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Sixty years of higher science education

The Constitution of India (Seventh Schedule), together with the amendment of 1976, places the responsibility for coordination and determination of standards in the institutions of higher learning and research with the Centre and the State governments. These institutions include universities (both Central and State), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and institutes of national importance declared by Parliament.

At the time of Independence, there were only 25 universities in the country, most of them imparting science education through affiliated colleges. In the last six decades, the number of institutions for higher science education has grown enormously. Today, there are 20 Central universities, 215 State universities, 100 deemed universities, 13 institutions of national importance, and more than 17,000 colleges. Under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the government evolved a machinery to discharge these responsibilities. It established the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1956 and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in 1987 through Acts of Parliament to administer, regulate, and supervise the functioning of higher science and technology (S&T) education in the country. However, the discharge of this constitutional responsibility by the government over the years has left a great deal to be desired.

The proportion of India’s population that enters higher education is around seven per cent, which is half the average for Asia. There is about one university for nearly four million people. This figure is too small for any significant impact of higher education, science education in particular, on the country. The number of universities has not grown in relation to the population, thus greatly restricting the opportunities for higher education. The system needs a massive expansion to establish about 1,500 universities countrywide so that the country can achieve a gross enrolment ratio of about 15 per cent by 2015. China, for example, has authorised the creation of 1,250 new universities in the last three years. Unfortunately, the expansion that is evident in India is only in the form of dubious deemed universities and unregulated private engineering colleges that have mushroomed mainly as commercial ventures.

Compared to an enrolment of 5.7 million (1995 data) at the tertiary level in India, it is 14.20 million in the United States, which works out respectively to 613 and 5,399 tertiary students per 100,000 populations. Even though enrolment at the tertiary level has been low, the absolute numbers have been increasing. In particular, enrolment in the science stream has increased from 127,200 in 1950-51 to about 1.5 million at the turn of the millennium. However, there are disquieting features in these numbers.

The number of students opting for science after the secondary school stage has dropped from 32 per cent in the early 1950s to 19.7 per cent in recent years. More significantly, in the 1950s the brightest entered science but today’s 19.7 per cent is from the lower middle level. This shows that young students, particularly the brighter ones, are drifting away from science. The choice of the National Talent Search awardees also reflects this trend in recent years. Of the 750 awardees, hardly 100 opt for science and only 15-20 per cent pursue science to the post-graduation level. Peer pressure, the changing socio-economic situation, and market mechanisms have further added to the process of the drift away from basic sciences to professional courses, with the lure of high salaries as you step out, like information commerce, management, information technology, and biotechnology.

A study by K.C. Garg and B.M. Gupta of the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) in 2003 based on 10-year enrolment data (1992-2002) both at Plus-Two and college levels in Delhi, showed that priority for science disciplines as a whole is on the decline even at the Plus-Two level. Data of college enrolment in the sciences between 1990-91 and 1997-98 revealed that, on an average, about 48 per cent of the students drifted out of B.Sc courses to join professional courses. These students are those who got admission after securing 80-90 per cent marks at the Plus-Two level. Data from a few colleges outside Delhi too showed a similar trend, which indicates that this disturbing phenomenon is countrywide.

The above also indicates that students who remain in science do so as a last resort thus leading to a situation where most students in higher science education are unmotivated and uninterested. To compound matters is the fact that 88 per cent of the students who opt for science after school are taught in affiliated colleges, which are ill-equipped, have woefully inadequate library and laboratory facilities, are overcrowded and poorly staffed.

Even those highly motivated few who choose to remain in science and move into universities for post-graduation and research are only confronted with outdated curricula, uninspiring teaching and disinterested teachers, entrenched bureaucracy and improper administration, poor infrastructure, obsolete laboratory equipment, lack of an academic environment, and, to top it all, lack of opportunities for the youngsters to do even reasonable research, let alone be creative and engage in front-end work. Data since the 1980s bear this out this as well. While the absolute numbers of student enrolment and universities have increased, the number of research degrees awarded in natural sciences has almost stagnated, whereas in engineering sciences the numbers have actually declined.

“There is, in fact, a quiet crisis in higher education in India that runs deep,” observed the recently released National Knowledge Commission’s ‘Report to the Nation.’ “It is not yet discernible simply because there are pockets of excellence, an enormous reservoir of talented young people … And in some important spheres, we continue to reap the benefits of what was sown in higher education 50 years ago by the founding fathers of the Republic,” the report added. This is slowly impacting all aspects of higher science education and research. There is all-round lack of qualified people for specialised jobs, in particular teaching in institutions. The latter is bound to have a serious cascading effect in the years to come.

This malady, as the NKC reiterated, is the result of a process initiated in the 1950s “to create stand-alone research institutions, pampered with resources, in the belief that research should be moved out of universities. In the process, we forgot as essential principle. There are synergies between teaching and research that enrich each other. And it is the universities which are the natural home for research … It is time to reverse what happened in the past and make universities the hub of research once again.” But the NKC also notes in a realistic vain, “It is … difficult, if not impossible, to outline a prescription for our universities. Nevertheless, it is clear that a reform of existing institutions must be an integral part of our endeavour to transform higher education. We recognise that this is easier said than done.”

Expansion of the university system to about 1,500 universities will call for large investment. But before that, the severe resource crunch that afflicts all universities, in fact the entire higher education system, should be addressed to correct the years of neglect. As the Indian National Science Academy noted as a matter of serious concern a few years ago, the investment per student has nosedived from Rs.850 a year in the 1960s to Rs.350 a year at the turn of the century (at 1990 prices). The allocation to education has already declined in recent years to about three per cent of the GDP instead of attaining the figure of six per cent recommended by the National Education Policy. The share of higher education and science education in particular has dropped to 0.7 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively. Compare the latter with those of the U.S. (1.6 per cent), the U.K. (1.4 per cent), and Japan (1.04 per cent). The NKC has called for increasing the investment in higher education to 1.5-2 per cent.

There are, of course, imaginative initiatives that have been mooted by agencies such as the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the MHRD to foster talent and creativity but these would only serve to create a few more small pockets of excellence or islands of talent in an ocean of mediocrity. What is required is perhaps a radical overhaul of the system and a complete change in the outlook vis-À-vis education among the bureaucracy and the executive.

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