EducationWorld

Inclusion trade off: Universities at the Crossroads by Andre Beteille

Universities at the Crossroads - Andre Beteille

Universities at the Crossroads; Andre Beteille Oxford University Press; Rs.423; Pages 216 Currently chancellor of North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, and formerly professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Belgium-born, naturalised Indian Dr. Andre Beteille is a prolific writer who has addressed questions of inequality, power, social class, family, the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology, and a whole range of issues, too vast to enumerate. The array of issues he has sought to understand and his commitment as a writer, stem from his unfailing dedication to his profession as a sociologist, teacher and author. His new book on the university is therefore a welcome addition to the existing corpus of his work as, apart from articles in different journals, he has not explicitly addressed the problems of education in any single compendium. This book is a collection of convocation addresses and lectures that he has delivered on the broad theme of education, and the university in particular, at different forums in India. The single most important point Beteille makes and continuously reiterates, pertains to the increasing demand for social inclusion in higher education. This is no doubt essential in a democratic society but in the interest of teaching and research, Andre Beteille is concerned about the need for a university to simultaneously be academically discriminating. This is the most striking argument Beteille makes throughout the book. He is careful to point out that there is a need to distinguish between, as he puts it, unwarranted exclusion on social grounds, and justifiable discrimination on academic grounds. While Andre Beteille supports all forms of social inclusion in higher education, his plea is to keep merit, ability and performance uppermost in all academic decisions. They must not be overtaken by ideology or other values that serve to undermine academic excellence. As Beteille knows very well, the point however is that academic competence is largely an outcome of social and cultural capital. Those with cultural and social capital are the few who benefit from academic pursuits in higher education. The problem is complex and difficult to resolve. If social inclusion in higher education must prevail, there will necessarily be a lowering of academic standards to accommodate those who have thus far been deprived of higher education. Without the social and cultural capital so essential to their participation in an active and challenging academic life, they will be severely disadvantaged if they are expected to meet standards that will further exclude them. What’s the way out of this conundrum? It seems to me that the university has a serious responsibility to combine social inclusion with strenuous efforts to develop the linguistic, technical and academic skills of students without the social and cultural capital whom it admits into its portals, rather than lower prevailing standards for reasons of political correctness and/or lethargy and lack of initiative. Without addressing this conundrum directly, Beteille is optimistic that Indian academia will overcome social exclusion. He cites Europe and China as examples of change and expresses hope that it will become possible

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