SFI Delhi State Convention Against UGC’s Blended Mode Of Education

SFI Delhi state committee held a state level convention on UGC’s proposal for a blended mode of education on June 2, 2021. The University Grants Commission has proposed a “blended mode of teaching and learning” through the notification it brought out on May 20, 2021. The notification and the rejoinder in the form of a ‘concept note’ argue for up to 40% of the syllabus of each course (other than SWAYAM courses) to be taught through online mode and the remaining 60% syllabus of the concerned courses to be taught in the offline mode. The convention saw 123 delegates participating from 36 colleges and universities in Delhi. The Convention had invited Prof. Abha Dev Habib, DUTA Treasurer and Prof. Surajit Mazumdar, Former Secretary, JNUTA to share their thoughts on the issue. The UGC has been sent a copy of the resolution approved by the delegates. The delegates argued that these moves are in service of MoE’s capitalist and communal masters at the expense of the academic quality and community. The following section from the resolution passed elaborates in detail about why the current notification should be read as the latest in the series of policy attacks on inclusive Public education structure of the country.

1. So-called “Student Centric” Model and the travesty of substituting classroom experience with online modules

The Draft Academic Bank of Credits Regulations, Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) Regulations notified in March 2021 and the most recent circular argues that it is a step towards a “student-centric” model focused on “students’ choice”. Nothing can be further from the truth. While the SWAYAM regulations made it mandatory for Universities to allow 40% of the credits to be collected from taking online courses, the recent notification wants to further erode the education experience and rigour by allowing 40% of each paper taught to be covered through online mode! Our knowledge of online learning and teaching during the COVID lockdown period of over a year tells us that it is highly unequal and inadequate. There is a constant realisation amongst the students that physical classroom teaching cannot be replaced. The surveys conducted by the AUD Students Council, the LSR Student Unions and SFI units in various DU Colleges clearly show the dissatisfaction of students with the online teaching and learning mode. One of the critical points identified was that Online teaching-learning reduces human interactions and truncates learning. Similar points have been raised even before the pandemic by students of Open Universities such as SOL and IGNOU. No serious education policymaker can expect that students will learn in-depth through listening to uploaded videos and course material to the same extent as live classroom interaction amongst diverse peers. Use of SWAYAM/MOOCs (MOOC stands for Massive open online courses) as the repository of courses for distance learning, or even as supplements that students can use, is an argument that can be accepted. However, to use them to empty out regular education is unacceptable. Moreover, these policy documents do not take any responsibility for the quality of the degree in terms of their meaningful composition and employability.

• Who can be a ‘Virtual Citizen’? Note on Digital Infrastructure and Divide

The proposed plan for blended mode is an “online driver model” preparing the younger generations to be responsible “virtual citizens”. The experiences over the past one year of online mode of teaching and learning need to be revisited to make a more informed opinion about the blended mode of education. There is a numbing silence towards the structural issues in the whole document, which must be addressed for any system that promises quality learning and teaching, let alone a system that hastily promotes online platforms. The problem of the digital divide has already received widespread attention in the past year. Students are struggling to cope with online education as they lack the resources and access to necessary infrastructure. There is a massive shortage of essential and sufficient lab equipment, internet connectivity and access to other requisite materials. Many students have limited or no access to digital infrastructure, studio facilities to record and produce, virtual labs, institutional support such as scholarships, academic journals and others. This has seriously impacted educational outcomes to the extent that various scholars have said that what India’s student community has experienced in the past year is, in effect, ‘de-education’. Many students are immediately affected by the pandemic, and UGC and MoE have not taken any constructive measures to provide substantive support. This has left many students on the verge of a mental breakdown. We can not forget the institutional murder of Aishwarya, a second-year student of B.Sc. (Hons) Mathematics at DU’s prestigious Lady Shri Ram College for Women, on November 2, 2020.

