Obtaining education from a reputed college is the dream ofevery student and their parents. Issues surrounding our college sector arevaried, and are worsening and hampering their academic expectations. Ourcolleges don’t provide best opportunities for career path in academics andresearch. The nature of academic life in colleges is drawing flak and is apotential risk to campus crises if timely not sorted out. Semester and choicebased credit system has not proved beneficial to our student community in lieuof the poor curriculum designing and age old examination system which is inneed of radical reforms. The introduction of credit system in teaching andawarding credit based degrees has neither satisfied teachers nor students.Elsewhere the semester system is very proactive system as it engages bothfaculty and students throughout the year in academic activity.
Without caring to deal with these issues and redress thestudent sufferings, an exponential growth of college sector rather skyrocketingin J&K State has taken place during the current year. On quality front weare struggling and lag much behind. Till the end of last year, 97 governmentdegree colleges were functioning in J&K State, however, during the last fewmonths, 102 (52 in first stage and now 50 more) academic colleges were createdmuch to the surprise of everyone and has created an emotive debate amongst thestakeholders.
Sanctioning of additional degree colleges quite recently byour policy makers and what can we expect from these colleges or what governmenthas planned to offer through these colleges must be in the minds of everystakeholder. When we know that the colleges which were established in therecent past are still suffering at multiple fronts including lack of properphysical infrastructure, lack of adequate human resources, leadership crisisand deficit teaching-learning practices, what can we expect now?
In one of my previous articles on the same subject (GK 18thMarch, 2019), I had rather questioned the establishing of more and more collegesin J&K State in absence of quality infrastructure, deficit teaching facultyand poor enrolment. However, in this column I will be more suggestive so as tounderstand what we can expect from the mushrooming growth of our collegesector. Will it prove a boon or bane, time will decide itself?.
Achieving excellence in college education doesn’t meansanctioning extra colleges on paper, but to address the issues faced bycolleges at the grassroots level. This mushrooming of college sector is more apro-politics rather than pro-academics affair. Rather than going for burgeoningof college sector, we badly need to review the current education system in ourcolleges including the examination system and question asking pattern to teststudent’s critical thinking and writing skills rather than merely testing theirinformation or knowledge. An utmost thrust must be on improving the curriculumin tune with socio-economic needs of our society to make learning sociallyrelevant. Similarly, we must think on the lines of enhancing and enriching theinfrastructure and teaching-learning facilities in the existing colleges caringmore for the quality learning and skill based education in practical terms.
The mushrooming of degree colleges will not enhance thestudent learning or improve educational setup, but may result in its decliningif the existing scenario of faulty infrastructure and compromisedteaching-learning practices continues. The graduation rates will only increasebut there will be no improvement in quality learning and gaining skill basededucation. However, at the same time achieving these objectives does not seemeasy because the students enrolled in colleges are least bothered about academicgrowth or excellence with exceptions of course. They hardly like to be regularin classes, instead spend less time in reading, concentrate less and learnhalf-heartedly. Overall today’s college student is deficit in readingcapability, learning pursuit and writing skills that is challenging the veryessence of imparting quality and skill based education.
In times when the Governments across the world are engagingtheir resources with best research and innovative educational policies andtechnologies to achieve excellence in academics and research, our policy makersare simply interested in quantity enrichment of our higher education without aproper plan. They are not addressing the basic academic needs of nativepopulations as per their aspirations and cultural or socio-political setup.Innovation and technology is dreams apart here.
Our need of establishing more colleges should be inconformity with the percentage of population in college going stage.Maintaining proper ratio between higher secondaries and colleges, average passpercentage at plus 2 level and expected enrolment in local colleges isimportant. Do we get enough of the pass outs from higher secondaries actuallyavailable to take admission in these newly created colleges? We know that majorityof students who are in college going stage prefer or choose to takeprofessional graduate courses in government and private colleges either withinthe state, or outside the state or country. When very less number of studentsare actually willing to take admission in our colleges for the sake of degreeonly without showing any commitment towards academic excellence, then how willcreating more degree colleges help us to do better in academia. Therefore, ourcolleges should be well equipped to run quality and attractive courses tomagnetically pull students towards them.
A good number of our graduates are compelled to move outsidethe state to pursue post graduate courses because they don’t get theopportunity to get enrolled in local universities due to less intake capacityfor PG courses. It will be therefore, quite beneficial for student community ifsome of the old and well established colleges at least one or two in eachdistrict are converted to PG colleges to cater the needs of local aspiring youthto get master’s degrees. However, it demands establishment of qualityinfrastructure, modern cohorts and pedagogy of teaching-learning, state of artlaboratories, rich libraries, adequate teaching and non-teaching faculty,competent leadership, ICT based tools, overall better learning atmosphere, etc.
Interestingly, two administrative staff colleges will alsobe established one each in Srinagar and Jammu. But more interesting will beknow their functioning and role when we have already two human resourcedevelopment centres (formerly called UGC academic staff colleges) functionaleach in Kashmir and Jammu University. The most appropriate would have been toestablish at least one professional college in each division with thrust ontechnology, management and research.
No doubt, we need more colleges to provide educationalaccess and facility to deprived sections of the society at their doorsteps.However, a proper plan or procedure should be in place to run unique coursesand subjects in these new colleges to attract students in tune with bettercareer options and job prospects. Further, most of our population lives inrural areas but majority of the quality degree colleges are located in the cityalone. A visible difference exists between infrastructure and academicexpectations among rural and city colleges. This need to be looked into andmade impartial. Making every college unique in terms of attractive and joboriented subject combinations or specific degrees and courses based oninnovative and skill based education will surely help in achieving uniformenrolments and better academic expectations from them.
Protection of interests of students and providing themconducive learning atmosphere and best education in our colleges should be ourmotive. Let us hope that our policy makers are looking at it and sorting waysand means of the practical implications for these colleges in teaching andresearch so as to make our college sector academically rich and sociallyrelevant.
The writer is an Assistant Professor of Zoology. Viewsexpressed are personal.