TG higher edn system needs overhaul

The Telangana government’s swift move in appointing Vice Chancellors to the Universities and reconstituting the Higher Education Council, while establishing Telangana Education Commission is a welcome step in right direction.

It is now the bounden duty of the government to initiate a complete overhaul of the higher education system in the State. A major revamp is essential in the backdrop of the fact that many universities’ performance is abysmally low in terms of teaching, research, innovation, placement, pedagogy, industry-academia collaboration, and in imparting the employability skills.

It is no wonder that many universities fail to register a minimum of 20 per cent placement for their passing out students, leave alone fancy packages. If there is no major shake-up, the universities’ performance will hit rock bottom on a host of metrics. The teaching and research activities in the universities took a severe beating with a large number of vacancies in teaching positions in all the universities. It is ironic to note that there are more number of vacancies than the actual number of working teachers in the universities in Telangana.

The high number of vacancies is majorly due to the BRS government’s failure to recruit the teaching and non-teaching positions in State universities. It is a sad reality that there was no recruitment in the universities for the past one decade.

As there are indications that the Congress government is mulling over setting up the College Service Commission to take up the recruitment, it is important to note that any such move to revive the College Service Commission would only result in further delaying the recruitment process. It is important to fill the vacancies in the earlier format, while ensuring transparency and accountability at all levels.

Onus is on newly appointed VCs

As the functioning of the universities is in a shambles, the task is cut out for the VCs. There is a hard road ahead for the Vice Chancellors to set things right. They must take the leverage of support of the government. They need to show a high degree of alacrity to push through academic and administrative reforms. The VCs can draft senior academic administrators from other universities for key positions like registrar, controller of examinations etc., in order to prevent any internal feud among the faculty.

Similarly, the VCs need to give the highest priority to ensure regular classwork. They need to take up the mantle to create an enabling ecosystem where teaching, research, innovation, and mentoring of students come to the centre-stage. By sanctioning school or faculty-wise small research grants, publication grants, sponsoring paper presentation visits and supporting patent applications, the university’s administration can motivate and support the faculty.

It is ironical to find that the financial status of many universities is so precarious that they are not even able to procure chemicals, tools, and other equipment for the mandatory curriculum-based lab work and experiments. Strengthening and galvanising the functioning of the internal quality assurance cells within the university will facilitate the universities to take part in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) and other global ranking competitions like the Times Higher Education (THE), and QS rankings.

As a majority of the universities either do not have or lapsed NAAC accreditation, they need to expedite the process of NAAC accreditation and other accreditations and approvals like the NAB accreditation, AICTE, and PCI approvals for their different academic programmes.

The Vice Chancellors can also make a huge difference by taking up employability skills training programmes for all the students in tune with the industry requirements, and promote industry-academia interface, and by organising placement melas. Special focus must be on career guidance, counselling, and competitive examinations coaching. As a majority of the students come from underprivileged sections, it is vital to seamlessly integrate the training of communication skills in regular classroom teaching.

Vice Chancellors need to set a personal example by conducting themselves in an exemplary manner on and off the campus, while the faculty take the lead in taking these initiatives forward. In order to leverage the power of alumni, the VCs need to be proactive in promoting department-wise alumni networks and the university-level alumni network. The alumni networks can greatly contribute in offering internships, openings, and other training and mentoring activities for the students, while contributing for the university’s all-round development. They can take a cue from foreign universities, which do not entirely depend upon the government funding, in developing the huge endowment funds to run the institutions. In this aspect, JNTU Hyderabad and Osmania University have succeeded to an extent in networking with the alumni and in collaborating with them for developmental and other student supportive activities.

What TG govt needs to do

The universities are fund-starved. They are finding it difficult to meet salary bills and are relying heavily on government’s salary grants and other development grants. In this scenario of emaciated fiscal condition of the universities, it is imperative for the government to hike the grants to the universities. The increased flow of funds will help the universities in creating an enabling ecosystem that emphasises top quality teaching, research, innovation and all-round development of students and ensure their global competitiveness.

The second most important initiative from the government is the need to expedite the process of recruitment of teaching and non-teaching positions in all the universities, while addressing the concerns of the contractual faculty, who have been working for decades. It is also a long-pending genuine demand of the universities’ teaching staff to increase their superannuation age to 65 years on a par with the Central Universities. The government can increase their superannuation age to 63. This makes a sense as the previous government had increased the superannuation age by three years to all the employees, while ignoring the appeals of the universities’ teaching staff.

Collaborative efforts need of the hour

There must be an effective coordination between the Telangana Higher Education Council (TGCHE) headed by Prof V Balakista Reddy and the Telangana Education Commission helmed by the likes of Akunuri Murali and the legendary Prof P L Visveshwar Rao. They should not end up intruding into each other’s domain and should not be working at cross-purposes.

These two apex bodies need to be constantly on vigil to ensure discipline, transparency, and accountability at all levels in the functioning of the universities and their administrators. These two important agencies can also explore collaboration opportunities with the national and international institutions of excellence.

With all these initiatives and envisaged collaborative work of different stakeholders, the higher education sector and the functioning of the universities are expected to witness vibrant and transformative changes in terms of quality of education, morale of the staff, and employability of the students.

(Author is an Associate Professor of Communication at The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad. Views are personal.)