THE presence of students from Kerala is prominent on the campuses of almost all universities and other institutions of higher learning in the country: in central universities, IITs and IIMs in particular. During the early days of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Malayalam was as commonly heard on the campus as English and Hindi. The migration to prestigious institutions outside the state in quest of quality and specialization is quite natural and even desirable. But the migration of Kerala students is mainly due to internal compulsions – first, an inadequate number of institutions of higher learning in the state and second, the relatively poor quality of education they provide. The access to higher education, though better in Kerala (around 20 per cent of the relevant age group) compared to the national average (around 12 per cent), is not sufficient to meet the demands of the aspiring students.

Failing to get admission within the state, however, is not the only reason for academic migration; many do so in search of better quality of instruction and infrastructural facilities, for the institutions of higher learning in the state suffer from a shortage of funds, outmoded administration, inadequately equipped library and laboratories and teachers with poor academic ability. The parents, therefore, suspect that their wards, if trained in the institutions in the state, would not stand a chance in the highly competitive employment market.

The general dissatisfaction with the quality of higher education in the state is expressed in a variety of ways: student unrest, indiscipline, strikes and even violence, all of which are endemic in Kerala. A more ‘constructive’ response has been migration to reputed institutions, where Malayalee students generally perform well. Obviously the poor performance of students in the state is not because of their inherent inability; the reasons are rooted in the general academic atmosphere prevailing in the universities. The higher education system in the state has, by and large, remained stagnant during the last sixty years; the only change being the periodic revision of syllabi undertaken by boards of studies, consisting of teachers, many of whom are not particularly suited for the task. The universities have shown neither the inclination nor ability to address other aspects like pedagogy, methods of evaluation, and infrastructural facilities.

 

That little attention was devoted to the periodic improvement in the quality of education was mainly due to unimaginative leadership and inefficient administration. The higher education in the state is controlled and administered by multiple agencies – Higher Education Council, universities, the Department of Education and the Directorate of College Education. The council is intended to deal with policy formulation, the Education Department’s task is implementation of policy and the universities are vested with academic management and supervision. None of these functions are strictly demarcated, leading to avoidable overlapping of functions.

This structural weakness is compounded by the appointment of administrators who are not sensitive to the academic demands of higher education. Bureaucrats and college teachers, not well-versed with educational administration, are often appointed to head the universities. Recently, even a retired school teacher was chosen as the vice chancellor of one of the universities, fortunately annulled because of the public outcry it created. Such vice chancellors, needless to say, are incapable of providing academic leadership to the institution and even lack the necessary confidence to conduct the administration. Consequently, they tend to adopt repressive methods to run the institution and discourage public discussion and debate and destroy whatever little democratic culture that prevails in these institutions.

In order to facilitate the academic performance of both students and teachers, the educational administration should be informed by a liberal philosophy and humanist culture. An inevitable dimension of this philosophy is the autonomy of higher educational institutions, which alone can ensure an intellectual space in which unhampered pursuit of knowledge could be undertaken. Such a climate is singularly lacking in the universities of Kerala. In fact, the universities are almost completely subordinated to politics.

 

The ministers as well as administrators treat the universities as extensions of the education department of the government secretariat and consider it within their powers to interfere even in its routine affairs. A minister wanted to see the minutes of the selection committee of a university and a secretary to government convened a meeting of the vice chancellors of the state! MLAs and MPs presiding over academic seminars is a common spectacle in all universities in the state.

Old timers often reminisce about the respect and courtesy extended by E.M.S. Namboodiripad to John Mathai, the Vice Chancellor of Kerala University. Responding to a request from the vice chancellor for an appointment to meet the chief minister, Namboodiripad chose instead to call on the vice chancellor. The cynics might point out that the present ministers are neither of Namboodiripad’s calibre nor are the vice chancellors of Mathai’s stature. That may well be. Yet, the system necessarily has to respect the basic character of its own institutions.

Namboodiripad’s gesture was not a matter of courtesy alone; it reflected the liberal conception of the character of the universities bequeathed by the colonial administration. The universities were conceived as autonomous institutions, with least interference on the part of the government. In Kerala the conditions are just the contrary. The main, and perhaps only, interest the government evinces in the administration of the universities is in exercising control over them. This is attempted through the appointment of its nominees to the syndicates. It has been a common practice in the state to change the members of the syndicate whenever a new government is installed. The incumbent syndicate is replaced by an ordinance or simply dismissed under some pretext or the other.

