Founded in 1857 and one of the first three universities to be established in the British presidencies, this once highly-reputed varsity with a roll-call of illustrious alumni including Lokmanya Tilak and Dr. Ambedkar, is facing an unprecedented meltdown, with its academic reputation at its nadir. Summiya Yasmeen & Praveer Sinha report At an impressive convocation ceremony of the University of Mumbai held on the last day of 2012 at its 156-year-old heritage Fort campus, dominated by its landmark Indo-Saracenic Rajabai clock tower, chief guest President Pranab Mukherjee exhorted India’s institutions of higher education to reinvent themselves to deliver relevant knowledge and actionable skills. “All universities in India will need to reinvent themselves as enablers of society and not remain just gatekeepers of higher education,” Mukherjee said in his convocation address. The President’s clarion call to India’s 611 universities to reinvent themselves is particularly apposite advice for the state government-funded University of Mumbai (MU) which boasts 667 affiliated colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 650,000 students in India’s commercial capital. Founded in 1857 and one of the first three universities (Calcutta and Madras (1857) are the other two) to be established in the British presidencies, this once highly-reputed university with a roll-call of illustrious alumni including Lokmanya Tilak, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Nani Palkhivala, is facing an unprecedented meltdown, with its academic reputation at its nadir. From shortage of faculty and administrative staff, obsolete curriculums, exam malpractices and marks card scandals to widespread political interference in faculty appointments and administration, MU seems to be afflicted with every conceivable malaise. 2012 was a particularly bad year for MU, marked by a string of administrative gaffes. Exam hall tickets that were supposed to be issued online could not be accessed; exam centres were re-allotted to more than 2,100 students just hours before they took the first exam; the marketing and human resource management question paper of the third year B.Com degree programme was leaked and disseminated through sms and mobile apps, landing the issue in the Bombay high court; and distance and open learning B.Com students got a “wrong” question paper in 19 centres. In 2011, there was a four-month delay in the declaration of results of the M.Com exam and in 2010, discrepancies in the university’s optical mark recognition (OMR) code system led to answer sheets of 100 students getting mixed up. While these instances could be excused as administrative failures perhaps inevitable in an institution with the size and diversity of MU, consistently slipping administrative and academic standards are widely attributed to political interference, especially the improper and suspect top-level vice chancellor and pro vice chancellor appointments in this 156-year-old university. With its huge budget of Rs.376 crore per year, MU is a rich prize for Maharashtra’s notoriously corrupt politicians, adept at generating illegal income streams and building patronage networks while simultaneously pushing sons-of-the-soil and caste-based employment agendas, academic standards be damned. The routine interference of the state’s avaricious politicians in MU’s affairs bears an uncanny resemblance with the modus operandi of…
