Fire All of Them Summarily

The Arun Nigvekar committee was constituted with a purpose. We are witness to the fact that Delhi University has failed to devise a logical way to implement the promotional scheme proposed and recommended in the sixth pay revision. Teachers of this university have been stranded without promotions for almost the last decade. When it was felt that the provisions of sixth pay recommendations with regard to promotions are primarily encouraging pseudo-research and promoting mushrooming of fake publications, the UGC decided to constitute this committee. When it was established beyond all doubts that the API-PBAS scheme is spelling disaster in the field of higher education, this committee was constituted to suggest ways to arrest the declining standards in research activities as a result of this faulty promotional scheme. When teachers began to feel that in order to secure promotions, they needed to give less importance to their teaching assignments and more to the activities that can lead to score API points, they were forced to engaged in all such activities that promised them to somehow accumulate these points. And the committee came into existence only when it became more than clear that for whatever purpose the API-PBAS system was invented, it had got completely defeated.

The Nigvekar Committee was given the assignment of addressing a specific issue but for some reasons it seems to have lost its direction and purpose completely. Instead of its report opening a debate on the new system of scoring points for promotions, teachers are now being compelled to agitate on the inexplicable increase in their workload as a result of recommendations of this very committee. While proposing the new scheme of scoring points, the Arun Nigvekar Committee appears to have attached an appendix to the document and a few explanations therein that are found to be completely unacceptable from all point of views. The increase in the workload as indicated in the UGC Gazette Notification 2016 is a prescription of disaster for the higher education. No government in its right senses can think of increasing workload almost by fifty percent! With one stroke, no government would have dared to leave almost half of the teaching strength with no choice but to come on the streets. How couldn’t they speculate the damage done by such a notification that is bound to leave teachers with nothing more to lose further? Don’t they understand that sudden loss of job for a sizable lot of teachers will be the direct result of implementation of this draconian notification?          
           Wasn’t that stupid to assume that such a massive increase of workload would not stir up the teaching community? Was that difficult to speculate the unrest that it has caused in the university system? Anyone could have predicted complete unanimity among teachers on issues of bread and butter. Who, on earth, has found the complete boycott of evaluation work as surprising? How could one assume that even after all the adhoc teachers are left with no other option but to agitate, they would keep quite? Was that sane to expect teachers to offer their neck when the gazette exposes the shining sword to axe their livelihood? Tell me who can extract any positive from this third amendment without seeing the writing on the wall?     

         I can smell a rat in this. There is something that is hidden more than what appears exposed in the open. I would refuse to reject the possibility of a game of mischief played by political players to suit their politics. Those who were trying hard to find an issue to mobilize against this government have been awarded the same with this UGC Gazette notification.In fact asking complete withdrawal of this notification would be an incomplete demand to accept even from the government’s perspective. To save the government from further such unnecessary embarrassments, they must investigate how it came to this stage in the first place. There is no alternative – instead of firing half of the teaching community – they must fix up responsibility of this obvious and unpardonable lapse immediately and fire all of them summarily.

Common course contents - its desirability in higher education

This article was published in the August 7, 2015 issue of the Millennium post  http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=144348 )
Uniformity and diversity are not synonyms to black and white. Talking of uniformity can't be always considered as wrong in any absolute sense. Whereas a desirability to enforce uniforms for school-students is well accepted, similar enforcement in colleges is also considered as avoidable. Recently a move of UGC to enforce a common syllabus in the entire country has generated intense discussions in academics. Traditionally, higher education in India has been following a trend of denouncing any such proposals. One of the prime argument offered in its favour is that nowhere in the world, where institutions are known for their excellence, such uniformity has been imposed. Ironically, while carrying out these comparisons, these arguments conveniently choose to ignore the glaring inequalities between the performances of those institutions with ours. It is no secret that our education sector currently needs to expand its age-old narrow and pure-academic outlook to include many other important and extremely useful aspects of modern education. In addition to this it is also advisable to never overlook the enormity of the exercise that we need to carry out in India in terms of numbers. One also must not forget that nowhere else, countries have been working with these many number of potential students and relatively fewer institutions. In my view, in the context of India, the absence of a common structure and syllabus has been encouraging anarchy and chaos in the mass education sector instead of providing any glimpse of excellence.

