To make India ‘Vishwaguru’, Indian institutes must think global and gear up to compete with the best for higher global index (HEI)
Global rankings of Indian Higher Education Institutions trigger discussions that propel towards critiquing the system of ranking ascribing many negative impacts that it generates. The teacher-student ratio and the potential issues with inclusivity in the Indian context and the negative implications of the inefficient teacher-student ratio on the research publications of course problematise the notion of such global-level competition. However, these should not be excuses for academicians to seek relaxation or exemption from their professional development practices.
By bringing in the idea of inclusivity, ranting and raving about the need to focus on 'local' issues rather than on the 'global' competitive market, academicians/educationists are actually misjudging the needs of their 'customers'. Further, projecting education as a noble profession that creates "organic individuals" as argued by Patnaik and Laxminarayan in their commentary is bizarre because it assumes that education is unaffected and distanced from the worldly at the very time when the education system has to prepare student consumers to meet the changing demands of the 21st century.
Going global by enabling students to be global citizens is emphasised multiple times in the National Education Policy 2020. To ensure this global citizenship, the facilitators of education at all levels must function competitively. By forging ill-framed equations between academically privileged and underprivileged students and by neglecting the faculty's responsibility in enabling every student to compete in the global scenario, such educationists defending the local are in fact ignoring student needs. The student needs are not local, and neither are the solutions, opportunities, and prospects which are now irreversibly global.
The fear of being challenged by a minority of high-performance peers, as rightly pointed out by the renowned academic Pramod K. Nayar, should not be the reason for evading the academic competition. A responsible academician must provide the students with valuable insights into the global-level challenges that they have to encounter once they walk out of the comfort zones of their HEIs. The competitive world that awaits the young graduates embodies the dictum: 'Survival of the fittest. If the educationists themselves are not fit to survive, how will they enable the students to contest and win?Addressing the student needs is a mandate of any HEI. As part of the consumerist educational structure, if students look for institutions that are high in international or national ranking and if they focus on a subject-specific shortlisting of institutions, it signifies the responsibility of individual institutions to raise their standards which in turn demands that its faculty members compete with peers both locally and globally.
It is wrong if the faculty/teacher assumes that the institutions should focus only on local-level engagements and not entertain global-level competitions in the name of ensuring inclusivity and catering to the demands of those less privileged students. Apprehensions about raising the level of academic challenge among students are pointed out as an issue. We underrate the students' abilities to cope with novelty. We must understand that the young generation is part of a knowledge revolution. Blanketing out these possibilities and giving them the impression that they need to meet only the local challenges is an incongruous notion that hinders the academic and economic progress of the young generation.
Many Indian institutions receive global-level funding. If this is not for enabling global citizenship, why should any agency fund these HEIs? There are many instances of students and academicians seeking international funding for their local-level projects. Would those preaching about the going local refuse global funding, visits, and collaborations even if such funding requires that they sell the local to the global academic marketplace like an ethnic product?
Being fearful of academic auditing, finding reasons to avoid competition with peers at local and global levels, and attributing the inefficient teacher-student ratio as the primary cause of lack of quality research and publication will not assist a nation to become a 'Vishwaguru'. In fact, it does not even augur well for ordinary gurus, if we as teachers are so scared of upskilling our game!
Rankings serve as a tool to measure the academic reputation of any institution. Healthy and meaningful academic contests can help any institute and its faculty to navigate toward excellence. Engaging only on local-level concerns and focusing only on the shortcomings of the ranking system cannot resolve any of the issues that deserve immediate attention. Rankings influence students' decisions. To pursue higher education, they rely on the benchmark set by different ranking agencies . When the Indian policy documents underline the importance of preparing every student for global-level challenges by envisaging a transformation of Indian youngsters into global citizens, the faculty should embrace the idea of challenging themselves more to strive towards eminence and excellence.
(The author is Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, at National Institute of Technology-Trichy. The views expressed are
personal)
This is second part of article on HEI rankings. Concluded.