Although UGC mentions that necessary financial support and infrastructural support will be delivered to students at their homes, it does not note how this process will occur. Looking at the recent history where there have been consistent cuts on expenditure on public education, it would not be an overestimation to suggest that the government has no roadmap in terms of public sector intervention to address the structural issues manifesting as a ‘digital divide’ amongst students. In other words, these promises will prove to be another ‘jumla’. Therefore, we firmly believe that these moves will result in students ending up in much worse conditions to pursue their education.

• Re-imagining students as consumers, modules as commodities, and universities as business enterprises

The document, when read as a practical manifestation of the guidelines drawn out in the National Education Policy of 2020, brings out its true intentions. The UGC conceives education as a commodity, instead of public-good which should be provided to all.

The allowing of up to 40% of the course module to be taken up online defeats the continuity required by teachers to teach modules in a particular course. For example, in a paper on Political Economy taught at the BA Economic (H) degree, the student would be free to listen to 40% of the course module online. Continuity is required while teaching such a course, which the faculty keeps in mind while designing the course modules, which cannot be ensured. This will essentially lead to students getting half-baked, incoherent knowledge. This, therefore, serves as a disruption of the development of the student in terms of coherent and holistic understanding of a subject.

Secondly, students wanting certifications from the SWAYAM portal shall be registered and offered a certificate on successful completion of the course if they can pay a “little fee”. This makes no sense; when the student is already paying the fees for the university/school, why would they pay to access SWAYAM courses?

The essence of the matter is that the UGC imagines various modules as packets of a graded commodity. Just like in a mobile store, you get ‘plans’ containing data, call time, and messages; UGC seeks to provide the student with such a pack of varied components, which will not end up as a coherent stream of knowledge required to develop an understanding on a particular topic. Moreover, these ‘components’ or ‘modules’ will be quantified through credits. This means each module will be allotted a specific number of credits, and the student has to gather a certain number of credits to complete a course. This is problematic as there will be a pull amongst students to attain such credits by taking up disparate courses which can easily fetch credits. A minor form of such practice is carried out by students already; wherein many try to choose a minor subject to gather credits. However, allowing the gathering of credits even within particular courses makes a mockery of the quality of the degree.

Thirdly, the imagining of education modules as commodities is linked to other aspects of the NEP. It envisions universities to fend for themselves and provide libraries, computers, and the internet. Moreover, just like the NEP, the blended mode promotes the taking of modules as independent parts of a course. This means the fees structure will be determined according to the credits of a course. This formula has been experimented with in universities such as AUD and has invariably resulted in high fees. To draw an analogy, if you can afford it, you buy a mobile plan with components, and if not, you buy a basic plan. Similarly, suppose the parents of a student can afford to gather many credits through offline mode or can afford the money to gather more credits. In that case, a better module can be constructed by the students for themselves. However, if your parents are not wealthy, you will have to settle for a basic and cheap module. This is an abomination of the Right to Education and will prove to be a potent tool of class reproduction. The children of the rich can attain better education and perform better in job markets. In contrast, the children of the poor will be thrown into the reserve army of the unemployed, who will compete amongst themselves for low-skill, low-paying jobs.

• Accelerating Privatisation by reducing input costs

In the above discussed points, it has been pointed out that the ‘Blended Mode’ does not have any real and substantive benefit in terms of increasing the quality and accessibility of education resources. Our past experiences show that it will only further the processes of exclusion and amplify inequalities. However, why is the UGC adamant about pushing this mode? We identify one such reason as the intention of the government to privatise the country’s education system further. The crucial role of ensuring a significant portion of courses and modules through SWAYAM and similar online portals is to reduce the need for universities to hire more faculty. This has different implications for Public and Private universities in terms of cost. For the public universities, this puts into jeopardy the jobs of ad-hoc teachers who are already facing pressures from the precarious form of employment they are in. DUTA has pointed out that the current notification jeopardises the livelihood of over 4500 teachers in DU! For the private universities, it allows the investor to run this educational institute (which for him or her is a mere business enterprise) at a lower working capital since the need to employ teachers will be less. This is a cause of concern since the youth unemployment rate had increased from 5.4% in 2004-05 to 17.8% in 2017-18. This would mean a proliferation of low-budget, sub-standard private universities. Moreover, the deadly combination of cost-cutting in terms of employing more teachers and the high credit-wise fees charged would ensure super-profits for the corporates investing in the education sector at the expense of teachers and students. Moreover, there is no mention of how reservation policy will be implemented in the appointment of teachers for the SWAYAM courses. Privatisation also has a negative effect on job seekers from historically backward communities due to the non-applicability of reservation policy in the private sector. This will in turn lead to discrimination in terms of number of appointments as well as differential wage rates.