 

Being political nominees, most members of the syndicate are generally without any academic distinction; sometimes without any credentials to be associated with the administration of an educational institution. Recently, a retired cook and a retired school teacher were appointed as the syndicate members of a university! In another university, a syndicate member opposed granting leave to a teacher who was selected for a prestigious Commonwealth scholarship, because he had no idea what the Commonwealth was. Interestingly, he was nominated to the committee to select the next vice chancellor by the government representative and two senior professors, one of whom acted out of political influence and the other because of religious considerations, although the claim was that they found a place in the syndicate purely on academic grounds! The only contribution of this member, who was also an MLA, was his effort to obstruct syndicate meetings by influencing the government nominee and other members to absent themselves so that the necessary quorum was lacking. Ironically in the next election to the legislative assembly, he listed his contribution to the university as one of his achievements!

The government looks upon the office of the vice chancellor as a political appointment, although the political leaders wax eloquent over the autonomy of the universities. Independent vice chancellors are not tolerated and the government creates hurdles at every step for those who do not succumb to government pressure. Currently, attempts are being made to push out Professor Rajan Gurukkal, the Vice Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, who has been running the university in an independent and exemplary manner. What the syndicate members representing the government want is not efficiency or independence, but a free hand to pursue their political interests. In Sree Sankaracharya University, Kalady, the vice chancellor was not permitted to hold syndicate meetings for three years, as he was not amenable to the wishes of the then government. A member of the syndicate is on record that he had blocked the syndicate meetings at the instance of the government!

 

Apart from these indirect methods of subordinating the universities to government control, the existing rules and regulations also work against the autonomy of universities. At the moment, there is no distinction between academic and government administration, as the same rules and regulations are applicable to both. More importantly, the interpretation of rules is vested with the bureaucracy whose views are invariably influenced by government procedures. The administrative control exercised by the government over educational institutions tends to curb the innovative spirit and academic initiatives.

Several examples of this mismatch of the administrative and academic requirements can be cited. The most glaring and perhaps senseless one is the rule regarding government permission for a teacher to go abroad to participate in a seminar. There is some rationale for prescribing government permission for bureaucrats, but insisting on the approval of the state cabinet for a teacher to go abroad for a seminar is both unnecessary and undesirable! In most instances, by the time the request reaches the cabinet, the seminar is over, depriving a teacher the rare opportunity to interact with his peers. How can a system which does not encourage academic exposure of teachers, be able to measure up to international standards?

Given such restrictions and a general atmosphere of neglect, it is not surprising for competent teachers to look for greener pastures outside the state that offer better opportunities for academic pursuits. The higher educational institutions in Kerala are therefore denuded of scholars who work on advanced areas of research. Not surprisingly, there are very few teachers of international standards working in the universities of Kerala, which in turn has affected the quality of higher education. The responsibility for the poor performance of teachers vests partly with the way the government treats the universities.

 

The educational progress of the state is a result of combined effort of philanthropic initiatives by private agencies, mainly in the form of community initiatives, and the support extended by the state. The princely states of Travancore and Cochin had evinced keen interest in promoting education, despite their feudal outlook and practices. The ruler of Travancore had assumed the responsibility of educating its subjects at the beginning of the 19th century itself. A proclamation issued in 1817, stated that, ‘The state should defray the entire cost of education of its people in order that there might be no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment among them, that by diffusion of education they might become better subjects and public servants, and the reputation of the state might be advanced thereby.’

Nevertheless, the participation of the state was of a limited nature and insufficient to meet the requirements of aspiring students. The initiatives by Christian missionaries and other community organizations sought to fill this void. The private initiatives were supported by the government through land grants and a system of private aided colleges which are privately owned but publically funded, as the entire cost of running these institutions is met by the state. These private institutions have gained so much ground that they have become the dominant players in the sphere of education in the state.

Currently there are more than 300 private arts and science colleges (both aided and unaided) in the state, whereas the number of government colleges is only 40. In the field of professional education, private agencies have now acquired a near monopoly ever since this sector was opened up to all kinds of profit-oriented ventures as a matter of investment in higher education. For instance, there are 105 self-financing private engineering colleges and only eleven government colleges.

 

The perils of privatization are acutely felt in professional education. The middle class parents of Kerala are obsessed with professional education, possibly because of the employment opportunities it promises. Whether or not the students have aptitude and ability for professional education, they are forced by the parents to join it. The private colleges exploit this weakness and extract enormous amounts of money as capitation fee for admission. No effort by the government to stop this practice has so far succeeded. The private managements have become so powerful that they are able to exert influence over the government and it is rumoured that even the judiciary has been unable to resist the temptations offered by them. The initiatives of the Left Front government to restrain them were defeated by the intervention of the judiciary. It is widely believed that the unethical practices indulged in by private managements have made these institutions inaccessible even to members of the middle class, unless they have other sources of income.