                In the name of autonomy, inexplicable and most often undesirable sense of diversity has been encouraged in the higher education. Identical degrees issued by two universities of this country can't ensure anyone that there syllabus would also have some level of commonality. It is strange also because the 'eligibility' to become a teacher in an institution gets decided not by the course contents covered by the applicants but only by the nomenclature of their degrees. I fail to understand that why can't we ensure that if the name of the degrees are identical then at least sixty-seventy percent of the course contents will also be same. On the other hand, if two course-contents do not have sixty-seventy percent common then why shouldn't they be identified by two different names. Further, it is also an undeniable fact that in the name of autonomy and diversity, some institutions are known to have taken its advantage in introducing some anti-national and anti-society studies in some typically designed courses. Is it not a fact that a common test called NET has successfully worked to an acceptable extent in ensuring a minimum standard of the quality of teachers.

                When one has a task of regulating the academic standards of more than many institutions, common structure always helps in fixing a hard lower bound on the academic standards of the educational institutions. In the absence of such a common structure it often becomes impossible to stop the falling standards of a deteriorating institution. Enforcing a common structure and course helps in carrying all the institutions along and also helps in putting brakes on their downslide. An autonomous institution, showing signs of failure, is undeniably designed for a free fall in such a scenario. Autonomy is undoubtedly beneficial but only for those who are showing signs of improvement since a uniform structure would ultimately limit their rise. In a typical Delhi University scenario, we all would agree that if all the colleges of this prestigious University are made autonomous, more than many would fail to survive beyond a decade. We argue therefore in favour of having a common course, a common degree, a common structure for all the colleges of Delhi University to stop those institutions from getting exposed. I also believe that some of the very good performing colleges of Delhi University is well poised to give an incredible show if they are allowed to become autonomous. But it must not be favoured only because the autonomy of these few would force more than many other institutions of the University to follow a downslide. Since we are aiming at mass education, we must not think of doing that too. IITs and IIMs have better performing institutions and therefore any move to implement a common syllabus over there would limit their rise. On a deeper analysis, since the tags of 'IIT' and 'IIM' have recently been extended to additional institutions, this fact may add a new dimension into this discussion as even these entities are now being dragged into mass education. Let us not ignore the glaring fact that a common syllabus of CBSE has helped in maintaining a nationwide minimum standard in the school education sector.

                So the strategy of the regulatory authorities is crucial in these circumstances. They should be able to assess the timing when to provide greater autonomy to an institution. But all those central and state universities who are serving for mass education must be asked to adhere to some level of commonality in the course structure and contents to ensure a minimum standard in education.

LET THE SENSE PREVAIL

When all the University will have similar syllabus and courses then why on earth there will be a need for the seamless movement of the students from one institution to another? Having provision for such a movement is therefore simply erroneous and stupid. I would only conclude that the credit-scheme that are being lauded as a feature that will facilitate movements across the institutions are not meant for this at all but it is only to allow students to give extended time to accumulate credits to qualify for a degree. It seems, it is meant only to help failing students to complete the requirement for the degree at their own convenience, pace and duration. If it means that Universities should have a liberal policy towards the concept of strict 'span periods', I would gladly advocate in favour of this.

Secondly, even if the question of desirability is set aside for a while, all those features that are being sought to be introduced in the higher education through CBCS, I can challenge, will work in a far more meaningful manner if the format is kept annual in the context of Delhi University where there are more than handful colleges running such courses. Isn't it stupid to allow students to hop in and out from any course twice in a year and five times in a three year-course?

And lastly, apart from 'suggesting' model syllabus and model courses at a centralized web-site, UGC can also provide an exhaustive list of all the courses being run in this country along with their detailed syllabus. Our education is already a victim of forced teaching - parents expect the teachers to forcibly teach students, students themselves chose courses that are forced by their peers and societal pressures and these are often get decided by the marks only, that they eventually achieve in their qualifying exams. 

When there is an urgent need for this country to switch on to interest-driven mode of study, these forced strategies are going to yield undesirable results that will never help India to become a developed nation. It's time that we remove all hurdles of age and financial requirements for all those who are really interested in learning specific skills, a particular subject or show interest to become independent professionals.

