The_Academic_Performance_Indicators_Regime_and_Its_Follies.pdf COMMENTARY this and there are very few alternatives The Academic Performance The Academic Performance to foster the qualitative and contextual aspects of learning and research. Indicators Regime and Its Follies In the past, societies have fostered cultural and intellectual creativity by promoting both institutional norms and V Sujatha non-institutional channels as part of an The University Grants Commission does not seem to view higher education and research as having anything to do with the culture of intellectual activity. Rather it looks at research as a matter of regulation, monitoring and measurement of academic "output". This refl ects in the UGC's policy to evolve universal and homogeneous evaluation indices for academic performance where productivity is mistaken for creativity. V Sujatha (vsujatha...@gmail.com) teaches Sociology in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and is the Coordinator of the Global Studies Programme at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems. Economic & Political Weekly EPW
JA NUA RY 31, 2015 D D uring a recent visit to one college in the interior part of central India for a conference, I was sur prised to see a state-of-the-art podium with built-in audio and video players. The mikes functioned perfectly without the usual screeching and interruption. Development has reached every nook and corner of the country, it seemed. But the materiality of technology is mislead ing; it had nothing to do with the content of the presentations, nor did it generate any discussion in the sessions that followed. College teachers had sophisticated mobile phones in which they stored their notes. Proceedings of a previous conference in a CD containing 150 articles were released. With no title, but only an ISBN number, the CD cover said "double blind peer reviewed carry ing 7.5 API (Academic Performance Indi cators) marks". The contributors to the proceedings were discussing the money they paid to get their paper into the col lection which was never reviewed; the collection was put together haphazardly and several papers did not make sense. Measuring Academic Performance The point is technological infrastructure is a necessary, but not a suffi cient condition for strengthening academic performance, if we do not have a way to cultivate human abilities along with technological provisions. Measuring academic performance through quantitative measures of output cannot ensure that the output is of good quality unless we have a social mechanism like the formation of academic community and peer influence to motivate people to conduct serious research. Equating material infrastructure and sheer output with academic excellence is not good for any science, definitely not for the social sciences. Unfortunately, the apex government organisation in charge of higher education, the University Grants Commission (UGC), seems content doing vol l no 5 atmosphere for learning. But the UGC does not seem to view higher education and research as having anything to do with the culture of intellectual activity. Rather it looks at research as a matter of regulation, monitoring and measurement of academic "output". A "statist" approach as I would call it, the UGC's policy seeks to evolve universal and homogeneous interventions to all "problems" including qua lity of intellectual output. There is little thought about the conditions of intellectual work and creativity while talking about academic performance and often productivity is mistaken for creativity. Language Issues One of the key problems of the API system of measuring academic performance in the university system is that it treats capabilities in social science and natural science research as the same. Social sciences rely more on language skills than the natural sciences; they require far more reading ability as part of training and research and the felicity with language to bring out observed complexities of social life. The large majority of books used are in English. Moreover, reading social science books and writing academic articles in English requires much more than a basic knowledge of English. This has been a persistent issue since the beginning, but has been compounded by the recent expansion of higher education in the social sciences outside the higher echelons of society. There is little or no translation of social science writings in most regional languages; there is very little even in Hindi, which is the national language. South Indian students from upwardly mobile communities resolve the language problem by either avoiding the social sciences altogether in favour of vocational or professional courses or, adopt the survey method and bring out statistical results that could be discussed COMMENTARY with limited linguistic skills in English. But this may not be adequate for disciplines like social anthropology and sociology and the enrolments for philosophy and literature are dwindling. This is not a good sign because a narrow growth- centred education system, where social sciences are reduced to surveys evaluating government projects, will completely undermine the civilisational future of this country. Understanding social life from academic social science requires some degree of conditioning and intellectual socialisation into the historical experience of different civilisations. This is different from the kind of conditioning and intellectual socialisation required for the physical and natural sciences, whose dependence on language is not so fundamental. Several generations of social science professors in India have addressed the gulf ingeniously by using classroom teaching as an "epistemological bridge" between the world that the student is familiar with and the world that the social science books represent. Teachers also often explain several arguments in the regional language. But these things are not written up for publication and so there is little available by way of social science books and articles in the regional languages, except probably in Malayalam and Bengali. Further the UGC API assigns least scores for publication in regional languages and does not consider translation as a valid academic activity for the social sciences. This is a big disincentive for bilingual or trilingual writers in social sciences to write in languages other than English as they used to do in the early 20th century. History of ideas shows that the quality of social science research is deeply linked to the social thought of a region, namely, the literary, cultural and political debates outside the university. There are vibrant debates in literary and cultural circles in languages like Tamil, Marathi and other languages which deal insightfully with the subject matter