Comphrensive Passage 134

Directions: Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:

Paragraph 1 : The government has announced a list of ‘Institutes of Eminence’ (IoE) among India’s institutions of higher education. This was awaited for the simple reason that finding a place on it would save an educational institution from the clutches of a dreaded regulator. Regulators are meant to ensure that we have a socially desirable outcome, but in the case of higher education in India the opposite seems to have been the case. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has over half a century micro-managed this space to an unimaginable level of silliness. The result has been publicly-funded universities that are cavernous wastes, shattering the aspirations of our youth and producing low-level ‘knowledge’. Evidence of the role of India’s higher-education regulator may be seen in the feature that the few instances when this is not the case the institutions have enjoyed privilege that leaves them protected from its depredations.

Paragraph 2 : The latest offering is in the form of a proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). The intention is to leave the HECI to focus on quality while leaving funding of public institutions to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). Even as we observe the progress of the HECI and wonder if it is going to be any more than old wine in a new bottle, we have already have an inkling of what could go wrong. This springs from the government’s announcement of a list of IoEs. The government has chosen three public and three private institutions for this status. The public institutions are the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the Indian Institutes of Technology at Delhi and Mumbai. The private ones are the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, the JIO Institute and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. This list suffers from a serious lack of credibility. Where in it are the universities of India? We understand that the government’s aim is to rectify the low presence of Indian institutions in the global rankings of universities.

Paragraph 3 : While the early European universities may have started as academies of the arts they were soon to have medicine and astronomy as areas that they pursued with vigour. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost this breadth and come to revel in a landscape dominated by engineering schools. These engineering schools, notably the IITs, have done us proud but cannot be equated with the great universities of the world for the simple reason that they are focussed on a narrow domain. Also, if the idea behind IoEs is that they will be left alone and given enhanced financial support, it must be acknowledged that until very recently the IITs have not been meddled with neither have they been starved of resources. The IISc is of course broader than the IITs but does not embrace the social sciences and the humanities, the presence of which would be considered necessary for an university.

Paragraph 4 : If a list of eminent institutions in the country is at all needed, the absence of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) from the first list of IoEs is striking. Its faculty has brought many of the world’s leading ideas to Indian students and in at least area came close to building a new school of thought, however controversial. It is not as if similar efforts in the social sciences have not occurred elsewhere in India but JNU has perhaps sustained its reputation as a university for longer. It already had schools of Computer Science and the Life Sciences over four decades ago when these were fledging disciplines giving it a certain breadth early on.

Paragraph 5 : Even as we may wonder at the exclusion of JNU from the list of IoEs released by the government one might wonder at how the private institutions that are on it made the cut. While BITS Pilani may have made a significant contribution to the country at a time when it desperately needed engineers, but is yet not what may be considered a university, the presence of the two others on the list leave one nonplussed. One of them, we are told, has been conferred the status on grounds of its promise, a dubious position to take as this institute has little to show except for the financial heft that will surely undergird it. The other is known largely for its association with the practice of charging capitation fees for education.

Guest You need to login to ask any Questions from chapter comphrensive-passage-134 of comprehension-passage

Chapter:

Only I and III

Only I and III

None of the above

Deploring

Only III

Only I and II

All of the above

All Chapters

Comphrensive Passage 1

Comphrensive Passage 2

Comphrensive Passage 3

Comphrensive Passage 4

Comphrensive Passage 5

Comphrensive Passage 6

Comphrensive Passage 7

Comphrensive Passage 8

Comphrensive Passage 9

Comphrensive Passage 10

Comphrensive Passage 11

Comphrensive Passage 12

Comphrensive Passage 13

Comphrensive Passage 14

Comphrensive Passage 15

Comphrensive Passage 16

Comphrensive Passage 17

Comphrensive Passage 18

Comphrensive Passage 19

Comphrensive Passage 20

Comphrensive Passage 21

Comphrensive Passage 22

Comphrensive Passage 23

Comphrensive Passage 24

Comphrensive Passage 25

Comphrensive Passage 26

Comphrensive Passage 27

Comphrensive Passage 28

Comphrensive Passage 29

Comphrensive Passage 30

Comphrensive Passage 31

Comphrensive Passage 32

Comphrensive Passage 33

Comphrensive Passage 34

Comphrensive Passage 35

Comphrensive Passage 36

Comphrensive Passage 37

Comphrensive Passage 38

Comphrensive Passage 39

Comphrensive Passage 40

Comphrensive Passage 41

Comphrensive Passage 42

Comphrensive Passage 43

Comphrensive Passage 44

Comphrensive Passage 45

Comphrensive Passage 46

Comphrensive Passage 47

Comphrensive Passage 48

Comphrensive Passage 49

Comphrensive Passage 50

Comphrensive Passage 51

Comphrensive Passage 52

Comphrensive Passage 53

Comphrensive Passage 54

Comphrensive Passage 55

Comphrensive Passage 56

Comphrensive Passage 57

Comphrensive Passage 58

Comphrensive Passage 59

Comphrensive Passage 60

Comphrensive Passage 61

Comphrensive Passage 62

Comphrensive Passage 63

Comphrensive Passage 64

Comphrensive Passage 65

Comphrensive Passage 66

Comphrensive Passage 67

Comphrensive Passage 68

Comphrensive Passage 69

Comphrensive Passage 70

Guest
You need to login to ask any Questions from chapter comphrensive-passage-134 of comprehension-passage