Education reforms - Kitchenette vs Cafeteria approach

(The edited version of this was also published in the Organiser that can be visited using the following link
http://organiser.org//Encyc/2015/5/2/Column---Yielding-New-Education-Approach.aspx)

The Cafeteria approach

The academic reforms in the name of CBCS is on the verge of being implemented in the higher education. The new system as proposed by the government will basically need us to review our old single-discipline oriented approach in higher education. It demands, what they call, a cafeteria approach in our education. What is meant thereby is that the new system would encourage a multi-disciplinary approach and it is claimed further that it would give the students the much desired flexibility in terms of choice of the discipline papers. In addition to this, it also boasts of leaving the issues of choosing the span period and the place to acquire education, entirely on the students. While nobody can deny the desirability of these features in our higher education but the feasibility, the state of preparedness of our institutions and other costs in terms of infrastructure and other resources to provide these choices have always remained in doubt. 

Assessment of The Present system

Our present education system follows a strict strait-jacket approach. It has little scope for any flexibility in the choice of papers. The span period to complete a course is also predefined in our institutions that gives very little scope to those who prefer to learn at their own speed. It is due to this that generally Indian students go through a forced-study approach - wherein choices are often forced by the parents, by the peers, by the teachers and many a times even forced by the ease with which marks can be scored therein. The studies here therefore are largely teacher-centric, parent-driven and forced by the societal-preferences. Some major aspects that need to be addressed immediately by any new system are given as under:

1) We need to do away with the concept of having a fixed time frame for acquiring degrees. Those who realise their passion, potential and interest a little late find the doors of learning options closed. Despite our general agreement with the common perception that an interested and motivated student learns much faster, restrictions still rule against this provision in India.

2) In the absence of even a quasi-uniform acceptable standard of a particular degree in this country, it becomes really impossible to compare identical degrees issued from different institutions of India. What adds to this problem is that students find it impossible to use a part of their studies at one place while continuing studies at another place. 

3) We are so used to relate studies only with academics that any deviation from this is considered as a blow on our education system. The higher studies in India aims at producing only academics. Skill-learning are considered sub-standard and are never preferred over academics. There is an urgent need to break this hierarchy and treat academics as only one of the areas for the students to choose from.

4) We need to look at our examination system also urgently. The invention of electronic gadgets have exposed many holes in our university examination system. Moreover our examinations work as a dampener for the spirit of learning. Understanding becomes a casualty in our examinations. Knowing well that we can only group students under a handful of categories such as (extraordinary, good, above-average, average, below average, poor and worthless) our system make them waste their useful energy, time and ideas to get exhausted in a process of rote-learning just to acquire a rank within a category. 

Past Experience

We must also learn from the failed attempt to implement FYUP ( Four Year Undergraduate Program ) in Delhi University. The tall claims could not be realised as the reforms were carried out in isolation and with inexplicable hurry. An apprehensive Delhi University now has developed an attitude that is hardly conducive to carry out a fresh round of reforms. The lesson must be learnt from this failed exercise that whenever such a change in the system is proposed, its implementation must precede with a series of refresher courses to prepare the teachers and the infrastructure according to the requirement. Although there is an urgent need to attempt reforms, instead of a piece-meal approach we must keep a holistic vision starting right from the primary education. The whole idea of forced-study in India needs to change towards encouraging a self-study attitude in higher education. Primary and secondary education curricula should also be developed so that they complement the student-centric approach in the higher education. However, Keeping in view our own state of affairs, I would suggest that instead of the celebrated cafeteria approach we must explore a kitchenette approach. 

Cafeteria and the Kitchenette approach

The cafeteria approach symbolizes a student-centric approach but at the same time it often means a pocket-centric and in the Indian context a parent-unfriendly approach. The choices in a cafeteria come at a price and playing around with the choices such as even sharing a plate is often discouraged in a cafeteria approach. It also includes paying penalty for any cancelled order and therefore in an honest analysis this cafeteria approach turns out to be primarily a market-friendly approach at all costs.

Instead, India needs a kitchenette approach wherein the government can play a role of provider and the users will have all the options available before them. Depending on their choice they would not only be able to prepare items of their choices but they would additionally be encouraged to explore into the unexplored territories. With raw materials available to them, users of a kitchenette are provided with options that are  not limited by the pocket but only by the availability of food items.

