Skewed higher education policy of TS hits students

Hyderabad: Isit time for the State Higher Education department and the government to shun acting and bringing policies in silos?

If goings on are any indication, the Telangana State Higher Education (TSHE) continues to pursue a policy of higher education heavily tilted toward technological studies that began in united AP amid the IT boom. The main focus of the entire effort is on providing jobs.

Speaking to The Hans India, a former V-C and senior faculty from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, said "while such policy could have benefited short-time, it turned into an impediment to the overall development of standards in higher education. It resulted in parents and students adopting a short-sighted view of preferring only to go to either engineering or medical studies. This has been proactively encouraged by the public policy of higher education pursued by the State governments," he added.

The net results of this skewed higher education policy left even fundamental sciences unable to attract good students in BSc and MSc streams in both physical, mathematical and life science verticals. The situation in social sciences and humanities (barring English) took a back seat in the higher education policies.

Contrary to this view, Prof R Limbadri, chairman TSCHE, said, "several new subjects have been introduced in the science stream, like agriculture sciences and others at BSc and under-graduate level."

However, the delay in rolling out NEP-2020 that allows multi-disciplinary education and research universities (MERUs) and colleges, to optimum utilisation of the existing human resources and infrastructure in government-run universities and colleges under-utilised.

For example; a student of journalism at Osmania University can specialise in agriculture and food technology and nutrition, tourism sectors of journalism, provided, if the Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agriculture University (PJTSAU) or the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology, and Applied Nutrition (IHM) in Hyderabad join hands to offer add-on courses in agriculture, food technology and nutrition to provide a multi-disciplinary-enabled job matrix.

When contacted, a former V-C of a national university in Hyderabad said, "the NEP-2020 is a well thought out policy headed by academicians of experience. It is an enabler to allow students not only pursue the principal stream of their interest, but also gives enough scope to branch out to set new goals and chalk out new careers as per the demand- driven job markets."

‘It is an outdated view to encourage students only to go to IITs, because, unlike earlier, several IITs have been facing problems in placing their own students in good jobs due to rapid changes taking place.

Multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary is the way forward, points out a former VC of OU. However, who bells the cat? The State government or the State Higher Education department remains a million-dollar question.