National Digital University — will it unify or alienate students?
Aims to bridge huge gap, upskill and lateral skill, and to bring safety in education. However, questions remain
Union Education and Skill Development Minister Dharmendra Pradhan
The central government stated in Budget 2022-23 it will establish a Digital University that will provide access to students “across the country for world-class quality universal education with personalised learning experience at their doorsteps”.
The Minister of State for Education, Dr. Rajkumar Ranjan Singh told the parliament last week that the University will be built on a networked hub-spoke model, with ICT expertise. The best public universities and institutions in the country will collaborate as a network, he said.
The Department of Higher Education, in consultation with University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and other stakeholders has already initiated the process.
According to the Union Education and Skill Development Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, an estimated 52.5 crore population are under the age bracket of 3-23 years, of which around 17.5 crore (about one-third) do not have access to education and skilling.
The need for such a university is dire, especially considering challenges like Covid. However, will it further fragment the quality of education in India or unify it remains to be seen.
The key challenge is the diversity of state boards in higher secondary education. The government says that the university will be made available in different Indian languages and ICT formats. This means state experts, who have studied and taught only what their state boards have made available, will be involved in the development of curriculum.
There lies the problem. States like Tamil Nadu have been resistant to even NEET citing lack of quality education for students to compete at the national level. They have consistently demanded the questions to be in Tamil, which could lead to leakage of questions, cause disparity in answers and thereby free marks or even cancellation of exams.
They insist on sticking to the local board marks as a key parameter for admission into higher education – this involves massive corruption and lack of merit-based standards (it may surprise you that only a very few in government offices (even the police and Labour office) in Chennai can communicate in English, let alone any other language like Hindi).
So, will the Digital University ever take the shape of a “world class” institution or will it be another tool among greedy corrupt politicians to fan the anti-India fire that is used to hide gross inefficiencies? That is the question that the stakeholders need to ask first.
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