To indulge into this, the government will have to explore ways to provide learning materials free on the internet sites in the form of lecture series of interactive and non-interactive variety, demonstration of experimental procedures, generous discussion on cutting edge technologies, providing scope for developing useful industrial ideas and other job-providing skills. We must create an environment where at least those who have realized their potential or interest are not deprived of an opportunity to acquire the relevant knowledge. The most regressive attitude is that we often relate age of a student with her ability to acquire knowledge. A person who realises that he should have chosen medicine as a field of choice in his late 40s finds his/her dream inexplicably unrealizable. Now that will be an injustice in a kitchenette approach. Whenever one realizes hunger, there must be a scope of preparing food making use of the available items in the kitchenette along with things available with her. Let us think of setting the students free to accumulate credits and once someone successfully acquires the required credits let an appropriate degree be given without any other unnecessary requirements. Let the working experience also provide some credit to a student in this system. Let an electrician start with some credit already in her kitty while attempting a degree in science/technology. Let an electronics equipment-repairing professional, a worker with an experience in building brick/steel/concrete structures, a plumber or a mechanic start with some advantage if they decide to study for a relevant degree. Let a nurse or a person having experience in pathology start with some advantage on the others aspiring to become a doctor. Let skills be treated at par with academics so that the preference for academics is not unjustifiably driven by an expectation for getting respect in our society. Let only the passion and interest rule the choice in this kitchenette approach as while preparing food only taste and quality governs our choice and not the cost of the food items involved.

Even though CBCS is being claimed to have been addressing some of the concerns discussed above, a cautious approach allowing wider consultation and discussions will only help in realizing its aims better.

Let us carry out the Change

It is never wise to reject a system without reasons. We had arguments against the semester system to arrive at a unanimous decision of opposing the same. We had reasoned out the absurdities in the FYUP. Our stands in these cases were never blind and were always based on their detailed analysis. We therefore, must spare ourselves from becoming slaves of our final decisions. Our opposition for FYUP or the CBCS were not because of their nomenclature but because of the objectives behind them. Now, an effort is being made to pull us all into the trap of opposing every change in the name of our well-meaning decisions of opposing these formulations. It often reminds me of the laughable stand of the university wherein they have resorted to notify all kinds of teachers' strikes as illegal not because of the issues at hand but by citing a court order that is arguably quoted completely 'out of context'. Let us remind ourselves that even our existing migration schemes are nothing but our own method of transferring credits from one college to the other. We were also never opposed to another credit transfer scheme wherein we were absolutely comfortable in transferring our Honours students to the respective program courses when they used to get less than a threshold marks. Whereas the DTF has a history of taking an ideological stand irrespective of the stand of DUTA, recently the DU authorities helped them in creating a space and environment wherein all of us were pushed to appear on their side. What helped them was the idiocy with which FYUP was formulated and implemented as these did not confine to the format alone but spilled over even to the contents and the syllabus. Whereas we all can feel the relevance and usefulness of even the foundation courses that have been designed in other institutes such as IISc (Bangalore), in DU they were reduced to jokes because of their compulsory nature, the unreasonable weightage attached with these courses, the standard of the contents and above all the state of unpreparedness with which these were launched. The DU authorities were further exposed defenceless as all these experiments were being carried out in an isolated manner ONLY in this university – thereby defeating the very purpose for which it was championing. The fact that these changes were being implemented without affecting the desired changes in the approach of school-teaching further established beyond doubts that the experiments were badly designed, were ill-thought and hurriedly approached.

Even if we decide to leave all the above arguments aside, does it not make sense in having broad centralized guideline to help different universities to come some kind of an even-level wherein assessment of students from different universities would not remain as difficult as it is now. Just as we have a CBSE syllabus to guide all other boards to keep up with the pace, relevance and some sense of uniformity, is it not time to discuss the same in the area of higher education too? Just as we all were unanimous in opposing the experiments that were carried out in our university it is also a fact that we all are not happy with state of education in this country.

Let us not run away from discussions as there is no other known way to arrive at a consensus. CBCS or a modified FYUP – what would ensure a better performance of any new system of education is our involvement and preparedness that will eventually help us in developing the necessary confidence and conviction – to make any new system deliver.

