Rohan D'Souza attacking NEP

 Professor Rohan D'Souza of Kyoto University has a good article here attacking Indian's New Educational Policy.

He writes- that the new policy will replace the '‘mode-for-learning’ approach which privileges critical thinking and citizenship training'

I don't see why one has to go to College to learn these things. Some of the finest of our citizens had no such opportunity. Many dunces, however, have lots of fancy degrees. 

the NEP intends to make dominant a ‘mode-for-instruction’ framework centred around information, exams, vocational training, and skilling.

What's wrong with that? After college most people have to pass various professional or else competitive exams to get a job or to receive promotion. To become an Accountant or an Advocate or an Actuary, you need highly specialized instruction which is quite different from that provided by a Liberal Arts College. 

One other innovation is the lateral entry of 'professors of practice' who may not have an academic qualification. Surely this is a good thing? Why not have English taught to Engineering students by a person who speaks good English and who has worked in the industry? There are plenty of people with PhDs in Gramscian Grammatology who can't speak English but who are supposed to be teaching English to such students. Naturally, those young people can't get a job. 

I suppose what D'Souza is really getting at is that the BJP wants to destroy campuses as 'safe spaces' for anti-fascists. The problem here is that the BJP, with its growing majority in parliament, could pack central universities with their own people and beat everybody else into submission. Professor-centric education means brainwashing by the ruling party. Surely, 'Khan Sir'- an online instructor whose videos are watched by millions of students hoping to pass civil service and other exams- is more likely to provide factual information rather than spread a poisonous ideology? 

D'Souza has an article in Scroll defending his own alma mater- JNU. He points out that many of his batchmates have had very successful academic careers. The problem here is that JNU was founded and had its glory days at a time when India was moving in a Socialist direction. But our Indian academics didn't predict the fall of the Berlin wall. They didn't grasp that the Chinese use of the free market did not represent an abandonment of Communist ideology. Instead they bleated about imaginary Fascists and the need to battle the RSS which turned out to be perfectly harmless. 

Adding edited volumes, journal articles, book chapters, popular writings, working papers and throwing in books reviews as well, then the academic output of the Centre for Historical Studies from a single cohort of 1988-’90 could effortlessly stack a good sized shelf in a library.

But were they worth reading? No. This was a case of diminishing returns. The more research that was done they more useless and uninformative the tome that was produced. The opportunity cost of this research- i.e. what else could have been done with that time and effort- was not factored into the calculation. It was simply assumed that more Foucauldian drivel would make people better citizens- which may have been true for those who emigrated and took citizenship in their new countries of domicile but wasn't at all true for those who had to remain behind in India.

First, the original model of Jawaharlal Nehru University was premised on the strong conviction that there was absolutely no positive correlation between high fees and the quality of education and academic research.

But the subsidy per student was high. Poor countries need to be smart in the way they spend their money. Poorer people did go to JNU in the hope of having a better shot of cracking the Civil Service exam. Those who failed to do so hung around the place getting a PhD. Like Kanhaiya Kumar- once the blue-eyed boy of the Communist party but now with Congress- they did worthless research and were otherwise unemployable.  

The low fees and subsidised residential housing was particularly appealing to the early 20s demographic, with the brilliant and inspired among them being able to thus pursue higher education programmes without having to worry about being a burden on their families.

But they were a burden on the tax payer. Also, had they got proper jobs, they could have helped their families. 

Similar would be the case for many families, especially in the late 1980s and early 90s in India, who would otherwise be financially dis-incentivised from sending their daughters to far-away places such as Delhi for higher education.

What about those who didn't make the cut? One might as well say that the national lottery is a Socialist measure which helps the poor become millionaires. The truth is money is redistributed from many poor people to one or two lucky punters. 

In short, by radically lowering the costs of fees and living, Jawaharlal Nehru University could draw from a much larger pool of the truly talented and motivated in the country.

Why favor the talented and motivated? They can look after themselves. Why not help those without talent and motivation? It is they who are likely to be at the bottom of the heap.  

In effect, more women students, no bank loans and no post-education debt.

while the country goes off a fiscal cliff.  

With higher education, thus, turned into a magnet for all those ambitious and daring, Jawaharlal Nehru University had no place for the client-customer student.

But it did have a place for 'students fighting fascism'. Why subsidize stupidity?  

The second feature would undoubtedly be the unique entrance exam and student recruitment design. Jawaharlal Nehru University had elaborately worked out a system for selecting students based on deprivation points, which, at heart, was aimed at fostering a conversation between not only different social and economic experiences but equally aimed at tapping into India’s immense regional variation of cities, small towns, villages and even forest-based communities.

Why have a diverse student community if you are going to indoctrinate them in stupid shit?  

The income spectrum, similarly, spanned the range from a sprinkling of elites, middle to lower-middle, rural and included many of the poorest of the poor as well. To the best of my knowledge, the majority of the MA History batch of 1988-’90 were breaking fresh ground as far as higher education was concerned within our families. The deprivation point system, in effect, was based on the understanding that meaningful education and research was possible only as a dialogue between facts, theory and personal biography.

But an MA in History is useless. Why have a boring dialogue with imaginary ghosts? 

The third would be the MPhil. As a two-year programme, the MPhil was sandwiched between the Masters and the PhD. At heart, it was to encourage a more intense one-on-one interaction between the faculty and their research students. The MPhil, by focussing on personal attention was, in fact, crucial to reducing the research gap between the poorer students who came from economic and socially challenged backgrounds and those who had privileged educational opportunities.

I can see some point to teaching Helen Keller to communicate. But why teach her to communicate stupid nonsense? 

It was the MPhil programme that provided a launching pad for many who either used the concentrated research training to apply for and secure fat scholarships from prestigious universities abroad

'fat scholarships'- that was the carrot dangled before these donkeys. Meanwhile coders on H-1B visas were making much more money doing slightly less boring shite.  

or harnessed the time and context for cracking the famed public services exams.

which allow you to get rich through corruption. It seems JNU was about escaping the country with a scholarship or bleeding it dry as a bribe-taking Babu.  

It would be wholly correct to argue that the accomplishments of the MA History class of 1988-’90 owes much to the the unique institutional and policy arrangements at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. From the “modern stream” (roughly studying the 18th-20th century), while a number of us submitted our PhDs at Jawaharlal Nehru University itself, four of our colleagues (all women) clinched scholarships at top universities in the United States and the United Kingdom.

So, they became 'diversity' hires and taught cretins worthless shite.  

On the other hand, several among the brightest chose instead to take up jobs with the government, public sector undertakings, journalism and a few joined research foundations as well. On a rough count, 14 of us in the batch currently hold academic positions, of which nine are teaching in universities in India (Delhi, Assam, Lucknow, Benares and Chandigarh), while five are teaching abroad (US, Canada and Japan).

So, none of these guys set up businesses which employ people. They merely took jobs that were already available.  

Clearly, we have made good on the investment of the Indian tax payer.

How? First the tax-payer has to pay them to study worthless shite and then it has to pay them to teach worthless shite. How is that an investment? 

But, equally, we acknowledge that it was Jawaharlal Nehru University that enabled our social mobility by empowering us with the educational means and resources to better the fortunes of our respective families.

while worsening the fortunes of the Indian economy. By contrast, IT services contributes almost 200 billion dollars in revenue and creates about 5 million jobs. That's an investment which has paid off for India.