K Yatish Rajawat
At 484 pages, the National Education Policy 2019 (NEP) isn’t always the simplest the longest policy draft by using any authorities; it’s also repetitive, didactic, and verbose. Much of it has been overlooked by the media, besides the plan to impose Hindi as a countrywide language — which changed into later redacted. More important troubles such as college education, talent education, or higher education are not noted by the media.
This article will provide recognition greater at the proposed structural reforms in higher education. The collapse of better schooling is obvious; unfortunately, this no longer conventional by teachers or bureaucrats. Somehow educational management ignores this truth that maximum graduate and submit-graduate guides are old and fail in supplying any competencies. There is zero awareness of talents in any diploma route, even as the technical or knowledge element is already available online. Thus, incremental modifications will now not do. There is likewise a denial of this trouble. The NEP 2019 addresses the structural undertaking through bringing in a high-quality regulator — the National Higher Education Regulatory Agency (NHERA), underneath which all of the other schooling our bodies will merge.
Currently, regulatory features are dispersed throughout a couple of organizations. This has created an alphabetic soup of bodies that swim around in murky waters. Some bodies provide offers and additionally adjust (including the University Grants Commission), some deliver accreditation (including the National Assessment and Accreditation Council), and others manage technical education (along with the All India Council for Technical Education). This structure allows a loose interpretation of the guidelines and distorts techniques to growth corruption. The fact is that schooling regulatory our bodies are inflexible, corrupt, and feudal. They are the remaining vestiges of Inspector Raj. The access of market forces is frowned upon by the sector, and therefore, reforms were sluggish. A rule-based obvious regulatory machine is unnoticed by way of the incumbents.
The current machine is based totally on controlling and curbing the delivery to sell licenses to the best bidder. Inspections take a look at infrastructure, no longer results. In a meandering manner, the NEP 2019 acknowledges those problems; however, even in any such large document, there is little information on how the exceptional-regulator NHERA will function.
Some of the regulatory global learnings were that the regulator’s position ought to be to serve the purchaser (the scholars) and now not the industry. This is one of the studies from the RERA Act for the real property region, which serves the buyers of actual estate. If the NEHRA continues the students’ interest, it will be capable of mold the sector.
If it specializes in the sector, it will fail. This focus became enshrined even in stock marketplace regulator; however, due to interference by using members in rule-making and its exercise, it has now not labored for small traders, which is why there are ordinary scams and frauds market.
Regulators charge registration costs, accreditation expenses and justify it; they create methods for inspections and management. However, those techniques create avenues for corruption. The handiest way to break this systemic jinx is to make the guidelines obvious and decrease or eliminate human interventions. Interventions have to be an exception, no longer a norm. The regulations governing the schooling zone ought to additionally allow flexibility to trade with time.
The NEP 2019 talks about giving freedom and autonomy to shape curriculum and guides to keep with the organizational requirement. The one-length-fits-all mindset or the regulator is the proper technique has to alternate. The half-life of learned competencies is falling hastily; it does not make sense to outline the entirety. What needs to be described is the outcome; the organization’s position is to impart talents and understanding. It wishes to create conducive surroundings. Regulatory bodies want to accept that technical studying has moved online. What they need to teach is useful talents and publicity to a much wider phase of subjects.
While the NEP 2019 reduces the significance of functional abilities and buries it below ‘smooth abilties,’ it does cope with the want for multi-disciplinary getting to know. It has cautioned a 3-tier shape for universities. The tier-1 group can be research-led and could need to offer more than one range and disciplines. The significance of this cannot be omitted with the merger of technology and era; then, dual ranges will nearly be the norm. Globally, engineering and technological know-how institutions should add liberal arts to push the pupil for a changing global. The Indian Institutes of Management and Technologies cannot stay aloof and glued in a linear trajectory if the recommendations are popular.
Things want to alternate speedy, and the NEP-2019 addresses most of the troubles. The barrier to exchange inside the training area is academicians themselves. They need to accept the problem if these reforms need to prevail. Otherwise, numerous generations of Indians will rue their future, and India will lose a golden opportunity for the economic boom.