Of the Indian University System and the INIs

The long and short of the story to follow in the paragraphs below is the assertion that despite noises to the contrary, the Indian university system is under a free fall! Let me elaborate.

The three-component engine that powers the university system is comprised of the students, the faculty and the non-teaching staff that includes its executive head, the vice chancellor. In all these cases, the current mode of selection/appointment of the resource personnel in the three indicated categories is faulty to the core.

Let’s begin from the selection process that is currently in vogue for the appointment of vice chancellors. While the selection process being followed now looks fine on paper, there is, to be sure, no mechanism in place that would throw up the right person to handle the most important and coveted job in the system.

Whereas an impressive track record involving the academic credentials apart from a role in the corporate life of the university of the aspirant are to be taken into account, it’s their vision and the leadership qualities that are neither sized up with due diligence and in a meaningful no-nonsense manner, nor viewed as of considerable importance in the election of a vice chancellor.

On the contrary, such qualities could be assessed, not necessarily by subjecting the ‘applicants’ to a multi-layered selection process - as is apparently the case at least on paper - but on the basis of a report by an ‘informal’ search committee comprising academicians of impeccable integrity who would undertake ground work to pick up two or three of them for a formal approval of one of them by the chancellor.

Over the past few years, what is generally taken into account in the process of appointing a vice chancellor and accorded preference over other metrics specified for the purpose has scarcely been the purely academic credentials, but sadly the extent of proximity of an aspiring candidate to the corridors of power, a fact that had recently hit the headlines following a letter written and signed by a group of 181 serving university vice chancellors who had sought to quash such reports as tendentious after allegations were levelled by an important opposition leader to that effect.

Of course, it’s nobody’s case to argue that all those who have been appointed in recent years as vice chancellors are short on merit or who happen to be there solely on the strength of enjoying the good will of the powers that be. To be sure, there indeed are a few of them who are there on their own merit and credentials without tacitly enjoying the support of the high and mighty.

Not that such premier centres of higher learning as the ISSERs or IITs are spared the ignominy of being led by directors of questionable integrity and merit. Some weeks ago, there were credible reports of the director of a well-known IISER having resorted to witch-hunt to humble a colleague in a certain department who was asked by the department head to organise a conference there. Following this, the chief organiser had reached out to some distinguished academicians from other premier institutions to deliver talks at the conference.

However, soon after he had sent out invitation letters to the speakers, the director forced his hand to unceremoniously remove him as the organising secretary perhaps because the said colleague had run out of favour with the director for reasons that we are unaware of.

This had led to the unedifying spectacle of the invitation letters being withdrawn, thus causing unwarranted mortification both to the organiser as well as to the invited speakers in the process. Here, let me hasten to add that whereas such cases of impropriety by the authorities may be an exception and not the rule in the present setup of "institutes of national importance - INI", it's absolutely important to fix such issues before these INIs begin to descend into the shambolic state which the Indian university system is currently seeped into.

That having been said, the above story does not take away from the ambiance and the work culture of these premier institutions that contrast so starkly with that prevailing in the universities and colleges across the country where it’s conspicuous by its absence, especially around the region surrounding the valley of Kashmir.

My reference is obviously to certain institutions of excellence including especially the TIFR, ICTS, HRI, ISI's, IISc, IIMSc, CMI, CAM, NCBS, the cluster of IITs and IISERs and of course some of the IIITs, which in any case are too few to make a difference in a country of India's size.

It's time that something in the shape of an IIT or an IISER was established in the valley to help foster scientific temper around this region that the university system across India has singularly failed to cultivate, save in certain isolated cases.

Though there are no easy and copy-paste solutions to the crisis in the higher education sector as it prevails in India, the most vital aspect of crisis management would require the state to ensure the recruitment of qualified and highly motivated teaching faculty in the universities, a process that can only be realised with a person of impeccable credentials at the top.

That would have to go hand in hand with the state making allowance for liberal funding in education/R&D- including in the humanities - and put in place a mechanism that would help improve the standards of education and research across the 1200 odd (public and private) universities that are dotting the educational landscape of the country. Of the many ills afflicting the Indian university system one has to contend with this lopsided emphasis on 'research' and the attendant high premium being placed on certain metrics having been proposed for recruitment and promotion in the universities.

That has exacted a huge price from the quality of teaching and pedagogy where standards have been falling rapidly due to systemic indifference towards it. It's time that teaching in educational institutions was accorded at least the same level of "respectability" as that appears to be the case in research "of whatever kind" that is being churned out in the Indian universities.

