Academics urge govt. to reverse move to shut down universities

A group of academics from Mysuru have urged the State government to reverse its move to shut down nine of the ten newly opened universities in the State.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Mahadev, the retired vice chancellor of ASBM University, Bhubaneshwar, and a former English professor at the University of Mysore, said the State government was to be blamed for opening the ten universities without consulting education experts solely for “political gain.”

The second mistake of the government was its failure to allocate necessary financial resources for these universities. “Now, making matters worse, the present government has proposed to shut down nine of the ten universities for financial reasons, prioritising political benefits over education. This is an even graver mistake,” said Dr. Mahadev.

Instead of closing down the universities, the State government should allocate more financial resources for higher education and fill vacant positions in these universities, he said.

The academics pointed out that the newly opened universities required financial assistance of ₹342 crore, which was not a burden on the State government.

Beyond financial concerns, Dr. Mahadev said the government must consider the issue from educational, social, and developmental perspectives.

According to UGC regulations, every district should have a university by 2047, and steps must be taken towards realising the goal now, said the academics.

While there are 42 government universities in Karnataka, there are 27 private universities, including 17 in Bengaluru alone. “But, students from rural or socio-economically backward groups do not benefit from these private universities,” he said.

Also, the UGC mandates that every university must have 250 acres of land but these private universities do not meet this criteria and many other standards, he said, adding that an alarming number of students in the age group of 17 to 23 are dropping out of higher education.

Though the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav proposes to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education from the current 28% to 100 %, the Centre has reduced its allocation for higher education to 8% from the earlier 14%. The State government was allocating only 4%, he said.

While pointing out that there were a total of 85 postgraduate centres across private and government colleges in the University of Mysore’s region, Dr. Mahadev said that none of the centres were following a proper staff recruitment programme.

Undergraduate teachers were assigned to handle classes for postgraduate students, and they were not even paid full salaries. If these postgraduate centres were shut down, university enrolment may increase, the academics said.

Contending that there had been no faculty recruitments in the older universities for the last several years, leaving many posts vacant, Dr. Mahadev said this had led to a decline in enrolment for higher education, forcing a large number of students to seek education abroad.

The U.S., which has a population of 300 million, has 3,500 universities, while India with a population of 1.4 billion has only 5,509 universities, the academics said while pointing to the need for having at least 10,000 universities if the country were to emerge as a global economic powerhouse.

S.R. Ramesh, K.P. Vasudevan, Prabhuswamy, and other academics were present on the occasion.