellery among many others.
The NSQF levels are defined in terms of learning outcomes which the learner must possess regardless of whether they were acquired through formal, non-formal or informal learning. It is composed of 10 levels and exhibiting a competence of level four can assure an individual admission into a UGC Community College. At each level, the student is required to prove competence in four categories — professional knowledge, professional skill, core skill and responsibility.
Lack of awareness of NSQF
There seems to be no awareness of this provision among colleges and thus a large population of those who have not completed schooling stand no chance at getting a Community College admission in the present state of affairs. All students on roll in Chennai’s UGC CCs have cleared Class XII. No student has been admitted under the NSQF arrangement. Alexander Jesudasan, Prinicipal, MCC, says no such student has approached them so far. T Santhanam, Coordinator, Vaishnav Community College, says, “We have contacts with the IT-ITeS Sector Council spearheaded by NASSCOM for our Diploma course in Computer Applications but have had no students join the Community College under the NSQF, for lack of awareness about such a provision.”
Arun Kannan, Director, Loyola Community College says, “Where are these Sector Skill Councils located? UGC needs to train education providers on how to admit these students. Whose certification do I consider? We need UGC to guide us on how to implement the NSQF.”
If colleges and the general public are made aware of NSQF provisions, and if it is implemented as envisioned, Community colleges would be truly inclusive, giving every person a chance to pursue an education and a means to earn their livelihood.
suraksha@newindianexpress.com