By H. Srikanth
Setting up the Captain William Sangma State University in Meghalaya is indeed one of the major achievements of the Conrad Sangma led MDA government. It is heartening to know that the state government is taking initiatives to make the University functional. However, the continuing public debate in the state underscores the need for greater clarity and consensus regarding the objectives and scope of the proposed university. The initial remarks of the Education Minister regarding the affiliation of colleges have sparked different reactions. Some individuals in NEHU are alarmed by the prospects of the loss of revenue in case some UG colleges choose the state university for affiliation. Certain student organizations have also expressed fears over the affiliation. There are concerns about its lack of expertise to run all the departments. There is also a view that the state university could confine itself to technology departments. Such varied reactions are natural.
While admitting the need to address all such public concerns, doubts and fears, it is also essential for every to acknowledge the need for a viable and competent state university in Meghalaya. Not-withstanding the fact that NEHU has played an important role in the development of higher education in Meghalaya, it has become unwieldy over the years. Apart from several PG and UG programs on its campuses, NEHU has 80 colleges affiliated to it. Being the lone affiliating university in the state, NEHU has to take the responsibility of affiliating the colleges, approving the courses, working on the curriculum and syllabus for all UG programs, conducting the exams and announcing the results on time. Further, the hasty decision to push NEP 2020 and impose FYUP without creating the enabling infrastructure and academic environment in the state has posed multiple challenges. NEHU is going ahead with new PG programs, even though there are no adequate permanent faculty to run the courses. How its ambitious horizontal expansion has affected its vertical growth becomes clear from NEHU’s declining national ranking.
The problem of inadequacy of teachers is more glaring in the UG colleges. Although they started the NEP courses, only a few colleges have appointed additional teachers for skill enhancement papers like Public Speaking. It is doubtful how many of them really have qualification and training for teaching such courses. For teaching regular papers, there are hardly any new appointments. The teachers, who were appointed earlier to teach eight core papers under the old system, are now expected to teach 15 core courses. The FYUP makes dissertation writing compulsory in the fourth year. As per the NEP norm, only those who have done Ph.D. are expected to guide the research. It is most likely that the colleges ignore the stipulation and entrust the responsibility of guiding the dissertation work to teachers who just have the PG degree.
Further, in the name of the new NEP curriculum, some papers which were taught in the PG program are now shifted to the UG program. Most college teachers are not familiar with many of the papers introduced as part of the FYUP. There are no prescribed textbooks as yet for some of the newly introduced papers. Further, conducting meaningful vocational courses for hundreds of students in the colleges will not be that easy. Barring a few city-based elite colleges, most colleges in urban and semi-urban areas may find it difficult to cope up with the additional academic and non-academic demands. In view of these problems, the college teachers and college managements are likely to face many difficulties in implementation of the FYUP. Further, in the absence of proper training and orientation for students at the Plus-Two level, both students and parents are worried about locals not getting admission once the CUET becomes compulsory for admission into the colleges within the state. It is but natural that some colleges which cannot cope up with the increasing demands and the workload would look forward to a viable alternative.
Given the state of higher education in the state, the tasks of the state university would be two-fold – one to ease the problems of the UG colleges in the state, and the other, to charter into the terrains where NEHU has not yet entered or has failed to make its mark. Considering resource constraints, it is better that the state university avoids the duplication of academic programs and comes out with new UG and PG departments, which are truly relevant to the state. As NEHU’s orientation is primarily academic and research, very few students from NEHU have been successful in cracking the central civil service exams. A four-year degree program is not at all needed for those who want to pursue their careers in civil services. Rather, the state university should lay emphasis from the beginning on training the students for civil service, banking and other competitive exams. It needs to equip the students with general knowledge, logical reasoning and quantitative aptitude. Burdening the students with too many papers and forcing everyone to undertake research at the UG level would leave little time for the students to prepare for the civil services and to take part in extra-curricular activities. Students and youth in the state are very creative. The state university may start PG and UG departments like Fine Arts, focusing on music, dance, painting, theatre, film-making, etc. Similarly, the state university could focus on sports and physical education. The university should also think of offering online certificate and diploma courses. As such, there are many possibilities of making the state university serve the needs and aspirations of the people of the state.
The state government should have a vision of its own to address the educational needs of the state. Education is a concurrent subject, and it is humiliating for the state to follow the central policies blindly. Not that everything in the NEP 2020 is bad. Taking relevant inputs from the center’s National Education policy, the state government should come out with its own New Education Policy. In public interest, the state government should ensure that the state university remains secular, democratic, socially relevant, and financially affordable to the people of Meghalaya. Its priority should be to serve the interests of its people, not to appease the government at the center.
True, shaping the state university is beset with several challenges–political, financial, administrative and academic. Considering the ethnic and sub-regional fault-lines, the state government should balance the concerns and needs of the people of all the three hill areas. It is possible to surmount all the challenges if the state university is placed in the hands of visionary educational leaders who understand the state and also know how to think and act out of the box. Great care should be taken in the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor and other key officials who would head the administration and academic departments. The next task would be to identify and appoint competent and committed teachers. The first batch of teachers is crucial for shaping the university departments. There should not be any compromise in identifying and appointing qualified and committed persons as teachers. Nepotism, corruption, and external pressures in appointment of key officials and faculty would mar the progress of the state university. The state government, political parties and the civil society organizations should arrive at a broad consensus on the objectives and how the university should be run. Although the challenges are many, one need not be pessimistic. Many state universities in the country have performed better than some of the central universities. Meghalaya should take lessons from the experiences of successful state universities in the country. If there is political will, academic vision and social commitment, it is very much possible to give shape to a good state university, which supplements and also complements NEHU in strengthening higher education in the state.