A mixed bag of reforms and unfinished tasks

Ever since its inception in 2007, the Kerala State Higher Education Council has been initiating new concepts and programmes in higher education in the State but lack of political consensus has stymied many of its efforts, G. MAHADEVAN writes

The birth of the Kerala State Higher Education Council on March 16, 2007 evoked mixed feelings in political and academic circles in the State. While there were many who saw the council as a supra-university power centre designed to impose one line of thinking on academia, there were others who saw in it the scope for shaping paradigms for far-reaching educational reforms in Kerala.

Life has been eventful — to put it mildly — for the council ever since it set up shop at a quiet corner of the Science and Technology Museum campus. From that ‘corner' a team headed by historian K. N. Panikkar was able to centrestage many a reform and concept in the higher education sector. What catapulted the council itself into the confluence of academics and politics in Kerala was its decision to set up committees to study what it identified as critical aspects of the higher education sector.

The single biggest achievement of this council was perhaps the implementation of the report of the committee that suggested reforms in undergraduate education. This brought about the conversion of the degree courses in the State to the credit and semester system from the decades-old ‘annual stream.' Many academics opposed it and political organisations alleged that these reforms were being implemented in the council as part of a World Bank agenda. There were saner voices who welcomed the broad thrust of the reforms, cautioning all the while that the devil was in the details and that the sheer size of the classrooms (the number of students) would blunt the efficacy of these structural changes. Indeed the council itself considers the credit and semester system as its signal contribution to the higher education sector.

The member secretary of the KSHEC Thomas Joseph pointed out to The Hindu-EducationPlus that the activities of the council — in particular the reports of the various committees it commissioned — have generated a robust public debate in the State. As a result of the media exposure on these reports the spotlight fell on new ideas and concepts in education. “Organisations such as the NSS have written to the government, reacting to our report on reviewing university acts. However, this robustness was not seen in academic circles even though we did organise widespread discussions on various reforms,” he explained.

Today all universities in the State have switched over to the credit and semester system for degree courses. This switch over was not glitch-free. The University of Kerala which was the last varsity to switch over to the new system continues to have serious problems relating to the valuation of answer scripts of the new degree courses.

There are those in academia who resolutely hold that the credit and semester system is a mistake and that “this won't work” in the Kerala situation. They hold that grading is not all that great a thing as the KSHEC makes it out to be and that thousands of students are being made guinea pigs for this ‘experiment.' Whatever be the merit of such charges and arguments, the alleged speed with which the credit and semester system was introduced should be juxtaposed against the ‘speed' with which reforms of any kind was taking place in individual varsities over the years. That said, all the reports of the council's committees did not meet with the same level of success. The report of the Anandakrishnan Committee which was set up to review the acts of the universities is a case in point. The Opposition has pilloried this report as being wishy-washy and inconsequential. “The act of each university should have been studied and reforms, suggested. That has not been done,” the member secretary of the UDF expert committee on education G. V. Hari pointed out. Some suggestions in the committee's report have been construed by private managements as attempts to impose governmental /political control over their institutions. And this is where the council fumbled and badly at that.

Thought it won accolades — at least from some quarters — for setting in motion processes of reform, it snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by failing to ensure that these committees worked to a tight deadline. As a result most committees turned in their reports towards the fag end of the tenure of both the LDF government and of the KSHEC. The committee set up to suggest reforms in teacher education has not yet submitted its report. Moreover, the council chose not to accept and forward to the government the recommendations of the Thanu Padmanabhan Committee on reforming PG courses because the report is not in sync with the broad thrust of reforms that the council has initiated.

Another council venture which met with limited success was the ‘cluster of colleges' experiment. Though the concept is laudable, there are many who feel that the idea is one that is ahead of its times as far as Kerala is concerned. The stand-off between the LDF government and managements of private self-financing professional institutions too contributed to the atmosphere of mistrust that stymied the cluster initiative.

Another major council initiative was the committee for a new education policy for Kerala. Here too there was a longer-than-necessary gap between the draft report and the final report of the committee headed by U.R. Ananthamoorthy. The result? There was no time for transforming the report into a policy document. There are many pro-UDF academics who blame the council for not working to build a political consensus on major reforms right from the beginning. When the council and the government did reach out to opposition parties in late 2010 and in early 2011, it was too little too late. The only report which found resonance in opposition circles was the one turned in by the Jacob Tharu committee on examination reforms. Even this report cannot be put into practice for the moment. So, on balance, has the council succeeded in what it was formed to do? By setting up a few clusters of colleges, the council has fulfilled its mandate partly. Its real success has been in initiating new concepts and programmes in higher education. In doing this, the KSHEC also amply demonstrated its relevance in the State's higher education sector. By packaging the credit and semester system to all universities in the State, the KSHEC has demonstrated its coordination skills and advisory acumen. The activities of the council over four years have, however, also shown that there is not enough social agreement and negligible consensus on the political front on the kind of concepts and programmes needed for the educational reforms. But then that is something no council can set right.