UGC’s Concept Document on “Blended” Learning — Centralisation in the Name of Efficiency

17th Aug 20216th Sep 2021 The NotA CollectiveLeave a comment

“Blended Learning” combines online and classroom learning and claims to centre the student as a “learner”. It aims to increase flexibility, self-responsibility and participation and, therefore, enhance learning. Pinjra Tod (a women students’ collective), takes a deep look at the UGC’s document, which reveals how bogus its claims are. Pinjra Tod, after a detailed analysis of the document concludes, “The NEP 2020 and UGC concept note on ‘Blended Learning’ stand to structurally ensure that quality higher education is accessed by the upper classes, and that the purpose of higher education broadly will only be to provide skilled workers to be absorbed by the market.” Groundxero is publishing Pinjra Tod’s full analysis and critique of the UGC’s “Blended” learning concept document in three parts. This is part two of the full critique.

CENTRALISATION IN THE NAME OF EFFICIENCY

The NEP 2020 has called for replacing the Executive and Academic Councils with regulatory bodies such as a centrally-appointed Board of Governors and Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). The HEGC and National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC), National Accreditation Council (NAC) and General Education Council (GEC) increase the centralisation of control over universities, by taking control over governance, curriculum, research and finance while alienating immediate stakeholders including the teachers and hampering democratic, autonomous functioning of universities.

The UGC’s idea of autonomy is a financial one, in which each university is left to its own devices to raise funds by dipping into student’s pockets, while HEFA-like bodies provide loans. Academic autonomy and integrity are relevant only insofar as they can be clamped down on. The draft syllabi UGC recently prepared for BA History course plays up mythological aspects of “Indic” civilisation at the expense of established topics and norms of history. The syllabi also prescribe reading lists full of questionable scholarship. In June, texts by pro-establishment figures such as Yoga magnate Baba Ramdev and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ajay Singh Bisht “Adityanath” were introduced at Chaudhary Charan Singh University on the recommendation of the Uttar Pradesh committee for implementation of NEP. These are only a few from the long list of instances in which academia is being sought to be saffronised in the country. The autonomy of the university and its faculty to decide coursework and material is actively being encroached upon, as is the space to dissent against such intrusions and overreach.

A Window to the Construction Workers in IITK Amidst the Pandemic

14th Aug 20216th Sep 2021 The NotA CollectiveLeave a comment

Hamara Manch Report, July 2021

On 14^th July 2021, women workers at the Swadeshi Civil Infrastructure Private limited construction site (the one across the airstrip) were told that they were all fired with immediate effect. Around 60-70 women were working at the site at the time and several more were to join in the next few days. Many of them have been working for months and were earlier told that they would continue to do so for at least several weeks more. Most of these women workers are migrant (at least not from the neighbourhood) and have come along with families to work at the construction site. It is imperative for all the adult members of the family to work, for them to be able to sustain the arrangement, as they have no social moorings here. Hence women losing jobs meant even the men would have to discontinue as they would not be able to survive in the meagre wages earned by men alone. When they tried to ask the reason for such abrupt en masse dismissal the women were told that these were orders from above. Most of these women were yet to be paid for the months of June and July, and when they asked to be given their dues they were told that their payments would be made soon but no definite date was given. Without employment these women and their families would be forced to leave and since they may not be able to pursue for their wages they were likely to lose it too. Usually, we at Hamara Manch have no access to construction workers because given the peculiar arrangement of construction work, those workers have no interaction with the regular workforce of the campus. And therefore, Hamara Manch has not reported anything on this construction activity during our pandemic series even though work has been going on full swing. But in this instance, we had a unique window to this site and the workers because three women mess workers had joined there recently.

As we had mentioned in our last report on women mess workers, (https://nirvaakiitk.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/15-months-of-pandemic-and-women-mess-workers-of-iit-kanpur/), situation is extremely desperate for several of them and they have been on the lookout for any kind of paying job. And when they came to know that there were some work for cleaning and clearing debris in newly constructed building by Swadeshi Contractor, several of them went to seek employment and three of them were recruited.

UGC’s Concept Document on “Blended” Learning — Flip-Flop Policies And Political Flippancy

10th Aug 20216th Sep 2021 The NotA CollectiveLeave a comment

FLIP-FLOP POLICIES AND POLITICAL FLIPPANCY

The efforts of the UGC to allay the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic over the last year, which has thrown education into chaos, are even more disingenuous. Its refusal to systematically organise a plan of action for the semester and academic calendar, as well as to set up a process of evaluation, has systematically pushed students out of consideration of various flippant policy decisions, as they could not necessarily keep up with the conditions imposed by the contingencies and emergencies of the situation shaped by the pandemic.