Of course, the least the universities ought to do is to strive to at least match the level of excellence as it is in evidence in the aforesaid institutions of excellence even as the culture, the working conditions and the quality of those working in the two cultures of work are way different from each other. However, to somewhat bridge the chasm between the two cultures, it’s important to draw attention to the flip side to the culture as it prevails in the INIs.

In order to at least partially address this issue, it’s pertinent to draw attention to scores of those who have completed their higher degrees from the aforementioned institutions of excellence and who are generally found to prefer to stay around the same circuit of institutions to continue their career in teaching and/or research or who wish to head Westwards for better and more lucrative employment opportunities.

Much as the suggestion may sound a trifle too ambitious to implement, it would go a long way in an effort to foster excellence in the university system if the degree holders from INIs are encouraged to move, and even obliged, to apply for teaching positions and considered for appointment in the university system and thus help contribute to the growth and improvement in the standards of pedagogy and research in the Indian universities.

That's because apart from the need for cost intensive investment of infrastructure to create a research enabling environment in the universities, what's lacking there is a certain ethos and work culture that those trained in premier institutions of research would bring along once they are roped in to work in the Indian University system.

Of a piece with that suggestion would be to seek a mandatory requirement for the university teachers to visit the aforesaid centres of excellence, albeit for a brief period ranging from, say 4-8 weeks every year to be reciprocated by visits by the faculty belonging to these premier centres for a proportionate period of time in the universities.

That would ensure the much needed peer pressure being built in the university system apart from a cross fertilisation of ideas between the teaching faculties conducting their professional work in two entirely different cultures of scientific work.

At this point, let it be emphasised that whereas the universities are no doubt required to impart instruction aimed at skill development of the student and to generate avenues for their gainful employment after passing out from the university system, an infinitely more important feature of higher education has to do with fostering a culture where the student is taught to cultivate certain epistemic virtues and independent thinking.

In other words, the university education system has to cater as much to skill development through job oriented courses as to the creation of knowledge and cultivation of scholarship so that alongside the job seekers, the system also has it in it to provide the right atmosphere where the pursuit of knowledge and scholarship would flourish.

In his famous essay “The two cultures of Mathematics”, Tim Gowers refers to the importance of theory builders and problem solvers in the growth and development of mathematics, and by implication, of science and technology.

The point is that technology as a by-product of science does not happen in vacuum and in fact is rooted in certain deep theoretical underpinnings hidden in the mathematics behind the theoretical foundation of science.

Whereas that has all along been the case over the centuries of development in science and technology ranging from abstract group theory which has now emerged as an important mathematical tool in theoretical physics, chemistry and many other branches of science, the highly abstruse “Knot Theory” has been successfully employed in statistical physics and in the study of the DNA molecule in biochemistry.

A more recent example is provided by the Fields Medal-winning work of the Ukranian mathematician Maryna Viazovska in 2022 on her deep insights into the purely theoretical “sphere packing problem” which deals with the purely theoretical question of finding the most efficient way to pack spheres (such as circles or spheres) in space.

It’s interesting to note how her work on this problem in dimensions 8 and 24 has led to great technological strides in deep space communication through the far reaching implications of her work in the theory of error-correcting codes. In fact, in its ongoing mission to the interstellar space, the Voyager Spacecraft has used the so called Reed-Solomon code for deep space communication which is based upon the principle of sphere packing in space.

Finally, to plead for a case for pursuing theoretical studies (including in the arts and humanities) in conjunction with the applied part of it through technology-based skill development curriculum, it’s pertinent to briefly mention how India has emerged as an important IT hub and how it has come to occupy an important position at the world stage in the IT sector and also in no small measure in theoretical sciences where the role played by the cluster of IIT’s over the past 6-7 decades has been remarkable.

On the other hand, the emergence of India as an important international player in the world of theoretical sciences, and especially so in mathematics which has been no less spectacular has to be credited to a few premier research institutions in India of which the Mumbai based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, IIMSc (Indian Institute of Mathematical Sciences) in Chennai and the chain of Indian Statistical Institutes (ISI) spread across the country stand out as world famous centres in theoretical research.

The point is that the two cultures involving the pure and applied research are in a symbiotic relationship with each other and have to coexist as such. Here, it should help to quote the Fields Medallist Enrico Bombieri “Knowledge, even when it is not motivated by short-term goals is always precious” and read that alongside what Jonathan Swift had to say on this count “It takes all kinds of men (and women, of course) to make a world”. In the current parlance borrowed from a well-known advertising cliché, that translates into saying: For education to be meaningful, the system has to learn to “take the rough with the smooth”.

By: M A Sofi, Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics, Kashmir University, Srinagar