Indian Education - a fresh approach

The present education system – an assessment

The present Indian education is designed to produce persons with

• Good mathematical skills.
• Good instruction-following capacities.
• Average analytical skills.
• Not so inspiring writing abilities.
• Poor reading habits.
• Hopeless self learning attitudes.
• Poor citizen habits.
• Missing national pride.
• Individualistic outlook.
• Missing concern for the society.
• Flawed attitude towards opposite sex.
• No idea of the law of land.
• No idea of financial discipline.

The system is apparently fighting to survive the pressure of dealing with unmanageable number of candidates right from the beginning. Our education system has become an instrument primarily to provide some mechanical way to shortlist candidates. To select candidates for any avenue, students are therefore judged more on their reproducing abilities and less on their understanding capabilities. Interest in a discipline and passion towards a skill are often sacrificed and the candidates are expected to discover and even generate these qualities within themselves after they get selected.

This has forced our education system to get built up apparently on a flawed premise that an academician or a researcher is suited best for any kind of profession. With this basic premise our education attempts to produce only academicians. And only during this process students keep on shifting to other avenues at some stage or the other out of frustration from the mainstream education to learn skills that are required to earn a living.

Examination side-effects

The education system has got evolved in such a manner that understanding a problem, innovative thinking and failed attempts go hopelessly unevaluated and hence get discouraged in the present system. On the other hand, mere having Information about solutions or an attitude for mindlessly following a beaten path and only successful attempts most often get rewarded in the present system.

That one will be able to get a profession of one's own interest depends completely on the reproducing ability of a person. And the system thus encourages students to fool others through rote-learning. Only rote learners are sure of getting 'success' in this system. In our society, 'Success' is a name given to the event of getting into your choice of profession. Ironically in our country it is another bitter truth that the 'choice' is always guided by the expected financial returns from the profession and not driven by any passion for that profession.

Our education system fails to realize that if someone has understood a topic/concept then that never means that the same person will also be able to reproduce the same. To be able to reproduce the same one needs to waste valuable time in revisiting the same again and again. Unfortunately even those who have not understood can reproduce the same through rote learning. Too much importance on examination-results forces even innovative thinkers and visionaries to waste their time in preparing them for useless reproduction.

Misplaced sense of achievement

Another serious fall out of the present system is that a degree is invariably mistaken as an ultimate achievement and a final license to get (not earn) money. To get into a system that would fetch them a 'financially relevant and socially respectable' job, students often get exhausted while handling the cut-throat competitions and consider their job as already over once they get placed in a desired environment. They then expect the government to start paying him/her for this 'false' sense of achievement.

Our society has an enviable (unreasonably skewed) liking for only a few types of professions. These professions come with a deadly combination of high returns with astonishingly lesser challenges. Beginning from the colonial era these jobs have continued to evolve as offering more and more of these attractive features. People find those select jobs so glamorous and paying that the entire society runs after only those selected few professions. We acquire degrees and percentages only to get hold of one of these jobs. However the anti-climax is that we consider acquiring degrees as the end of the purpose to get education and a government officer's job ('corruption' renders the returns entirely de-linked from any pressure to perform) epitomizes the sense of getting rewarded in return of education.

The main problem of our education system is therefore that our society considers only a handful of the 'jobs' as 'financially relevant and socially respectable' options. This is exactly the reason that our society looks up to getting a job only as a doctor, engineer, manager, officer, administrator, academicians. There is an urgent need to expand this base. Jobs associated with several other kinds of skills should also be made financially relevant and hence socially respectable. In our society the difference between the social status of a pathological technicians, a nurse and a doctor is unreasonably enormous; difference between a construction worker, a labor contractor, a junior engineer and an engineer is unreasonably huge; difference between a car mechanic, a technician and an automobile engineer is too large to be justified; difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer is completely unjustified; difference between a University professor and a school teacher is not understandable; difference between the status of a plumber and a civil engineer is outrageously huge; difference between a hotel waiter and a hotel manager is inexplicably large. This brazen attitude stems from our age-old disrespect towards dignity of work. It is true that this change is not easy to affect but the absence of effort in this direction has already magnified the problem to an extent that an avoidable 'reservation race' has found its relevance in the system.

The way ahead

Let us try to move inch by inch towards a state wherein financial considerations will take a back seat in favor of an inherent interest in a profession. When a student can take up a profession out of his own personal interest in the same and not because the skill can provide an unreasonably better financial status and a respectable lifestyle – then only we will be somewhere near to our destination.

