Both centralisation and privatisation have dismantled the future of higher education in India and the lack of moral positionality of the state has come out as a catastrophe for millions of students who aspire to follow higher education pathways.
Amidst the ongoing controversy surrounding the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (UGC-NEET) examination, the education ministry has cancelled the National Eligibility Test (NET) examination conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). The education ministry’s statement states that the “government is committed to ensure the sanctity of examinations” and the “integrity of the examination may have been compromised”. This incident is part of a larger pattern under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, where bureaucratic mismanagement and agencies are often blamed for such incidents. However, these incidents raise a larger question about the moral accountability of the state.
The Union government has made concerted efforts to dismantle the democratic model of higher education through measures such as the imposition of the New Education Policy (NEP), saffronisation of curriculum, and promotion of privatisation in higher education. While the sanctity and integrity of examinations should not be centered on individual agencies, we must bring the moral accountability of the state under question.
The NET examination, previously used to select candidates for Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and Assistant Professor positions, has now been made mandatory for PhD admissions in Indian universities by the UGC. The UGC’s directive has turned the NET examination into a centralised system, following a ‘one nation, one exam’ model.
For the June 2024 NET exam, the UGC established 1205 centers in 317 cities. According to the UGC, around 11 lakh students had registered for the exam, but only 81% appeared. The NTA has conducted this exam on UGC’s behalf since 2018. While the exam was computer-based in the past, this year, the NTA decided to administer the exam using pen and paper simultaneously at different centers. This highlights the failure of the central government, which spent heavily to promote digital India but has now returned to traditional examination methods.
The progressive student and faculty community has been voicing their opposition to NTA and calling for its abolition, along with restoring previous institutional bodies to oversee such examinations. However, the BJP-led central government did not take this issue seriously and continued to support the involvement of private agencies in higher education, resulting in the current scandal.
There are many concerns arising from these irregularities in the examination systems. However, the most crucial concern that has been overlooked is the moral accountability of the state. The debate around transparent and fair examinations has always focused on individual agencies and institutional perspectives but rarely considers the state’s and its institutions’ moral accountability. Notably, both centralisation and privatisation have dismantled the future of higher education in India and the lack of moral positionality of the state has come out as a catastrophe for millions of students who aspire to follow higher education pathways. To explain this crisis, I borrowed the framework of “moral loss” and “moral reconstruction“ proposed by Norman Brady.
Scholars of new public management debated moral loss and moral reconstruction. Post-neoliberalism interventions in higher education have repositioned universities as “servants of the knowledge economy” and students as “customers.” Neoliberal educational interventions have limited universities’ autonomy by transferring power from institutions to the marketplace. Consequently, higher education has transitioned to being treated as private or commercial goods. The primary utilitarian objective of the university system has shifted to prioritising profits and surplus.
Following this argument further, one could see the NEET and other national examinations become the fort of commercial coaching institutions that sell the tactics and skills of qualifying for these competitive exams through the nexus of state and advertisement markets. The shift of higher education control from the state to the market has disrupted the democratic research-teaching system and led to unequal access to higher education. According to Brady, many academics agree that the consequences of marketisation on universities have been mostly harmful, as human interaction in academia has been reduced to transactional exchanges.
This period marked the realisation by academic communities of the loss of moral accountability of state institutions and highlighted the need for moral reconstruction as a remedy for this loss. In the context of India, the period of the 1990s played a significant role in shaping the future of the Indian economy. In literature, it is commonly assumed that due to the influence of marketisation, higher education systems have become fragmented or weakened. The concept of “academic citizenship” is seen as crucial for a system where members are reconnected by a shared moral purpose and objective to serve students and fellow academics, and where the importance of teaching and learning has been emphasised.
According to Brady, “moral reconstruction” stands in contrast to the advocates of reformed higher education institutions who focus on recognition and reward policies as a practical solution to the perceived imbalance of the research-teaching nexus and the devaluing of the service ethic. The foundation of moral accountability depends on how the state and its institutions attempt to regain moral integrity and sanctity after a loss.
The level of accountability required for ensuring moral integrity will be addressed by acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of institutions and by restoring the autonomy of these institutions for their losses through state accountability. It is assumed that the higher education system will continue to decline until these actions are contractually recognised and rewarded. The current crisis in higher education in India is still characterised by a lack of moral accountability, with the state appearing passive in addressing this issue.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Professor’s Harassment by ABVP Shows Near-Complete Takeover of Universities by RSS-BJP
Ruchir Joshi: Out of depth – India’s anti-knowledge brigade
Goodbye Saleem / सबके मेंटर थे सलीम किदवई
Suicide of a teacher: Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold
Where Are the ‘Don Quixotes’ of Indian Academia?
University Grants Commission aiding the cult of personality
An Ode to the ‘Ad-Hoc’ Teachers of Ramjas English Department
Witch-hunt against Tejaswini Desai highlights dangers of being a teacher in India today
Apoorvanand; Gauhar Raza: The bully that is destroying India’s academic culture
After the truth-shower 