UK examiners have been instructed to award higher marks to foreign students who pay huge amounts to study abroad. These same universities are being now welcomed to India. The Foreign University Entry and Operation Bill is ready now. If these foreign universities are welcome because of their higher standards, then does it not make better sense to upgrade our educational system? Better set up indigenous private higher-educational institutions run by Indians. For example, one can have the Ramakrishna Mission, the Jesuits or the Tatas set up universities where teachers’ accountability will be enforced. Yahoo News reports Arjun Singh, the HRD minister, insisting on avoiding transient educational entities who want to make money and dupe Indian students. He was addressing a summit on higher education. Oxford University chancellor Lord Chris Patten was also present. Singh wants to clean up Indian higher-education. Since most Lecturers appointed today in government or government-aided colleges have little idea of true education, Singh is justified in his anger at the status quo.

Meritocracy is out, mediocrity is in. Unless one has the right political contacts or parents who are teachers, it is very tough for anyone to become a Lecturer. Today’s lecturers are tomorrow’s professors. So we can understand what passes for higher education here. The Union Grants Commission (UGC) has made the tough National Eligibility Test (NET) for Lecturership in India optional for post-graduate students citing the low pass-percentage. Less meritorious students can easily become academics. It is in this context that we must view Arjun Singh’s efforts in trying to pass the Bill. Foreign universities are supposed to provide better options. The logic goes that students will not have to shell out lakhs for going abroad. They will have to pay lesser tuition fees for the same kind of elite education available in the university’s original country. This is deceptive.

The following will work against Indian students:

a) After all the reduction in costs, the tuition fees of foreign universities will exclude poor students. Now merit suffers due to nepotism and political considerations. Then merit will again suffer due to economics. The poor will be forced to opt for lesser institutions.

b) When the British taught us they used Indian teachers to make clerks suitable for their dirty drudgery. What makes us think that foreign universities do not have purely business agendas in coming to India?

c) It is one thing to study in person at Oxford under some of the best scholar-teachers alive and one thing to do the course by proxy. Studying at Oxford in the UK and in India is not the same thing. Then the main purpose of getting high quality education is defeated.

So when Lord Patten magnanimously says that we are moving in the right direction, we are speechless with fear. The British had told us that when we first invited and trusted them centuries ago.

Via: Yahoo News

Image: BMCC