The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 presents a retrograde and exclusionary vision of education, noted academician and economist Prabhat Patnaik has said.
He adds that the policy seeks to homogenise education that is necessary to form a labour market to cater to capitalistic needs.
Prof. Patnaik, who is chairing a six-member committee constituted by the Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) to study the impacts of the policy, was delivering the keynote address in the conclave on ‘Higher education reforms under NEP 2020’ organised by the council on Wednesday.
According to him, despite comprising interesting suggestions including that on early career grooming and multi-disciplinarity in universities, the policy fails because it neglects socio-economic factors in the sphere of education. It also tries on impose bourgeois notions of excellence upon educational institutions.
He says the policy viewed education as an aid to the creation of a knowledge economy. “For this, it wants world-class institutions that are clones of the Universities of Harvard and Oxford and teach modern science and other disciplines with a dash of Hindutva and celebration of Indian glory thrown in. However, education in a country like ours cannot be identical with education in an advanced country,” he says.
Inaugurating the discussions, Higher Education Minister K.T. Jaleel says the proposal to provide colleges with powers to grant degrees could lead to academic chaos. Calling in for further deliberations on this, he emphasises that the dismantling of the affiliation system cannot be justified. The affiliation system had increased gross enrollment ratio (GER) in the country in spite of its weaknesses, he observes. There was need for a greater devolution of funds from the Centre to the States to achieve the targeted GER of 50% in higher education.
Shakila T. Shamsu, Officer on Special Duty (NEP) at the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education, says the policy strives to do away with silo-based education and disciplinary boundaries. The provisions pave the way for greater learner engagement by accepting that the capacities of students vary and it is not merely the performance of a student in an academic subject that determines whether the person becomes a holistic individual.
KSHEC vice chairman Rajan Gurukkal, member secretary Rajan Varughese, Gangan Prathap of National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Vice Chancellors of National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), Kannur University and Calicut University N.V. Varghese, Gopinath Ravindran and M.K. Jayaraj also spoke.