of the social sciences, but academic social science departments in the university mostly keep themselves aloof from these initiatives. Where the curriculum and teaching is able to establish the link between the social thought and social science, we have pockets of creativity. Students with weak knowledge of English also do exceedingly well, while working upon materials in their language, rather than researching on a textbook topic in an unknown language. Their knowledge of English and of social science simultaneously improves as they ask questions from their own material and seek and search for answers in social science writings. Even in surveys, access to media reports and documents in the regional language enriches the fi ndings. Need of a Well-Thought-Out Pedagogy While there is a lot of emphasis on the bureaucratic requirements of affi rmative action and reservations in the academy, there is scant attention to the need for an informed and well-thought-out pedagogy for a heterogeneous classroom as in the Indian university. At best UGC may focus on infrastructure like chairs, tables, buildings and amount sanctioned for remedial classes in English. There is generally no reference to strengthening the human element of teacher-student relationship and between student interactions. If some institutions in this country are doing well in the social sciences, it is because of the formation of an academic community that exerts influence on students and teachers to think and read more to keep up with each other. It is common for us to hear about the expansion of higher education in purely quantitative terms, as an expansion of the number of central universities or Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Rarely does the discussion venture into substantive issues about what kind of abilities do the MA or PhD in social sciences are expected to create, what the non-tangible (social) benefits of social science education are and how to assess them. The UGC policy on higher education does not seem to be based on an engagement with issues of pedagogy, translation of reading material and their connection to academic performance in the social sciences. These crucial matters have always been part of the tacit awareness of teachers, but discussed informally in the corridors, while recruitments, per centage of reservations, projects and admi nistrative procedures are part of the formal discussions about the university system. Today the government directives in public education do play a signifi cant role in shaping the modalities of learning and research and there are no powerful cultural and intellectual movements to counter the bureaucratisation of higher education. There is no doubt that a purely managerial approach to higher education will have an adverse impact on the intellectual culture of this subcontinent. An education system that places high premium on academic performance in terms of marks and focuses heavily on technical education marginalises the social sciences and humanities also. This eliminates the possibilities of sensitising youngsters to think critically about prevalent social practices in a growth- driven economy. Youngsters could take to cutting-edge science and technology while remaining uncritical of social inequalities and deprivation. The offi cial bodies of social science on their part have reduced the social sciences into mute degree-producing disciplines in which the curriculum has little connection to the linguistic and cognitive universe of the students. Social science students are likely to have little to take back from social science to their social milieu and less chance of bringing the richness of their cultural world into academic research. The urban middle class is already alienated from the idea of tradition as knowledge of body, ecology, proverbs, folk tales, etc, and largely experience tradition in terms of caste rules or religious rituals. Youngsters who are more and more estranged from the regional knowledge traditions of their region in the broader sense - mother tongue, dialects, music, dance, literature, folk arts, medical lore and philosophy - end up holding on to narrow religious identities and practices in the face of economic prosperity. Several studies have noted the resurgence of religious identity in the present generation even more than those of the 1970s and 1980s. Thus we could have a flourishing technocracy, bureaucracy along with parochial theocracies. JA NUARY 31, 2015 vol l no 5 EPW Economic & Political Weekly COMMENTARY This is happening in other Asian countries which have adopted growth-centred and managerial models of development in the education sector. While their universities have all the amenities, there is little work in social science and virtually no possibility of contribution to philosophy, literature and creative arts from the university system, nor any link between university education and social thought outside the formal system. Religious polarisation and identity assertion are already on the anvil among students here; democracy and freedom of expression are precarious. The system of global ranking of universities is oblivious to the social and cultural role of the university as an institution in heterogeneous societies of the global South. The managerial approach to higher education is devoid of a vision of intellectual and creative potential of the people and will lead to a lopsided civilisation. The recent directive of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to IITs about separating mess arrangements for vegetarians and non-vegetarians is a good example of how "human resource development" could have more to do with identity and nothing to do with human abilities and creativity. In Conclusion This does not mean that evaluation is not desirable, but that the criteria should be context-sensitive and the interventions should take human and cognitive aspects of learning along technological and administrative considerations. Holding separate workshops to collate suggestions from teachers in the humanities, creative arts and the social sciences, strengthening students' participation in curriculum design and supporting reading and discussion groups could be some steps in these directions. But this is possible only under two conditions: the narrow mindset that privileges science and technology and neglects the signifi cance of philosophy, linguistics, arts, social sciences, etc, has to go and the managerial approach of reducing everything to tangible quantitative measures and to encashability has to be substituted by a more inclusive approach. Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 31, 2015 vol l no 5 Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. 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