Topic– Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.
1) No amount of concern over India’s place in the world university rankings or pumping resources into infrastructure building can help, if the university culture is not conducive to creativity. Comment. (250 words)
why this question
India’s poor performance in global university rankings has led to expression of concern from various quarters add sections of the society. There have been calls for providing more autonomy and funds to universities at academic institutions providing higher education. In this context it’s important to understand the importance of University culture conducive to creativity.
Directive word
Comment- here we have to express our knowledge and understanding of the issue and form an overall opinion thereupon.
Key demand of the question.
The question wants us to Express our opinion on the importance of University culture which is conducive to creativity vis a vis the importance of better performance in university rankings as well as allocation of more funds towards higher education.
Structure of the answer
Introduction– write a few introductory lines about the performance of Indian universities in the global university rankings. Also mention the recent announcement by the PM of India to invest Rs One lakh crore for infrastructure in higher education by 2022.
Body-
Discuss why a culture conducive to creativity is important for a university. Bring out the role and relatively less importance of, improving university rankings and pumping more funds. E.g rankings, though imperfect, suggest that Indian universities are lagging in their research output. This by itself should be worrying, but another aspect, namely the migration overseas even at the undergraduate level, suggests that not even the dissemination of knowledge here is considered good enough by Indians; University teachers are paid well enough and the availability of material is no longer a problem, with highly affordable Indian editions of the best international textbooks; The crucial factor is the absence of the norms internal to the Indian university that enable desirable outcomes with respect to teaching and research. Among these norms would be an expectation of excellence from both teachers and students and the assurance of autonomy to the former. This autonomy, it may be asserted, is to be expected not only in relation to external agencies such as the UGC or the MHRD but also within the university, including from peers. In fact, within the university the latter is all that counts etc
Conclusion– based on your discussion, form a fair and a balanced conclusion on the given issue.
