[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s someone once said, “Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician’s karmic calamity.” This wisdom would sound apt for the situation that the hallowed Delhi University today finds itself in after the University Grants Commission (UGC) last Sunday asked it to scrap the controversial four-year undergraduate programme, by now notorious as FYUP. The vice-chancellor, who has over the past one-year-and-a-half remained stubborn in the face of strong criticism of his so-called reform move, has made it a prestige battle to safeguard an initiative that looked promising on intent but hollow in content, thus jeopardising the future of one entire batch of students and creating enough uncertainty for yet another batch.For the first time in the university’s 92-year history, principals of all constituent colleges of DU on Monday evening deferred admissions for the 2014-15 session till the FYUP issue is resolved. This when students and parents from far-flung places of the country — including many from the northeastern states — had descended on the capital city for the admissions that were to start on Tuesday after waiting for almost a month for the competitive cutoff lists to be out. Some 2.75 lakh students have applied for the 54,000 undergraduate seats in the 64 DU colleges this year.
The FYUP, introduced last year, sounded ambitious in description; it aimed to promote an interdisciplinary approach to education by combining knowledge with practical skills, offered great flexibility and wide-ranging choices and multiple degree options — a diploma if one leaves college after two years with the provision to return in future and complete the degree, a Bachelor’s degree with a major subject if one leaves in three years and a Bachelor honours/B Tech degree with a major subject in four years. DU claims the course will better-equip students to get employment or become an entrepreneur or go for higher end-research-based studies. All this were music to the ears of students who have increasingly become desperate with the formal education that gives them just a degree and little else, and also a nation full of youth and energy but minus the skills.
Sadly, by the time the contours of FYUP became clearer to the academia and students, the charm of the course had faded. In essence, the course only added some 11 mandatory foundation courses in the first two years of college regardless of one’s choice of subjects which included two courses on language, literature and creativity (one in English and the other in Hindi or another modern Indian language), information technology, business, entrepreneurship and management, governance and citizenship, psychology, communication and life skills, Indian history and culture and building mathematical ability. Students and teachers, who have been agitating against FYUP, say the new programme brings in no reform and that the foundation courses are actually a repeat of what one learnt at school and make a mockery of real-world skills. In doing so, FYUP truncates the core academic curriculum from what it used to be under the now discarded three-year degree programme: in effect it meant wastage of a critical year and financial resources for nothing extra.
There is no dispute that the three-year degree courses that our colleges offer have long lost relevance in the modern economy and job market. Prime minister Narendra Modi best articulated the dilemma of our jobless graduates in his first speech to Parliament earlier this month when he cited the example of a job-seeker who when asked what he can do had no answer except for his graduate degree to show. In that sense, the DU vice-chancellor deserves kudos for at least taking an initiative and kicking off a debate on the need to overhaul the system. But he did more damage than good by hastily adopting a half-baked new curriculum and then stubbornly rejecting all suggestions and objections to the same. In doing so, he missed a great opportunity to put DU on the forefront of a nationwide reforms move in higher education and failed his students — both already enrolled students and the prospective lot — who are left marooned in the unusual impasse created by the UGC order. That DU is switching back to the old course is more or less certain now with 57 of the university’s 64 colleges — including the big names like Hindu College, Lady Shri Ram, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Miranda House, Venkateswara and Kirori Mal — communicating to the UGC their willingness to move back to the old programme.
But the costs of this flipflop have been huge — both in terms of resources, time and confidence. The current mess has created much anxiety for students and parents, as colleges switching from the FYUP would have to scrap a host of new courses that they had introduced under the new curriculum, which will also mean alternations in seat allocations for various courses. The guinea pig batch of FYUP remains clueless where they go from here. A 10-member committee set up by UGC to prepare a roadmap for their transition back to the old programme says all courses that existed prior to FYUP should be restored, which may mean course change for those who had got admitted to the few new courses offered last year. Fate of the students who took the newly-created B Tech programme remains in balance, as a reversal to the old programme might mean a switchover to something very new to them, leading to loss of time, efforts and resources. Add to that the additional burden on the time and resources of the students coming in from far-off places like the Northeast, Bihar and down South are only added woes.
If at all, the move to scrap the FYUP was absolutely mistimed, and if time was in short supply for the new government, it should have acted with swiftness to clear the mess quickly, so that the students, guardians and others concerned were spared the costs, confusion and sufferings. But the biggest takeaway from this chaos is that there is possibly a need to redefine institutional autonomy to prevent overzealous administrators from using its garb to act like CEOs of private companies and play with the futures of our students. Last, not the least, this teaches us a lesson to put a more stringent checks and balances to ensure greater due diligence, more participatory dialogue and multi-level scrutiny when an institution undertakes a course change. It requires time to shape the future; which can’t be left to the whims and fancy of one or a few individuals — more so when that future involves an entire generation of young students.