As long as these differences would stay in our society the mad rush to get into those few professions would continue. And as long as the rush would continue the method of examination to shortlist the unmanageably long list of candidates in a blind and mechanical manner will find no alternative. And as long as this examination system will exist no innovation can be nurtured or encouraged in this process.

Education should aim at producing persons with

• Good reading, writing, analyzing and debating abilities.
• Necessary sensibilities.
• Some job fetching skills/attitudes.
• Attitude of a self-learner.
• Concern towards society.
• Knowledge of law of the land.
• Temperament of observing rules.
• Courage to point out deficiency and injustice.
• Having national pride.
• Vision of an innovator.

Conclusion

Education means development and it must be provided to all without exception.

Primary education should aim primarily on building values and personality development,

Secondary education should be utilized to help students identify their interest/inclination and

Higher education should be aimed at building those skills.

To achieve this we need to dump two avoidable misconceptions that obstruct our march towards achieving this:

• We must be realistic and never think of de-linking Higher education from jobs/profession.
• And secondly, we also must stop daydreaming that the government will be able to provide Higher education to all without the help of private investment.

The government should focus on framing policies to encourage private players to help in enlarging the set of 'financially relevant and socially respected' professions by modernizing more and more job-providing avenues/skills.

Scope and Hope

The numbers are so large that there is no other way but to depend heavily on internet-based education. Uploading of skill-training demonstrations by real professionals should be encouraged and must be given utmost priority. Computers and automation by machines should be encouraged in those skills that are hitherto not financially paying to make them financially attractive. Use of automatic machines in furniture industries, washing and cleaning industries, repairing industries, construction industries and waste-management industries can do wonders in making them of some financial worth. Use of computerized approach in hair-designing, jewellery designing and fashion designing can make them attractive too. Besides these, imparting the attitude required on the issues of Sexual Harassment, Gender sensitization, Driving rules, Anti-drug laws, developing a balanced understanding on the other sex, issues of national pride, national concerns on population, poverty and environment should also find desired attention in the nursery and primary education curricula.

Biopsy of FYUP

(This article was also published in Governance Now at http://governancenow.com/news/blogs/biopsy-fyup )

Justification for Change

I am fortunate to have witnessed Dr. Dinesh Singh twice justifying the FYUP course, especially defending the introduction of Foundation Course papers and on that I would honestly submit one observation that out of the whole army of defenders that he has, only he could score some positive points on this account. I saw him not only offering reasons for having such a course and papers but also unlike the other marshals of his army, I witnessed him owning an honest desire to introduce these courses. He clearly exhibited a firm belief and confidence in the positive result of this experiment that is currently being undertaken in Delhi University.

I have maintained from the beginning that this time the changes are not merely cosmetic in nature as it was done during the semesterisation when it was only a shift from annual to a bi-annual examination system. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that even Prof. Dinesh Singh shows no inhibitions in admitting this and on both the occasions expressed his no nonsense intent to change the way the college education is looked upon in India. My primary worry that the new course would shift the focus of the students away from research and academics met with equally candid admission from him that it was indeed the aim with which the course was primarily designed for. Further, on both the occasions when I listened to the Vice-chancellor I never noticed him feeling even slightly apologetic about the shift of focus that this vision threatens to bring about in the Indian college education system. Now I am clear that the purpose of the FYUP is indeed not to make the students oriented 'only' towards research or academics. Initially I felt as one can make him see reasons for going back to our earlier approach till he offered a winning argument in favour of this shift by pointing out that only on an average a maximum of 5-10 % of the undergraduate students happen to choose academics or research as their career whereas our traditional education focuses completely on them only. Our education system, that probably serves the interests of this minority successfully, fails miserably in carrying the expectations of rest 90% of the students. Honestly, I see a level of transparency in his arguments that is often missing in the reasoning offered by the other defenders of FYUP.

