– Rahul Singh is the former editor of Reader’s Digest and Indian Express NOBODY COMES OUT smelling roses in Delhi University’s four year undergraduate programme (FYUP) imbroglio, following which the programme — hastily introduced last year (2013) — has been reversed in the new academic year. Neither the previous Congress-led UPA-II government, nor its successor the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), nor the bruised DU vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh, who should have resigned but hasn’t, and least of all the University Grants Commission (UGC). All of them have lowered the prestige of what is arguably the best university in the country, even though it’s ranked a modest 441-500 in the annual World University Rankings of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds. Together, these dramatis personae have inflicted grave damage upon DU’s 430,000 students (of whom 140,000 are full-time) and 9,000 faculty. The latter have been sacrificed on the altar of politics — the bane of Indian education, particularly higher education. Despite fancy talk about “autonomy” and “independent decision-making”, it’s now clear that the government in power calls all the shots in Indian education. A good case can be made for the FYUP which Dinesh Singh introduced towards the end of the UPA-II government’s tenure. The FYUP initiative could have aligned undergraduate education in India with international norms and prompted a revolutionary change in higher education. The laudable intent of switching from the three-year undergraduate programme to four years was to deepen the college experience and make graduates more employable. With students in India entering college at a much younger age than before, FYUP would have produced more mature and employment-ready graduates. I went up to Britain’s Cambridge University when I was 19 years old for a three-year undergraduate programme. Attending lectures was optional and students spent considerable time in the debating, film and photographic societies, to prepare for postgraduate vocations. The university authorities took it for granted that students were sufficiently mature to choose their own lifestyles. Their job was only to show the way. Therefore when we graduated we were mature and ready for working life. An estimated 12 million usually too-young Indians enter the job market every year, some highly educated, but most with dubious qualifications. As EducationWorld has highlighted (EW July), a Nasscom-McKinsey World Institute Study (2005) showed that 75 percent of engineering and 85 percent of arts, science and commerce graduates, are not fit for employment in multinational companies. The unemployability of graduates and youth in general is one of the major challenges confronting the nation. Frustrated young educated men and women without work, and little or no prospect of it, constitute a combustible mix attracted to crime and extremist ideologies of various hues. Work, especially if it’s fulfilling and adequately remunerative, is the best antidote to civil unrest and violence. Delhi University’s FYUP had another purpose, which was perhaps its hidden agenda. It was to make the varsity financially less dependent on government. Indian universities are heavily subsidised by government and the fees students pay are ridiculously low,…
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Delhi University’s FYUP imbroglio
– Rahul Singh is the former editor of Reader’s Digest and Indian Express NOBODY COMES OUT smelling roses in Delhi University’s four year undergraduate programme (FYUP) imbroglio, following which the programme — hastily introduced last year (2013) — has been reversed in the new academic year. Neither the previous Congress-led UPA-II government, nor its successor the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), nor the bruised DU vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh, who should have resigned but hasn’t, and least of all the University Grants Commission (UGC). All of them have lowered the prestige of what is arguably the best university in the country, even though it’s ranked a modest 441-500 in the annual World University Rankings of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds. Together, these dramatis personae have inflicted grave damage upon DU’s 430,000 students (of whom 140,000 are full-time) and 9,000 faculty. The latter have been sacrificed on the altar of politics — the bane of Indian education, particularly higher education. Despite fancy talk about “autonomy” and “independent decision-making”, it’s now clear that the government in power calls all the shots in Indian education. A good case can be made for the FYUP which Dinesh Singh introduced towards the end of the UPA-II government’s tenure. The FYUP initiative could have aligned undergraduate education in India with international norms and prompted a revolutionary change in higher education. The laudable intent of switching from the three-year undergraduate programme to four years was to deepen the college experience and make graduates more employable. With students in India entering college at a much younger age than before, FYUP would have produced more mature and employment-ready graduates. I went up to Britain’s Cambridge University when I was 19 years old for a three-year undergraduate programme. Attending lectures was optional and students spent considerable time in the debating, film and photographic societies, to prepare for postgraduate vocations. The university authorities took it for granted that students were sufficiently mature to choose their own lifestyles. Their job was only to show the way. Therefore when we graduated we were mature and ready for working life. An estimated 12 million usually too-young Indians enter the job market every year, some highly educated, but most with dubious qualifications. As EducationWorld has highlighted (EW July), a Nasscom-McKinsey World Institute Study (2005) showed that 75 percent of engineering and 85 percent of arts, science and commerce graduates, are not fit for employment in multinational companies. The unemployability of graduates and youth in general is one of the major challenges confronting the nation. Frustrated young educated men and women without work, and little or no prospect of it, constitute a combustible mix attracted to crime and extremist ideologies of various hues. Work, especially if it’s fulfilling and adequately remunerative, is the best antidote to civil unrest and violence. Delhi University’s FYUP had another purpose, which was perhaps its hidden agenda. It was to make the varsity financially less dependent on government. Indian universities are heavily subsidised by government and the fees students pay are ridiculously low,…