• An attempt to withdraw government intervention to solve structural issues plaguing our education system

The making of SWAYAM/MOOCs as compulsory parts of course modules is also an attempt by the government to invent a cheap, short-cut excuse to roll back public funding to education. The reduction of teaching workload and subsequently eschewing the need to hire more teachers and construct and maintain university infrastructure for physical classroom teaching allows the government to show that it is serious about education without investing enough. The limits of online teaching through uploading video lectures and modules have been discussed before. The government does not want to focus on such issues and instead wants to argue that it has provided access to education to anyone with a smartphone and internet access through the provision of modules online. This, clubbed with other measures in the NEP such as multiple-exit points, is a part of the larger strategy of the government to hide its failures of ensuring reduction in the drop-out rate.

In order to improve Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), from 20% at present to 30%; the Government of India has felt that conventional mode of education shall alone not be sufficient to achieve this goal and has decided to utilise ICT in a big way, in education. However, merely increasing enrollment is not enough as quality is essential for education to serve as a valuable tool for critical thinking and social mobility. As argued before, the online mode is not sufficient, especially for students who belong to the lower class or women who are mostly caught up in household chores and carework. It is well known that the only way the drop-out rate can be substantially reduced is through government provision of scholarships, improvement of infrastructure to ensure better quality education, and providing support to families from the poor and marginalised communities. However, it has instead surrendered to the neoliberal logic of rolling back public-sector investment even on essential social goods such as education. The SWAYAM model is merely a smoke-screen behind which the government seeks to hide.

• An attempt to tender democratic institutions like Student and Teacher Unions toothless

The aversion of the current government (and many others worldwide, especially in the Global South) to democracy and democratic institutions is well known.

The Blended-mode of education has the desired effect for such anti-democratic governments on two fronts. First, shifting 40% of the module online means that students will effectively spend less time on campuses. The student unions across the country, especially those of progressive nature and critical of the government, derive their strength through social and political interactions with students in such spaces. A space to make the new generation of students aware through interactions within campuses. Reduction of both spaces and the number of time students spend in such places will ensure the weakening of the tendency of students to come together and demand for their rights. Moreover, university campuses have been a keyspace in which students become aware and get involved in more significant issues. The outpour of solidarity from the student community to the anti-CAA movement is a case in point. The government seeks to curb such spaces where critical thought, dissent and solidarity emerge. Secondly, for teachers, this will effectively mean the lowering of their bargaining power. This is because not only the number of teachers will reduce, but at the same time, the acceptance towards teaching and learning through SWAYAM/MOOC essentially means that the high skill-job of a teacher is no longer irreplaceable. Therefore, teachers’ potency of collective actions, such as when they call a strike, will have a more negligible effect since the administration can easily switch to an online teaching mode through the SWAYAM portal.

• A policy attack on Federalism And Academic Autonomy

Another concern is that the statutory bodies of universities would lose control over the way course structures are designed, and thus differences according to perspectives and regions cannot be accounted for. Over the years, demand for granting more ‘academic autonomy’ is now being finally and decisively abandoned. NITI Ayog’s ‘three-year action agenda’ (2017) and UGC’s Graded Autonomy Regulations (2018) formally spoke of autonomy for HEI’s. NEP 2020 continues with the same refrain. But the ‘spirit of autonomy’ will be primarily predicated by ‘financial autonomy’, a euphemism for fast-track privatisation.