Foundation of foundation courses

Even while I am feeling agitated on being left out on not being given an opportunity to express myself on the decision of affecting this change in attitude towards the very purpose of our undergraduate studies earlier but at the same time I am also ready to accept any excuse because of the limitation that we also are likely to face while attempting to consult each stakeholder for opinion. For this reason, let me postpone the discussion on the need for this change for the moment and try to investigate whether the course has been designed properly or not for what it has now been aimed at in the first place. Even if I completely agree with his entire contention, the agreement turns into apprehension as I try to analyze and understand how the new FYUP is going to serve the interest of those who do not choose research or academics as their career. His claim that the Foundation Courses would make these students 'employable' is what needs cautious analysis. In both of his addresses he mentioned that a company had came to DU looking to employ the undergraduate students, interviewed around 1100 students but found only three as employable. Now this is a thoroughly incomplete data for me to make out any meaningful inference out of this unless it is shared with us that what all quality/skills were they looking for in the students. Although there is a high probability that the employers were not looking for academicians or researchers in the case in question but just to proceed logically I will assume that the employers who interviewed the students were looking to employ the undergraduates in areas including academics/research.

Even in the absence of the accurate data we can begin the discussion as follows:

In any interview of a general nature, who all can be considered as employable?

Of course the one who is likely to leave an impression in the interaction?

Now how can a candidate impress a selection committee? I would place the following (almost exhaustive) qualities that normally impresses an interviewer.

1. Communication skills (oral and written)

2. General awareness quotient

3. How comfortable is the candidate while using modern electronic tools (handling different kinds of computers/printers, PPT, email, SMS, social networking etc)

4. Ability to think out of box (innovative thinking)

5. Ability to work in a group

6. Ability to lead a group

7. Inclination to do hardwork

8. Knows the importance of observing deadlines

9. Ready to learn new skills as and when required

10. Specific knowledge of the area in which a particular company deals in.

If we look at the points listed above it would be clear that our traditional approach of undergraduate teaching indeed aims at improving mostly only last of these skills. Communication skills that can impress almost anybody on earth is ironically never given the adequate attention in our studies. Here I must state that modern day private schools do give attention to this aspect of personality development and it is true that they stand a fair chance to impress any interviewer. Even if one ignores the last quality listed above, the other qualities make a student smart enough to impress anyone who would interact with them to consider an entry-level employment. Those who have access to modern equipments such as computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, internet usages and vehicle driving would find to have developed a confidence that can help in impressing any interviewer. In today's world if a candidate admits that he does not have an email account then he is most likely to score negatively in any interaction irrespective at the qualities that were being looked at. A candidate who knows how to handle bank affairs, how to deal with government departments, has a fair idea of our legal system and has a basic knowledge of government rules and regulations regarding our tax and civil liabilities and and is aware of our environmental concerns and policies is bound to impress any prospective employer. One who has some basic knowledge of Indian and world history, national and international politics would also stand a fair chance of impressing anyone. Basic understanding of data analysis and interpretation of graphs is also a must for leaving a noticeable impression on the interviewers.

It must also be understood that if last of the above points is ignored then all the other qualities that are listed above and are probably the target of foundation courses can make students employable only for an entry-level employments. On the other hand, even for those who wish to continue in the area of academics and research must also have all the attributes besides the last two to excel in their fields. Further, anyone seeking a mid-level or a high-level entry employment will have to supplement the qualities listed as point numbers 1 to 8 necessarily with the last two qualities listed above.

I believe that all these qualities including some aspect of character building can be best taken up during their school days itself but even at that stage we would be able to cover the above-mentioned aspects of personality development only by offering courses such as those listed below.

1. Basic laws of our land: Dealing with driving and accidents, marriage acts, civil rights and behaviour, women rights and environmental concerns etc.
2. Disaster management concerns.
3. Basic financial awareness: Working of banks, Share markets, investment and insurance products.
4. Basic economy: Indian and international economy, share market and investment strategies, inflation and interest rates.
5. Geography: Basic understanding of Indian and international geographical maps.
6. Political Science: Basic knowledge of Indian constitution and international politics.
7. History : Basic knowledge of Indian history and international awareness.
8. Travel and tourism ideas: Booking and managing individual and group travels for adventure, fun and pilgrim

Foundation Courses seems to me as attempting to cover some of these aspects. Some essential aspects that are listed above have been left out whereas some aspects are given undue attention according to my personal assessment.