Though a myth, the general impression is that private institutions provide superior quality education. It is, however, true that some colleges managed by private trusts and organizations are better administered than government institutions, and produce better results. It is also true that government colleges suffer from a lack of discipline and poor instructional standards, but this does not justify the conclusion that the private is good and the public is bad. On the contrary, the conditions obtaining in many private institutions, particularly professional colleges, are abysmally poor – in infrastructural facilities, number of qualified teachers and properly equipped laboratories and libraries. One of the private engineering colleges was even found to be running in a renovated cowshed. Obviously, this has happened with the collusion of the government and the universities.

 

The state of higher education has been a matter of concern, both for the public and the government, for quite some time. Professor Joseph Mundassery, who was the education minister in the first communist ministry (1957-59), initiated some bold measures to improve the quality of higher education. He had rightly recognized that improvement in quality was contingent upon the effective involvement of teachers, for which it was necessary to provide them satisfactory service conditions. Therefore, he took steps to impart respectability to the profession by relieving the teachers from the whims and fancies of the management.

However, before further steps could be taken, the ministry was dismissed, following the ‘liberation’ struggle launched and led by political and social forces keen on maintaining the status quo. Their main area of concern was the likely changes in education in which the Catholic Church and the community organizations of Muslims, Nairs and Ezhavas had a vested interest. After the liberation struggle, private managements came to virtually control the higher education sector, leading to its commercialization. The rights of the minorities guaranteed by the Constitution were invoked to overcome the demands of public accountability.

 

The freedom thus ‘won’ was used to collect capitation fee from students and contributions from teachers in lieu of appointments. It is reported that a lecturer’s appointment makes the management richer by a minimum of twenty-five lakh rupees. In the process the best candidate is pushed out of the race. These practices are not limited to professional colleges in which the competition is intense and the possibility of extracting money greater. The payment for admission, be it to schools or colleges, has become a part of educational culture, no longer considered an undesirable practice. In fact, the amount of money paid as children’s fees serves as a status symbol! Therefore, the academic community, consisting of both teachers and students, is not constituted by merit, but by the power of money.

 

The extremely arduous task of retrieving the system from this state of decay was what the state government attempted during the last five years. The government followed a three pronged strategy to stimulate the system. To begin with the government recognized the importance of higher education in the development of the state by retrieving it from the comparative neglect it had suffered in the past. An indication of this change in approach was the allotment of larger amounts of money in the eleventh five year plan. Higher education received about ten times more funds than in the tenth plan. The government also sanctioned the appointment of 1600 teachers in arts and science colleges, as no improvement is possible without an adequate number of qualified teachers.

Second, the government recognized the specialized character of higher education by constituting a Higher Education Council to formulate policy directions and academic guidance. The council performed an advisory role in relation to the government and functioned as an academic facilitator in relation to the universities. It was entrusted with the task of in-depth study and analysis of academic problems, for which neither the education department of the government nor the universities had the leisure or expertise. In pursuance of this objective, the council formulated an educational policy for the state, prepared a draft model act for universities, suggested an entirely new method of student evaluation and, above all, implemented an ambitious programme of restructured undergraduate education. It also imparted training to teachers to handle the system of grading, and equipped them with the preparation and teaching of innovative courses. When the council was constituted apprehensions were expressed that it would adversely affect the autonomy of the universities. The working of the council has allayed such fears as it has provided an independent space in which interaction between the administration, the universities and the council could take place.

The new initiatives taken by the government during the last five years were mainly aimed at a qualitative improvement of higher education in the state. The features of these initiatives were academic freedom to students and teachers, a system of continuous evaluation, academic and administrative democratization, social justice and a choice based credit and semester system. It also evolved the idea of a cluster of colleges to share academic resources and relieve the universities of their excessive burden. In other words, the council sought to transform higher education into a student centred modern system, heralding a fundamental departure from the existing outmoded pattern. This package was evolved through intense discussion and debate with educational experts, teachers and students.

 

In this process of preparation, the council benefited from the participation of educationists like V. Vijayan, Deputy Director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Ananthamurti, renowned litterateur and former Vice Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam; M. Ananthakrishnan, former Vice Chancellor of Anna University, Chennai; Jacob Tharu, Central University, Hyderabad; Anita Rampal, Delhi University, and several others. The most important contribution of the council was that it substantially raised the level of discussion on higher education and sensitized the teachers about their role in the improvement of quality. Moreover, college teachers were drawn into the process of reforms initiated by the council, the most important of which was the restructuring of the undergraduate programme.

