‘Ad hocism could be the bane of Bihar’s higher education system’

What ails higher education in Bihar? Large-scale vacancies in colleges are badly hampering academic work, demotivating rural students to travel long distances to attend classes in colleges distant from their homes

By Dheeraj Sinha from Patna

Higher education in Bihar is facing multiple challenges, foremost among them being ad hocism, mainly in the appointment of teachers in the state’s colleges.

To begin with, the state government had constituted the University Service Commission for the selection and appointment of teachers, but it was scrapped in 2007 in the name of rampant corruption. To the surprise of many, it was eventually revived in 2017.

“There is a lot of corruption in the state secretariat too. Does that mean it should also be disbanded,” asked Dr DM Diwakar, a former director of AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies.

With the scrapping of University Service Commission, appointments of teachers in the government colleges were disrupted leading to a sharp decline in the standards of teaching. This provided an ideal situation for the proliferation of a large number of private colleges and institutions charging heavy fees from students. Between 2007 and 2017, such private colleges and a number of private universities, to boot, mushroomed all over the state.

Private universities

“As many as seven new private universities have sprung up in the state as students’ faith in the public education system has eroded to a large extent,” commented a university professor.

After the scrapping of University Service Commission, Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) was given the responsibility of recruiting university teachers. Since BPSC was already overburdened with too much work, the appointment of new teachers slowed down, creating vacancies as well as delaying filling of existing vacant posts in colleges and universities, pointed out Dr Diwakar. “The ultimate sufferers were the students enrolled in government colleges,” he added.

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According to the Head of the Hindi Department of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur, Dr Yogesh Mahto, there is a possibility of the universities’ sessions getting regularised though it may still be unlikely to upgrade the higher education system as large numbers of teaching posts are lying vacant, affecting teaching, and even the process of evaluation getting largely compromised, particularly at the +2 level.

Pressure on examiners

“Since students obtain higher marks in CBSE board exams, there is pressure on examiners teaching in +2 colleges to evaluate answer sheets liberally,” he said.

Since there are large-scale vacancies in colleges, it is badly hampering academic work, demotivating rural students to travel long distances to attend classes in colleges distant from their homes. There is an alarming drop in the number of students attending classes in such a situation. In Tilka Manji Bhagalpur University’s prestigious TNB College, the number of teachers has come down over the years from 175 to 125. And this has happened when teachers have to take +2 classes as well.

The General Secretary of All India Federation of University and College Teachers’ Organisations, Dr Arun Kumar, said there are two categories of colleges in Bihar: constituent and affiliated. “As much as 60 percent of students are studying in the affiliated colleges,” he pointed out.

Lack of proper infrastructure

Even the post-graduate (PG) education is not insulated from the bane of ad hocism as PG teaching started in 100 colleges suffers a lot due to the lack of proper infrastructure in these colleges. “These colleges are no more than degree distribution centres,” he explained.

The number of sanctioned posts of college teachers in Bihar is 8,500 but 60 percent of them are vacant. While 1,200 teachers were appointed in 1996, the second lot of 1,300 teachers were recruited in 2019. Some teachers were appointed by BPSC between 2016 and 2019.

While the number of sanctioned posts of college teachers remains static at what it was in 1970s, the number of students has increased 10 times over during since then, Dr Kumar noted.

Of greater concern is the fact that there are no permanent teachers in the state’s colleges which offer professional courses.

Dr Kumar said that the state government has allocated Rs 35,000 crore for the higher education for the period 2022-23 but a lion’s share of the amount will go into paying salary and pension of the teaching and non-teaching employees.

Bearing additional burden

Although the number of teachers in Bihar’s degree colleges remains far from adequate, +2 are also being held in these colleges.

Dr Kumar said that Bihar was the only state in the country where +2 classes are held in degree colleges. Except for Patna University colleges, +2 classes are being held in colleges under all other universities of the state. He said this was putting too much strain on limited resources in terms of number of teachers, infrastructure and financial resources of the colleges and universities.

Dr Kumar said that +2 classes were being held in degree colleges despite Patna High Court’s directive to delink + 2 education from colleges. “Since Bihar Intermediate Education Council (BIEC) looks after affairs of +2 education and universities are entrusted with the task of administering degree colleges, there are two centres of authority functioning in a single college,” he pointed out.

Late sessions

Though sessions are running late in all the universities of Bihar, Magadh University (MU) has virtually left behind all others on this count.

Dr Kumar said that the session in Magadh University was late by four years. Part-1 examination of graduation courses, he said, was held in the MU in 2019 itself but no result has been declared so far. The session was late even in Patna University by two years; it was two to three years behind schedule in other universities.

MU Vice Chancellor KC Sinha claimed that all the pending results of examinations held between 2017-20 and 2018-21 would be published by the end of the month. The university is unable to conduct examinations on time, primarily due to the staff shortage. The reason behind the delay is mainly attributed to corruption cases being faced by the MU’s top functionaries. Officials, however, blamed the Covid-19 pandemic for the delay.

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Bihar Education Minister Prof Chandrashekhar said that all the universities have given undertaking to the state government to clear all backlogs of examinations and to regularise the academic session by the end of the 2022-23 session.

The university has over two lakh students and more than 2,000 teachers.

Magadh University’s former vice-chancellor, Rajendra Prasad, who had been absconding since November 2021 after the state vigilance unit (SVU) charged him with corrupt practices, had surrendered before a court last month.

Prasad and other accused face charges of having hatched criminal conspiracy to embezzle more than Rs30 crore of the government funds for fictitious works related to getting answer booklets, books and other items printed without any demand or need at the university. The SUV has also charged the accused with having allotted the contract for printing works to favoured people without floating any tenders.

(The views are the author’s own/Main picture courtesy Pixabay)