While going through a book titled ‘The idea of a University’by Apoorvanand of the Delhi University, it came to my mind that being a collegeteacher can I throw some light on an idea called College. This is how the titleof the present write-up was conceived. As a student, during my graduation days,we were told often that “no knowledge without college” and it was a real badgeof honor to be a college student those days. And to be fair enough to ourteachers they were equally responsive to our needs and aspirations.
The college as always has been considered as first steptowards new and exciting journey of one’s career. The college degree is stillconsidered among one of the important milestones one achieves in his/her lifeowing to its basic eligibility not only for further studies at university levelbut also being one of the basic requirements for majority of employmentsincluding prestigious Civil Service examinations.
Both being a college student as well as college teacher wasconsidered as an honor and were well respected in the society. When we takecontemporary times especially in this part of the world we could easily see thesheen out of college degree has come down tremendously. Why it is so and whatall factors are responsible for this kind of pathetic condition of HigherEducation in general and college education in particular.
In one sentence if you would tell me the conditions of ourcolleges, with due respect to schools I can say with complete sense ofresponsibility that our colleges are glorified versions of schools with almostno innovation at place!
Organizationally the position of colleges in Jammu andKashmir has not been clarified, while for examination and evaluation thesecolleges are affiliated to universities, the administrative controls are withHigher Education Department, leaving these colleges caught between two masters.
For the sake of comparison if we can see the standards anddelivery mechanism in colleges like St Stephen’s of the Delhi University andmany more DU colleges and compare them with our own brand of colleges, we cansafely conclude that our institutions especially colleges are nowhere in raceand in fact we have lost it completely.
When we try to analyze this comparison, it is verysurprising and astonishing in the very first place when especially all HigherEducation institutions throughout India are governed by same set of UGC rules,why we have not been able to produce a single St Stephen’s in J&K so far.If we pose this question to anyone here, probably 90 percent could blame thedecade’s old turmoil in the valley.
But in my humble way I believe that it is only half of thestory, yes our institutions became the victims of the conflict, yes theseinstitutions suffered heavily but that could only be one variable, what aboutthe others. What about the governance structure, who has stopped our collegesto get rid off old and archaic rules of running the colleges? For example, if ateacher wants to get a book for the library of the college which he/shebelieves will benefit students a lot, there is such a cumbersome procedureinvolved that we end up not getting that book at all and in turn those booksare bought which many times are not related at all. Basically, we believe lotsof people have got immensely benefitted from this system and probably thosedominant groups never allowed any kind of reform in the Higher Education ofJammu and Kashmir.
Why this question can’t be asked that if a particularcollege has been in place for decades together, why NAAC was not allowed toaccredit it. Though, we should also mention the fact that even at times NAACaccreditation mechanism has been questionable in itself. Thanks to currentdispensation many of our colleges now stand accredited, though majority of themunder grade C.
Why would anybody like to study in an institution whichlacks basic amenities for quality education? Why again an aspirant would spendhis time in a college where teaching-learning is the least priority, andadministration the highest.
For decades together we have seen the culture of committeesin our colleges where one professor, especially seniors, acts as convener andothers as members. Having been the college teacher for around three years, Ihave not understood the philosophy behind the constitution of these committees,and how they help in development of a particular college. Why can’t we haveenough of professional non-teaching staff in the colleges who will look toadministrative part of the college and teaching staff will exclusively devotetheir time to teaching, learning and research.
The most disturbing part of the story is that as a teacheryou are never supported for any kind of research endeavor whether in terms ofattending some conferences or workshops which could have helped them indeveloping themselves and see the irony of these institutions when it comes toNAAC assessment the same college comes to you and asks you to furnish thedetails of one’s research related work in order to lift the grading of theinstitution on assessment scale.
What could be done – is there a way-out. We believe if thereis a political and administrative will things will definitely change forbetter. For example, while choosing heads/leaders for these colleges, we needto see the vision and administrative acumen of a particular faculty memberbefore inducting him/her on an administrative position in a particular collegeand it would have been great if the Union Public Service Commission wouldconduct interview for these posts. After appointment as head of the institutionthere should be a compulsory one to three months training program for these newleaders preferably at IIM Ahmedabad that would definitely help these people toa great extent to develop the skills of administration necessary for running aninstitution.
Moreover, teachers also need to reinvent themselves and needto move beyond traditional methods of teaching and learning. Higher educationneeds reforms in Jammu and Kashmir and it needs them at the earliest.
Author is Assistant Professor (Education), Higher EducationDepartment, Government of Jammu and Kashmir, posted at Government Degree CollegeGanderbal, Kashmir.