Impact assessment and suggestions

I have a first hand experience of teaching Foundation Course papers. I have taught History of Science (formulated for blind students), Information Technology and the Science and Life papers partially. What I can say for sure is that within the limitation of classroom teaching these papers do have certain features to encourage certain essential qualities in the students. But as teachers like us are not trained for these interactions there is a fair chance that teachers would become hurdles in their effort since we are always tempted to teach them the way we know the best and are eventually trained at. I have often found during the interaction with students for Foundation Courses that the students were contributing more in enhancing my own vision on several issues many a times while I could contribute only occasionally and always felt that I could have been better replaced by an internet search engine. On the other hand, the aspects that one intends to cover in a classroom of Foundation Courses can well be embedded into the teaching methods that we adopt even for discipline courses.

As it must be understood that the idea behind introduction of these courses is not to make the learners as experts in these fields but is only intended to make them aware on these issues. It is for this reason because of which I am pretty convinced that it is late to introduce all these subjects at the time of under-graduation. We should have a national policy to include these aspects of studies in the schooldays and if at the undergraduate level students are to be encouraged to learn these aspects then they can best learn these outside their classroom hours. It can be easily found out that a private school pass outs generally would score very heavily on many of these aspects and only students from conservative/semi-rural/rural background poses a real challenge before us. Fortunately key to these kind of personality development techniques lie in the method that should be adopted for teaching these papers. I agree completely with Prof. Dinesh Singh who has repeated himself so many times while submitting that classroom teaching that is mostly unidirectional will never serve the purpose that is required for Foundation Courses. Hence the students must be given liberty of developing these qualities themselves by engaging themselves in some or the other group activities. The college can at best facilitate the process of providing them a suitable environment and leave them on their own to develop these qualities. I would prefer that they are asked to choose four such papers as listed above (one in each of the initial four semesters) excluding the papers that is related to their own area of specialization (honours) but they should be encouraged to consult internet to study these papers. Supplementary materials can be provided on our University website. Students should be encouraged to acquire knowledge on their own for these papers. Online multiple-choice tests can be made available during semester and students should be asked to attempt these wherein they can be assigned the best score out of their two to three allowed attempts.

In addition to this, each student can be asked to choose a single project for the entire duration of two years with a chosen group of 8-10 students preferably from different backgrounds and a teacher (or teachers) should be made available to them for consultation who would ensure that their single project helps them in improving the following skills for sure:

1. Writing skills.
2. Collection of some data from field or from the internet sources.
3. Analysis (tabular and graphical representation and comparison)
4. Conclusion and further ideas for improvement in the approach/analysis.
5. Creation of a working model, wherever possible.
6. PPT presentation before an audience (students and teachers).

This way all the aspects of 'employability' would get covered with a single project without compromising on the development of their specific (honours) skill. Some of these aspects of their personality development can be taken care of during their regular teaching of discipline papers itself. One can think of embedding these aspects into the discipline courses by encouraging the students to give presentation and by involving them in group discussions.

Conclusion

I must admit that unlike during semesterisation this time I tried to engage myself during the syllabus writing but I found that with reduced number of papers and periods for discipline courses we were just helpless in giving adequate attention to different aspect of physics teaching. Just to point out our helplessness I can state here that the computer programming and numerical analysis for which around 11 periods per week for two semesters were being devoted earlier we could now provide only three periods per week for two semesters wherein we have added even micro-controllers into the curriculum. According to the modern requirements we are justified in introducing the micro-controllers but we were helpless in providing the adequate periods for the same.

I would conclude my discussion with a reverse analysis of the data that was cited by our Vice Chancellor. If despite all the attention that we give to the academics and research we are able to motivate only a miniscule component (a maximum of 5-10%) of students towards these areas then what would happen if these aspects are compromised beyond a threshold. Unfortunately, the present FYUP structure is biased heavily in favour of the Foundation Courses. This posses a real danger of disorienting students away from academics and research and a developing country like India can never afford to do this. We must include aspects that were missing in our education but we can not afford to do this by compromising on our strong points. We should never let those students down who join the college to take up academics and research as their career of choice. There is a clear case to look for a wide scale review of this course. I would end this with my last remark that Foundation Courses can at best serve as supplementary courses at the undergraduate level and any effort to make it as the backbone of the course (that is how I will sum up the entire FYUP exercise) will produce students who would find themselves as not ready for any mid-level or high-level employment.