National Education Policy of 2019,intended to free education from shackles of bureaucratic controls, expand the private sector funding for academics and also for research and allow
greater autonomy and overseas investment for all practical purposes has ended up hurting access, equity and quality, experts from higher education community feels. Top academicians speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry's CII 4th Higher Education summit ripped the NEP in and feel that the policy instead of freeing academia has further locked them in and also is leading to greater controls by the government.
The intended purpose of the NEP was to increase access, equity and quality in the educational institutions and raise the current enrollment figures from abysmal numbers to healthy 50 plus percentage. In reality however, the policy has resulted in greater controls especially for higher education institutions and no escape from the current bureaucratic hold in admissions, fees and expansion of seats as these aspects still continue for a bulk of institutions with a few escaping after being named as candidates for graded autonomy
The promised Higher Education Commission is not going to shut down the current system of AICTE, UGC and NCTE etc., and instead would add to the bureaucratic red tape that would bind the HEIs is the general take.
The NEP was also announced before the onset of the Pandemic and the consequent near 100 per cent migration to the virtual route in education be it school education or the colleges. The NEP system of aggregation of the research grants and withdrawal of state grants to many institutions would come in the way of investing in technology in most institutions. Also the removal of the affiliation system by the universities while causing stress to many of the smaller institutions but also cause greater burden on the functioning of the Universities.
The credit bank idea of the NEP to allow greater horizontal learning flexibility to the students in the absence of clear mechanism may result in utter confusion, higher expenditure and poor quality. The accreditation system originally proposed to allow greater flexibility in assessment of quality in reality will be mired with regulatory controls with the new accreditation overseeing body proposed as part of the NEP.
NEP clearly has been introduced without adequate consultation with the stake holders the pandemic has further exacerbated the issues relating to the policy calling for a wholesale review of the policy.
Comments