Raju G. Mendez
Thiruvananthapuram: Doom and gloom on Kerala’s pitfalls in redeeming the malfunctioning state of its universities and colleges, a new book has said “long-time neglect” of quality in higher education has built a “for-Kerala-by-Kerala” type of higher education, catering to mediocrity.
The damning criticism of the higher education sector in the book ‘Kerala – 1956 to the Present: India’s Miracle State’ — co-authored by Tirthankar Roy, professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics, and K Ravi Raman, a member of Kerala State Planning Board — comes at a time when the state is facing an outflow of youngsters to foreign shores for higher education. Adding to the concerns, most campuses are battling murky student politics and violence.
The Kerala Model was exemplary with primary education and an unequivocal failure with higher education. The authors opined that the invasion of private educational establishments has failed to improve the awful state of the universities and colleges.
“Private investment in education has revived, as in other states. However, private investors in education rarely foster quality while focusing more on quantity. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, are not competent to perform the complicated task of improving the quality of education,” the book said.
Not even the media,which is otherwise probing in nature,could have brough to light the challenges in education but happened to overlook it’s prominence.
“Most of the media personnel are under the presumption that government officers know how to deliver quality education because the budget pays teachers’ salaries. That is a grave mistake,” the book said. According to Ravi Raman, the co-author of the text, the slogan of ‘for-Kerala-by-Kerala’ higher education means that the educational qualification attained here is of no use outside the state.“This situation not only hampers opportunities to bring quality education to potential students from outside the state, even abroad but also denies the opportunity to skill the domestic workforce.
“The much-hyped unemployment in the state owes largely to this failure. The growing knowledge economy sector in the state will continue to open opportunities for skilling and global integration for the domestic labor market.” But how far the state can ensure the participation of the relatively marginalized in this enterprise and make the process inclusive remains open to doubt,” according to the book, published by Cambridge University Press.
Asked about the solution, Ravi Raman said there can be many easily implementable ideas. “One, there is student feedback about the faculty, the course, etc. This is very much a feature in foreign universities but not done here. Similarly, there is the concept of tutors in universities abroad. While a professor takes classes for say 120 students, they are separated into groups of 10-12, and a tutor is made in charge of each group. Each group would be guided and taught separately by these tutors,” he explained.
“Massive investments have been made in modern infrastructure, including education, but to what extent they have been effective in addressing the ever-increasing educated unemployment in the state or delivering skills remains open to question,” the authors wondered.
The book also criticized the Left regimes in Kerala for destroying private capital, nearly killing conventional agriculture, weakening growth, and creating the conditions for a fiscal crisis.
