The Hindu

Mangalore, Sep 30: Taking a critical view of the present higher education policy trends in the country, M.I. Savadatti Vice-Chairman of Karnataka State Higher Education Council, has expressed his reservations over indiscriminate moves to create more universities.

Delivering the Foundation Day lecture on Tuesday at the Mangalore University, where he once held the post of Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Savadatti said the focus of policies should be on improving existing universities. “More universities and more of the so called ‘institutes of excellence’ cannot give rise to better education,” he said while making a case for a qualitative improvement in the present system.

He was critical of the functioning of IITs and IIMs and said: “They admit the best and get the best results. Would the best brains be any different without these institutes,” he asked while pointing out that the average university spent only Rs. 10,000 on each student annually whereas the IITs and IIMs spent over Rs. 5 lakh on each student annually.

Although he mentioned the lack of political will to improve the university system, he placed a bulk of the responsibility for change on teachers. Quality education could not be achieved purely by hiking the salaries of teachers. “In the West, Nobel laureates work in universities for a fraction of the money that they could have earned outside,” he pointed out.

“The base of a revolution in higher education can only be formed with the personal integrity of teachers,” he said.

Addressing the large number of teachers in the gathering, he said that teaching was a “profession not a job”. He said: “we must find a way to instil better values among the teachers as well as the taught.” He said that there were far too many specialised apex bodies governing higher education such as the Medical Council of India or the Dental Council of India.