PATNA: With the recent state cabinet’s approval for the establishment of separate medical and engineering universities along with the sports university, Aryabhatta Knowledge University (AKU) faces a bleak future.
Established with much fanfare in 2010 by chief minister Nitish Kumar himself, AKU was supposed to govern all the professional institutions, including medical and engineering colleges, of the state more efficiently, ensuring their all-round development. Consequently, all the 54 engineering colleges and 14 medical colleges (both private and government) running under different conventional universities in the state were brought under the umbrella of AKU. Besides, some other professional colleges of nursing and education were also attached to AKU.
However, even before the institutions could make some satisfactory progress under their new master, the chief minister himself decided to create separate universities for medical and engineering education. Now, after the establishment of these new universities, AKU will hardly be left with some institutions of substance, feel academicians.
The state government recently created four autonomous centres under AKU , but the university has very little to do with the administration of these study centres. All these centres, namely, Centre for Geographical Studies, Patliputra School of Economics, Centre for Journalism and Mass Communications and the Centre for River Studies, are headed by directors who would be the chief custodian of these autonomous centres.
AKU’s founder vice-chancellor Shambhu Nath Guha regretted that without paying much attention to AKU’s growth and development steps have been initiated for the establishment of new engineering and medical universities. A full-fledged centre of nanotechnology was started at AKU several years back, but it is still having only one faculty to teach M Tech and Ph D scholars of this centre. How can one expect good quality of teaching and research with just one teacher, he asked.
Guha opined that all the four centres established recently should have been placed under the full administrative control of AKU. Some other proposed centres of stem cell research and astrophysics should also be established under the administrative control of AKU itself, he added.
Patna University social science faculty’s former dean Nawal Kishore Chaudhary , however, felt that creating new engineering and medical colleges would hardly serve any useful purpose. Unless the government ensured appointment of qualified and competent teachers and provided the desired infrastructural facilities in technical institutions, there would be no significant change in the standard of these institutions. What did PMCH achieve when it was brought from PU to AKU and what would it further achieve when it is brought to yet another new medical university. Institutions matter and not the university, he said.
Moreover, Chaudhary pointed out, the idea of creating specialized universities also goes against the provision of the National Education Policy, 2020. For that matter, even IITs are now conducting teaching and research in social sciences, humanities and management in addition to engineering courses. He said instead of setting up new institutions the CM should try to strengthen the existing universities in the state. There is no harm if some specialized centres like that of sports and culture are set up in the state, he added.