 

The state of Kerala was the first in the country to introduce a choice based credit and semester system (CBCSS) at the undergraduate level. The semester system is almost universally followed today and South Asian nations are perhaps the only exception as they continue with the old practice of annual evaluations. There is a near unanimous opinion among educationists and administrators in favour of semsterization and choice based course and credit system. Consequently, the Government of India too decided to move to a semester system at the national level in 2010 and the University Grants Commission instructed the universities to implement it expeditiously. In Kerala, the semester system, already in vogue for about ten years at the postgraduate level, was extended to undergraduates much before the Government of India adopted it as a part of the national policy.

The introduction of the CBCSS in the universities of Kerala was conceived as a comprehensive academic reform and not merely as an administrative reorganization of the pattern of evaluation. The importance of the new programme, as implemented by the Government of Kerala, was neither the introduction of the semester system nor the change from marks to letter grades, as some of its critics seem to believe, but more importantly the creation of a multidisciplinary base for higher education which would enhance quality of study and research.

It heralded a fundamental departure from the existing pattern on many counts. To begin with, it put an end to regimentation of disciplines; enabled multidisciplinary exposure through a basket of common compulsory courses; provided for training in methodology and, above all, ensured academic freedom of students and teachers. Its main strength was its student centred character which could stimulate the creative ability of students. It has the potential to develop a new campus culture, which in turn could lead to greater involvement of the students in academic matters.

 

The Government of Kerala has been critical of the ‘open door policy’ of the central government, which potentially allows unrestricted entry of foreign universities to the country. This is an attractive proposition to the Indian middle class, intellectually and culturally steeped in colonial influence. The Indian ruling elite is of the view that the presence of foreign universities can enhance the quality of higher education by providing a better example. The Government of Kerala, in contrast, proposed an improvement in the quality of the institutions within the state. Towards that end it took several new steps, among them the setting up of inter-university centres and the implementation of scholar-in-residence scheme known as ‘Erudite’ are particularly important.

The inter-university centres provide a meeting ground for those pursuing advanced research in a particular discipline, drawn from different institutions in the state. The purpose is to create a platform for interdisciplinary study and research. The Erudite Scheme, on the other hand, is intended to expose students and teachers to the academic work undertaken in institutions abroad. Under this scheme more than one hundred scholars, including a few Nobel laureates, have already visited and lectured in different universities in the state. Their visits have opened up the possibility of international collaboration in research, exchange of scholars and joint courses in selected areas of common interest. The advantage of the Kerala experiment over the central scheme of setting up foreign universities is both cultural and intellectual. The local institutions could benefit from the academic expertise of these scholars without the cultural disadvantages of a foreign institution.

 

During the post-liberalization period, the study and research of social sciences and humanities have received relatively less attention and state support. It is understandable that concerned with job opportunities, parents are obsessed with ensuring professional education for their wards. The preparation for the entrance examination for professional colleges begins from the early days of schooling. One consequence of this obsession with professional education – and that too within a narrow range dominated by engineering and medicine – has been a decline in the quality of social sciences and humanities, as these areas do not attract good students. In fact, humanities and social sciences are sought only as a last resort. To offset this tendency, the Higher Education Council set up a scholarship fund through contributions from the public and matching grant from the government, to provide scholarships to all needy students opting for humanities and social sciences. The scheme would not only attract students to non-professional courses but also ensure social justice to the deprived sections of society.

The main achievement of the state in the field of higher education has been the setting up of necessary infrastructure for a leap forward in quality and for ensuring social justice. Many of these initiatives have been defeated by private interests who have dominated the field by treating higher education as an arena for commercial ventures. The bill for controlling private agencies in professional education was blocked by them. Their attitude of non-cooperation has made the much acclaimed system of college clusters non-functional. Their participation in CBCSS is at best lukewarm. On the whole, private managements are trying to undo the progressive policy of higher education which the state has implemented after wide-ranging discussion with stakeholders. The indications are that instead of taking a step forward, the present government might wilt and compromise under pressure of caste and communal interests.

 

Being a field of common good, it is desirable that a consensus is achieved on the broad contours of policy on higher education. A complete unanimity on policy, however, is not possible, given its integral connection with social power and economic interests. All the same, the state cannot afford to change its policy every five years when the government changes, as is the case today. Instead, it is desirable that the broad outline of policy is formulated through democratic processes.

Such an effort was attempted during the last five years with wide, ranging discussion and consultation with students, teachers, educationists, political leaders and the public to help create a climate for qualitative improvement and quantitative advancement. Yet, there is a long way to go before higher education can truly become democratic and egalitarian, on the one hand, and competitive in quality on the other. What the state has so far achieved is a fairly strong foundation: in structure, quality and access. The future task is to establish a modern system drawing upon the groundwork already created.