Delhi University is taking online exams starting from 7 July for final-year students. The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) had asked the university to cancel these exams, but it only postponed them from May to June instead. ABEs (Assignment-Based Exams) could have been an option, as other universities such as Ambedkar University, have done.
In July 2020, the Delhi High Court asked the University Grants Commission (UGC) to clarify if universities could conduct final-year examinations based on Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs), open choices, assignments and presentations, instead of long-form exams. The question came up after Delhi University contended that it was holding online OBE exams only because the UGC guidelines make it mandatory to hold final-year examinations. Legally, UGC’s guidelines are advisory and not binding on State institutions, yet the MHRD’s sanction made timed online exams during the pandemic a de facto compulsion. Expecting people caught in different circumstances to attempt the same exam is extremely unfair, as the Delhi High court observed.

Decolonising Indian ecology

7th Aug 202111th Sep 2021 The NotA CollectiveLeave a comment

– Akshay and Grass Demon

As the world came to a standstill in the wake of the pandemic, and travel was abruptly restricted, long-term or ongoing field research suffered ¹. Projects which involved local communities/researchers at the field site were able to continue their work with little loss of data, but those without strong local support were suspended indefinitely. Veteran ecologist Vojtech Novotny called it “a test [of] the rhetoric of ‘capacity building’ within tropical countries”. This reignited conversations around the involvement of local communities in field ecology by Western institutions, and associated ‘parachute science’ ² ³ ⁴. A recent paper by Trisos et al. 2021 ⁵ furthered this conversation by providing a sharp look at the different, often unchallenged, ways in which colonial thought and practices pervade ecology, and provide concrete ways for ecologists to work towards decoloniality, the main points of which are summed up in the table below.

Before we begin, let us clarify for the uninitiated what decolonisation means, according to Trisios et al. In the first instance, it is “[r]ecognizing that colonialism led to Euro-American centricity, dispossession, racism and ongoing power imbalances in how ecological research is produced and used”. Following this recognition, decolonisation demands that we “actively [undo] those systems and ways of thinking”. – NotA

UGC’s Concept Document on “Blended” Learning — Individualises and Privatises Learning and Education

3rd Aug 20213rd Aug 2021 The NotA CollectiveLeave a comment

“Blended Learning” combines online and classroom learning and claims to centre the student as a “learner”. It aims to increase flexibility, self-responsibility and participation and, therefore, enhance learning. Pinjra Tod (a women students’ collective), takes a deep look at the UGC’s document, which reveals how bogus its claims are. Pinjra Tod, after a detailed analysis of the document concludes, “The NEP 2020 and UGC concept note on ‘Blended Learning’ stand to structurally ensure that quality higher education is accessed by the upper classes, and that the purpose of higher education broadly will only be to provide skilled workers to be absorbed by the market.” Notes on the Academy will publish Pinjra Tod’s full analysis and critique of the UGC’s “Blended” learning concept document in three parts. This is part one of the full critique.

In consonance with the New Education Policy 2020, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has released its concept note on a “blended” model of teaching and learning, allowing for 40% of each course to be taught and assessed online (out of which over 40% SWAYAM courses are already online). Shockingly, the 40% conveyed in the UGC press note fails to convey that the actual desirable standard is to take online teaching and learning to 70% of the programme, as explained in the concept note.

The Gig Academy Part 2: Tenure’s Destiny of Failure

24th Jul 202124th Jul 2021 The NotA CollectiveLeave a comment

In part 1 of this piece we tried to understand tenure through the lens of the role it plays in the system of academia. To do this, we first listed out some essential aspects of academia, and how tenure functioned in relation to those aspects. Let us now take these observations and synthesise them to try to understand what our position should be on the new type of tenure proposed by NEP 2020.