The Constitution makers had placed education under the state list in the Schedule. The emergency and the 42nd amendment to the Constitution transferred this from the ‘state’ to the ‘Concurrent List’. The SWAYAM model is a technological fix to intensify centralisation, where critical inputs and various perspectives in classroom teaching modules will be muted. The government, through this, seeks to make university merely a site of a reproduction of ruling class ideology.

• A threat to the project of progressive nation-building

While progressive nation-building involves a wide array of processes, the coming together of students from varied backgrounds, regions, and social locations in spaces like universities have proved to be a potent tool in the arsenal. India, with its huge variety of culture and lived experiences, contains a risk of inter-community conflict. The coming of the new generations in universities often provides much-needed exposure to students to understand the concerns and issues of other students. For example, classroom teaching often helps us realise caste, class, patriarchy, regional exclusion, which are pervasive in our society. This realisation is not merely to consume academic material, but more importantly, through the active process of sitting together, coming in dialogue, correcting and understanding opinions, and constant everyday interaction with our classmates. This is crucial for the unity of a diverse country. The reduction of time spent by students in such space will invariably lead to the isolation of individuals from each other and the reproduction of biases and prejudices that could have been broken if physical teaching and learning continued. Therefore, for a heterogeneous country, with different histories and culture, opportunities and safe spaces of interaction amongst people from different cultures are crucial for ensuring national integration. The process of isolation, in which such attempts are shifting a significant part of the course online, will increase social alienation and isolation and help reproduce the othering of communities and prejudices. No wonder fascist organisations like the RSS push forward with this mode of education and the NEP with such enthusiasm. It becomes crucial for people who care and love the anti-colonial democratic ethos and solidarities to ensure that university spaces continue to exist. Students should be provided with an education model that encourages their participation in such places instead of learning in isolation.

The above note, as accepted by the State Level convention highlights the various facets of the issue SFI Delhi State Committee finds with the Blended Mode of Education. The following are the demands –

1. To roll back the notification forcing universities to adopt SWAYAM/MOOC courses as primary mode to complete a section course.
2. To give the university academic autonomy in terms of creatively using the resources made available by these platforms with a guideline that the SWAYAM platform must be envisioned as a supplementary aid to physical classroom teaching and learning. As noted, the online resources must not be seen as an alternative to physical teaching in a classroom setting.
3. To involve various stakeholders of the academic community, such as, teacher and student unions to deliberate the ways in which technological aids can enhance the existing physical teaching centric model.
4. Any decision must recognise the diversity of the people, and thus seek to preserve the federal structure of the country. More space should be given to the states to take in account regional needs, culture and histories.
5. A major drawback of the NEP has been the manner in which it has been pushed by the government without having proper discussion with the academic community and the parliament. We urge that a serious, even if lengthy, demoratic deliberation must take place over the lacunas and drawbacks in the National Education Policy involving all stakeholders before implementing it.
6. The aim of the notification, and the NEP is to provide access to education resources. The UGC and the Central Government must focus on expanding physical infrastructure in terms of campuses, universities, laboratories, and libraries in a time-bound fashion.
7. A key aim of the notification, as well as the NEP is to lower the drop-out rate. Instead of the ill-conceived ABC notification, the UGC must urge the government to focus on addressing structural issues which are a primary driver of drop-outs. Financial aids must be extended to all students to the extent that they are not dependent on the fluctuations of family income. COVID scholarship must be provided to students whose parents have passed away due to COVID immediately. UGC must ensure the timely dispersal of existing scholarship and fellowships.
8. To increase the budgetary allocation to education to concretely meet such an expansion process. The UGC must urge the central government to present a concrete plan of action, including staggering up of budgetary allocation to education,  in the parliament.