Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) vice chairman Rajan Gurukkal P.M. has sounded a note of caution on the Higher Education Department instruction issued to universities and affiliated colleges to choose from a bouquet of “new generation, multi-disciplinary courses” recommended by an expert panel.
Terming the move inappropriate, the noted educationist said the government should ideally list priority areas among academic disciplines, rather than thrusting courses through orders.
Issuing a list of undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) programmes mooted by Mahatma Gandhi University Vice Chancellor Sabu Thomas-chaired committee, the government recently instructed universities to call for applications from government and aided colleges to launch the courses.
Prof. Gurukkal broached the topic amid growing resentment among a section of academicians who warned against a “top-down approach” that imperilled universities’ autonomy. Even while the government maintained that the list was only suggestive, academics said new programmes and syllabi should ideally be evolved by statutory bodies, including the Board of Studies and the Academic Council after ascertaining the colleges’ facilities.
Multidisciplinary approach
The KSHEC vice chairman also cautioned against instituting UG programmes in specialised branches of basic sciences or interdisciplinary science and technology fields. UG programmes in sub-disciplines such as biochemistry, biotechnology, and microbiology should no longer be encouraged as they required strong knowledge base in basic sciences.
“All new academic programmes in emerging areas of knowledge must be designed in a cross-disciplinary perspective. Nevertheless, programmes in basic sciences, including social sciences and humanities, are important, but all new UG programmes in them must be multidisciplinary,” he said.
According to him, university-level academic programmes in emerging fields of super-specialisation must be research oriented and must be offered as PhD programmes rather than as PG diploma programmes.
Prof. Gurukkal added that conventional UG programmes in physics, chemistry, and biological science must be turned into integrated science programmes with mathematics and fundamentals of earth and environmental sciences for BS/BSc Honours as combinations.
Suggesting various study areas, he viewed anthropology as the most suitable elemental discipline that could be combined with a wide array of fields such as linguistics, arts, archaeology, history, economics, and political science at the UG and PG levels.
