India’s Affiliation System Crisis

Context 

The university affiliation system in India—a colonial legacy where a central university affiliates hundreds of colleges, dictating their curriculum, exams, and administration—is facing a crisis of relevance.

Archaic Academic Rigidity and Stagnation

The affiliating system subjects hundreds of colleges to a one-size-fitted curriculum, irrespective of the place, type of student population served, and particular areas of pedagogical strength.

• Innovation Deficit: Colleges are not able to revise their curriculum to match industry requirements leading to low rate of employability among the graduates.
• Emphasize on Rote Learning: Since the central university organizes the examinations, the teaching process is centered on rote learning in order to pass examinations as opposed to the practical skills or critical thinking.
• Resistance to Change: Woven through. Any curricular reform is faced with opposition by affiliated colleges resulting in universities having to uphold a common, usually old-fashioned, minimal curriculum.

Systemic Inefficiencies and Administrative Burdens

Big affiliating universities (with more than 500 colleges like in Pune or Mumbai) have too much administration and examination work, and thus, their original roles have been watered down.

• Management Crisis in Examination: Management of large numbers of students in examinations leads to a lack of promptness in results and wastage of administration.
• Lack of research attention: Since the university administration is too busy with the administration issues, there is practically no attention given to research and academic mentoring.
• Necessary Renewal Process: The yearly renewal of affiliation is in most cases a cumbersome affair which is very corruptive and whereby colleges that are ill equipped are permitted to exist under a reputed brand name.

Lack of Quality Monitoring and Accountability

The sheer scale of the affiliation system makes quality control impossible.

• Watering Down of Quality: Universities are not able to oversee the teaching learning process in hundreds of affiliated colleges, which result to low quality of faculty and physical resources.
• Corruption in Affiliation: The Affiliations are usually obtained on political pressure or even through financial gain without necessarily going through a stringent evaluation of education standards.
• Poor Supervision: The monitoring departments lack responsibility and the procedures of inspection are usually formal, which does not guarantee high academic standards.

Need for Reform: The Way Forward

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has identified these shortcomings as well as suggested a 15-year programme to phased-out the affiliation system in favour of a system of “Grades Autonomy”.

• Empowerment of Colleges: Colleges that perform well should be accorded total freedom whereby they are able to develop their own curriculum, as well as giving their own tests.
• Mentorship Model: Established universities must shift the paradigm that they are an administrative head of the establishment to assuming a mentorship role to support associated colleges attain minimum standards and be self-sufficient.
• Cluster Universities: Small, local colleges can also be organized in cluster universities to promote collaboration and better sharing of resources.

Conclusion

The affiliation system in the university is no longer useful. India needs to shift to an autonomous, flexible, and decentralized system to compete with the rest of the world and offer high-quality and industry-relevant education. Higher education should have a future of empowerment, and not of chains to an old bureaucratic framework.

Source: The Hindu

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