Metrics to minds: restoring purpose to universities

Why in the News

National multiple choice examinations, once built to pick a few thousand officers, soldiers and engineers fairly, now govern admission and careers across every discipline and college. The same reliance on countable scores has spread to faculty recruitment and Vice Chancellor selection, crowding out the academic judgement universities exist to exercise.

Why are national entrance tests a poor judge of ability?

1. What it is: A standardised test asks every candidate the same multiple choice questions, like one sieve used for every grain. It is designed for uniformity.
2. Reach of the tests: The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC NET) test lakhs of candidates, from oncology to Punjabi literature, in one format.
3. What it misses: The tests are now used to find talent, reasoning and critical thinking. Uniform questions cannot capture these, so able students fail for not mastering a test-taking technique.
4. Thinner classrooms: Students from memorisation heavy testing read less, and classroom discussion has thinned, a change no education body has studied.
5. The takeaway: A test built to be fair to the many now rejects the abilities it claims to examine.

How have counting rules hollowed out faculty recruitment?

1. Market for papers: Promotion rules demand a minimum number of publications, so papers are produced to be counted, not to carry ideas.
2. From API to research scores: The UGC Regulations, 2018 replaced the Academic Performance Indicator (API), a points tally of teachers’ activities under the Performance Based Appraisal System (PBAS), with research scores. Achievement is still reduced to counting.
3. Predatory journals: Journals of no academic standing print whatever applicants submit, without peer review, so applicants can meet research score deadlines. Some span seven or eight disciplines under one title.
4. PhD as points: A doctorate commonly earns 30 marks in a teaching post’s selection matrix, yet that weight says nothing about the quality of the thesis.
5. Weak supervision: Theses pass on supervisors’ reports written without proper reading, and the viva voce (oral defence of a thesis) has become a formality.

Why do Vice Chancellor selections favour scientists?

1. Patent question: Search committees ask candidates how many patents they hold, irrelevant outside applied science.
2. Built-in STEM bias: A laboratory head can add his name to every paper it produces, a count no lone humanities scholar can match, so Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) candidates win by design.
3. Networking over merit: Many appointments are settled by networking rather than judgement, so changing metrics alone will not fix selection.

Can judgement replace scores without losing fairness?

1. Penalties fall short: Harsher penalties for examiners and testing agencies punish a lapse but do not prevent it.
2. Departmental examinations: Letting departments set their own entrance tests restores judgement to faculty and lets students apply where their aptitude lies. That is the Western norm.
3. Peer appointments: Appointments were once made through discussion with people who knew a candidate’s work. Eg. Four eminent professors interviewing one candidate for over 40 minutes.
4. Accountable judgement: Peer selection demands time and the courage to defend a choice without a number, and society should judge it by the quality of that judgement.

Challenges

1. Capture by networks: Opaque discretion can be captured by the networking that already distorts appointments.
2. Uneven capacity: Many State universities lack the permanent faculty to design and grade their own examinations.
3. Cost to students: Separate departmental tests raise travel and fee burdens for poorer candidates, the problem common tests were meant to solve.

Way Forward

1. Quality over counts: Assess a candidate’s few best publications through peer review instead of counting papers.
2. Floor plus judgement: Use national tests as a qualifying floor, with departments selecting through interviews.
3. Reasoned appointments: Record written reasons for every selection, with discipline experts on Vice Chancellor search panels.

Conclusion

Indian higher education has let countable scores replace academic judgement in admission, recruitment and leadership. The unresolved question is whether regulators will trust departments with discretion and still hold them answerable for the quality of their choices.

Higher education in India

1. Scale: With over 4.6 crore students, India runs the world’s second largest higher education system.
2. Single regulator proposed: The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 would create one apex body to replace the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).
3. Policy target: The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 aims for a Gross Enrolment Ratio (enrolment as a share of the college age population) of 50% by 2035.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2020, GS2, 15 marks] National Education Policy 2020 is in conformity with the Sustainable Development Goal-4 (2030). It intends to restructure and reorient education system in India. Critically examine the statement.”