Absurd to manage universities in state without permanent vice-chancellors
All universities, except Kerala University of Health Sciences, are managed by interim VCs appointed as a stopgap arrangement. The question raised by the apex court, as to why students should suffer this type of litigation over the appointment of interim VCs, assumes greater significance in this context.
Universities have an academic core and an administrative shell. The first is composed of faculty members responsible for the academic content (curriculum) and quality of the university.
The VC, being the chief executive officer of the university, is the head of the administrative shell. He chairs all statutory bodies and should be the chief functionary for taking the university to greater heights. He is responsible for the management of the university as well as its interaction with external stakeholders like statutory and regulatory bodies and political institutions.
Universities serve as stable, permanent and continuing generators of knowledge, learning and associated services and benefits to society. What matters to universities is sustained high performance in both. This is why we call universities quality engines. How can an interim VC, appointed for six months, take visionary decisions, even if he or she is an academic visionary?
The role of the VC is crucial now as the country is implementing National Education Policy (NEP-2020).
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The only major initiative done by the universities in Kerala is the introduction of a four-year degree programme. However, the implementation is being done in a tardy manner as the philosophy of the four-year degree programme has not been conceived in the curriculum. It has just been thought of as an extension of the present three-year programme by having one more year of study.
A curriculum should have been framed by exposing the students to industry, critical thinking and creativity with pedagogical innovations.
Kerala should leverage NEP's policy guidelines in innovative ways to improve the quality of education and NEP gives enough leeway to do this and more. To start with, the need of the hour is to end the affiliation system in its present form and consolidate the number of colleges to transform them into universities with a large number of students. The private university bill, pending with the governor, is one step in this direction.
Here we peer into the crystal ball and envisage a sustainable model of the higher education enterprise in Kerala using a simple Fermi estimation. We expect that by 2040, India's population will grow to 1.6 billion. At current ratios, Kerala would then have a population of around 43 million. If around 10% of this population falls within the college-going age group (18–23) and with a gross enrolment ratio GER of 50%, the number of college students in Kerala would be approximately 2.15 million.
Following NEP to its logical conclusion, these students should be enrolled in 60 universities, with an average enrolment of 35,000 students. Only at this size will we have the scale and spread to compete with universities that are doing well in teaching, learning and research around the globe.
How do we achieve the above if we don't have VCs to lead universities with vision and implement NEP? Are our universities, like the Dullahan in Irish folklore, ending progress?
(The writer is the founder VC of Kerala Technological University)
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