A Destiny of Failure

When we evaluate a machine, we think about the stresses and strains various components exert on each other. In normal conditions, it is by way of these forces that the machine performs its intended function. And t is precisely these forces that cause degradation over time — the piece that gets bent out of shape first is the one on which the most force is acting. Similarly, when evaluating this social system, we should evaluate the stresses and strains the components of tenure exert forces on each other, deforming it so that it is no longer able to perform its function; we should look for the ways in which tenure negates itself.¹

The most obvious negation is well-encapsulated in the following couplet

Kursi hai, tumhara ye janaza to nahin
Kuch kar nahin sakte to utar kyun nahin jate
[It’s a chair not your deathbed;
If you can’t deliver why don’t you leave.]
– Irtaza Nishat

The Gig Academy Part 1: The Enduring Tenure of Academic Tenure

23rd Jul 202123rd Jul 2021 The NotA Collective2 Comments

– The NotA Collective

“India debates a nationwide tenure system,” reads a headline in Nature.¹ It seems academics across the country are debating whether to adopt a tenure-track system for faculty, or keep the current one. This should confuse anyone who has spent any time in an Indian institution. Senior professors in our institutes seem to have no worries about losing their jobs, with some of them not even turning up at their office. What is the cause of this nonchalant confidence, if they don’t have tenure? Why is our current system not a tenure-track system? The Nature article clarifies the difference,

“Some scientists are calling for the nationwide adoption of a five-year tenure-track review structure. After around five years, research faculty members are reviewed on the basis of their publications and funding received. Teaching ability and service to the institution usually have a supporting role. If the candidate is granted tenure, they receive a permanent appointment. If they are not, the appointment is terminated.
“Under the probationary system in India, research faculty members who receive a positive assessment at the end of their first year are given permanent positions as assistant professors. After another five years, they can apply to become associate professors — a position with higher rank and pay. If they are unsuccessful, however, their appointments are not terminated. Faculty members can stay at their institutions as assistant professors until they retire.

Okay, we lied. It clarifies the difference between the current system and the proposed one, but doesn’t even attempt to resolve our original confusion. We usually think of academic tenure as a guarantee of continued employment, not a question about whether this guarantee comes after one year or five. The discussion summarised in the article takes for granted that professors should be given tenure; the discussion is not about whether professors should be given tenure but about which of two models the tenure system should follow, and whether tenure is called tenure. Why is this being discussed at all? Because the NEP 2020² has proposed such a change.

Storming The Ivory Tower: An Invitation to The Caste of Merit

20th Jul 202119th Jul 2021 The NotA Collective3 Comments

– The NotA Collective

Ajantha Subramanian,
The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India,
Harvard University Press (2019).

I remember reading Sandipan Deb’s The IITians: The Story of a Remarkable Indian Institution and How Its Alumni Are Reshaping the World a little over a decade ago, around the time my classmates and I were studying for the Indian Institute of Technology’s Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) in hopes that we too would one day join the ranks of those world-reshaping alumni. Breathless and hagiographic, the book crystallised the reverence with which IIT was viewed, not only by my peers but also society at large. To “crack” the IIT-JEE and become an IITian meant many things at the time. For some, it meant one was marked as a member of the intellectual elite, standing head and shoulders above the rest. For others, it meant one was guaranteed a high-paying job on graduation. Some even wanted to go abroad, and for them an IIT education was the surest path to a foreign graduate school admission. An imprimatur, a golden ticket, a lifeboat. This impression of the IITs has changed little in the decade since then.

Ajantha Subramanian’s recent intervention — The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India — is an impressive and welcome salvo against the all-pervading sense of exceptionalism surrounding all things IIT, in particular aiming to understand “how the democratic ideal of meritocracy services the reproduction of achievement.” Equal parts history, ethnography, and theory, her book traces the

“rise of engineering education in India in the context of older forms of social and economic stratification… illuminat[ing] the relationship between engineering education and caste formation.”¹

Student Academic Freedom and Student Solidarity

28th Jun 202120th Jul 2021 The NotA Collective2 Comments

– The NotA Collective

Recently, “The Mine Field,”¹ a powerful testimonial that was published in NotA, received many heartfelt responses. Two of particular interest to us were those from faculty members in Indian institutes.^2,3 Since one of the prime purposes of this publication is to start a conversation about life in Indian academia specifically and academia more broadly, we must begin by thanking them for participating.

What follows is more than 1000 words in response to a couple of tweets from months ago. This is somewhat self-evidently ridiculous. We would like to offer the following in the spirit of countering harmful ideas that we thought were reflected in the tweets, while fully acknowledging that it is unreasonable to assume that these 140 characters, or what we read into them, is a reflection of the authors’ true opinions.