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The Great Education Divide

Bridging General and Professional Education
SIMANTINI KRISHNAN

Vol. 51, Issue No. 18, 30 Apr, 2016

Simantini Krishnan (simantini.krishnan@gmail.com) is an independent researcher and

columnist based in London.

It is time to break the mythical divide between general higher education that raises
consciousness, and professional education that is instrumental to employment and
marketable research.

Media discourses surrounding the events at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have
revealed a sharp polarity in views on the meaning and purpose of higher education. Is public
funded higher education in a developing country meant to produce thinking citizens or
employable youth? Should taxes fund scholarship that has no impact, nor is market friendly,
at least, in the short term? Is political activity on campuses a distraction from academic
pursuits?

Each of these questions has pointed to a fundamental divide, or what seems to be a black
and white choice between a higher education that raises consciousness and illuminates the
horizon, and one that must be instrumental to employment and marketable research. In the
Indian scenario it plays out through the increasingly unsustainable, and somewhat facile,
divide between general higher education and what is known as professional education.

Impact of Policy

A discourse that dichotomises the important roles of higher education is perhaps a

reflection of a system that has come to be gripped by very narrow disciplinary and
vocational confines. Colonial policies recast in new moulds at the time of independence and
during economic reform established such a framework. “Occupational education,” as it was
first designated by the Wood’s Despatch of 1854, acquired fresh significance after 1947. In
colonial India, such education serviced the need for artisans, artificers and other technical
personnel in the public works. On the eve of independence, the Sarkar Committee situated
technical education at the heart of nation building through industrialisation. The
Radhakrishnan Commission felt the need to break away from a liberal arts emphasis in
colonial education—one that produced civil servants and white collar workers. The National
Policy of Education 1986 reinforced the separate universes occupied by technical and
general higher education. Following economic reforms in the 1990s, private engineering
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colleges expanded rapidly, particularly in regions touched by the information technology

sector (Krishnan 2014).

Technical Education for Development

In Nehru’s India, higher education in general and scientific education in particular was
envisaged as a crucial agent of socio-economic transformation. Science and technology at
the service of industrialisation would promote economic self-sufficiency, while the practice
of science would inculcate the spirit of scientific inquiry and scientific temper. Disciplinary
compartmentalisation was perhaps a strategy for expediting the nationalist project. Decades
later, however, there is little evidence to suggest that such ties have sustained. The exodus
of students from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other public institutions of
technical education to Western countries and the advent of information technology and
related sectors have meant that technical education now has closer ties to the research and
market imperatives of advanced industrialised nations than to India’s own developmental
needs (Sohoni 2012).

Further, a slew of low quality technical institutes churn out unemployable graduates
aspiring to join the information technology (IT)-enabled services (ITES) sector, which
accounts for nearly a quarter of the organised workforce in the private sector. This has
grave consequences for other sectors of the economy such as manufacturing and public
works, which benefit little from the surfeit of engineers in the country. The shrinking
manufacturing sector fails to provide employment while inadequate public services deepen
the problems of access and equity.

The disconnect of many educated youth with India’s indigenous problems is then located, at
least in part, in the uncritical reproduction of engineering education in the country.

Middles Classes and the State

It has to be said that the IT boom of the 1990s tried to construct a meritocracy that
promised to liberate the aspiring middle classes from the stranglehold of a much discredited
public services system. Employment in the IT industry required a combination of skill and
cultural capital, which meant that social hierarchies based on caste and class were often
reproduced (Upadhya and Vasavi 2006). Nevertheless, it came to redefine the symbolism
attached to technical education. The powerful agent of nation building came to be viewed
more as a means of socio-economic mobility or as a pathway to middle class membership.

Technical education at the service of IT was instrumental in distancing the middle classes
from the state. The flourishing of private sector engineering colleges, many of which ran on
capitation fees, diminished the role of public education. It is therefore not surprising that a
rising middle class that wants to stake a claim in the system does not demand better public
universities. For similar reasons, the issue of corruption strikes a chord with middle class
professionals, while that of redistributive justice does not. The argument rests on the model
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of corporate citizenship where social justice is a matter of philanthropy rather than of

political engagement or demand for rights.

Challenges before Public Universities

On the other side of the education divide rest the traditional colleges and universities, most
of which are publicly funded. They also account for over 50% of enrolments in higher
education. Plagued by the shortage of qualified faculty and a curriculum that does not
reflect new developments or emerging challenges, India’s public university system is neither
vigorous nor adequate. The deemed unemployability of a large section of such graduates in
fact points to the production of a graduate underclass that is both undereducated and
underemployed. Expectedly, there is also little evidence to suggest that such education has
produced innovators and entrepreneurs. Besides, there is the long standing concern of
universities being captive to organised political interests, which further contributes to its
falling signaling value in the labour market.

Historically, India’s public universities have been at the forefront of social movements. This
must be owed in good measure to the very nature of such institutions. As various social
groups come together in a more or less egalitarian space, the voices of radicals and
subalterns begin to be heard (Deshpande 2016). The freedom struggle and the anti-
emergency movement had gathered strength on university campuses and delivered stalwart
politicians. JNU, in particular prides itself for the defiance of Indira Gandhi at the peak of
her Emergency powers. Its robust tradition of student activism is also credited with
effecting progressive changes in admission policy, instituting intra-university mechanisms
for gender justice and campaigning forresearch scholarships. Yet student activism is being
discredited for promoting personal aggrandisement and disruptive activities.

The moot question is whether a university like JNU can then proclaim the virtues of blue-sky
thinking and consciousness raising without trivialising the problems of teaching,
curriculum, and uninspired student politics in public universities.

Conclusions

The occurrences of the past few weeks have demonstrated how India’s university students
can be powerful agents for widening democratic participation. In reminding the political
class of the founding values of the Indian republic, they have also situated the debates on
public education and the role of universities in perspective. But just as higher education
cannot be reduced to a market enterprise guided by corporate interests, it also cannot
remain a rarefied realm of higher thinking unconcerned with employability and innovation.
If a university is a site for building the values of citizenship and raising the stakes for
participation in the country’s future, it has to nurture critical thinking, employable skills and
creative entrepreneurship all at the same time. A higher education system that feeds
India’s much touted knowledge economy cannot rest on facile splits and policy-induced
chasms.
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References

Deshpande, Satish (2016): “The Public University after Rohith-Kanhaiya,” Economic and
Political Weekly, Vol 51, No 11,
http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/11/university-under-siege/public-university-after-rohith-kan
haiya.html.

Krishnan, Simantini (2014): “The Political Economy of India’s Tertiary Education:

Persistence and Change,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 49, No 11,
http://www.epw.in/journal/2014/11/special-articles/political-economy-indias-tertiary-educati
on.html.

Sohoni, Milind (2012): “Engineering Teaching and Research in IITs and its Impact on India,”
Current Science, Vol 102, No 11, http://home.iitk.ac.in/~anindya/MilindSohoniArticle.pdf.

Upadhya, Carol and Vasavi, AR (2006): “Work, Culture and Sociality in the Indian IT
Industry: A Sociological Study,” Final Report Submitted to Indo-Dutch Programme for
Alternatives in Development, August, http://eprints.nias.res.in/107/2/idpadfinalreport.pdf.