As we climbed the stairs to the conference room we were allocated, our eyes tried to avoid the sight of broken doors, rooms flooded with reams of paper, filthy toilets and dying plants in an inner court surrounded by walls with peeling paint. Once our hosts realized our group was too big to fit into their relatively modern conference room, we were ushered into a large lecture room where we were warmly welcomed by 2 professors from the university - the director of the International Center (a tiny elderly woman named Dr. Indira) and the director of the newly formed Gandhi Center for Peace and Conflict Result ion (our official host institution).
Dr. Indira proceeded in perfect British English to tell us about the school and interject her strong opinions as to the rapid changes taking place in it. The students were informed that in spite of what they have seen the university is considered one of the finest while struggling to maintain its stature due to lack of government funding (mostly being directed now at schools of engineering and technology where the biggest job growth is occurring). Quoting from Shakespeare's critic, Sir Johnson, she talked about "Quibble" having a great place at a university and something that is also, she notes, that our Scholarship represents.
The university, she told us, is relatively new, having been established in 1857 and modelled after London University as a liberal arts and science school. Everything was copied from the British, even the exam questions!
In the mid 70's the university was changed to a teaching and research school and graduate studies were offered. Further changes took place in the mid 90's when the university introduced the American credit system and the university was detached from its British heritage. That led to a bigger emphasis on political science, for example, than philosophy and literature (an important point to her, since she is an English professor!). For the first time professors got to know each other since the new system encouraged an inter-disciplinary approach to education. However, lots of confusion entered into the system as well. She called this "a revolution in the Indian education system."
In the year 2000, the international centers were created and she was put in charge of one of them. The university is striving to not only bring in more international students and scholars, but allow their own staff and students to go abroad. She herself has been a Fulbright visiting scholar twice.
At this point, once done with the "official introduction", this little woman started voicing her opinion on various subjects. Her first controversial comment was on how the revolutions in higher education as well as in industry in her country represent "the new colonialization of India". She talked about how India's new Finance minister who is presiding over India's tremendous industrial growth has deemed universities such as this one as creating "unemployable students". In her particular fiend of English, she claims that new attempts to introduced "soft skills" into the curriculum (a term we have heard over and over again at the various businesses we visited as core to their training)which now include "spoken English" and "foreign language acquisition."
The streets of all cities in India are now full with private institutions that are "industry friendly" that pose a great threat to her English department. Her conclusion was that "government policies are rosy, but implementation us very very hard." (This notion of India instituting many new policies at once in order to reform the country while having a difficult time following up with implementation is a very common theme among scholars and industry leaders).
Students and industry members have entered the board rooms of universities to help them "catch up" with modern time, she told us. Yet, the American notion of student appraisals, all based on American criteria, has scared some of the teachers. She herself did not feel comfortable knowing that students are asked about their professors' efficient use of technology since she dos to use any in her classes..."So I improvise, and my students luckily understand," she said with a big smile.
She then went on to blast the "Commercialization of Education" where scientists at the university have found a market for their knowledge while liberal arts professors have become "second class citizens"... But in the case of the English department, one thing that has kept them popular is the fact that knowing English well is "an elitist badge" and 90% of students see English as a "mobility ticket". Yet they want to learn "international English" and not the English she was trained to use and teach. And since the educational system has been liberalized, the universities now have "different" students than before, so she has become a minority...
As Dr. Indira (whose name means appropriately "thunder"), bid us - "migratory birds" as she called us - goodbye, I wanted to hug her... After 32 years of teaching under very difficult circumstances, she is still a fighter :)
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