.png)
.png)
Universities today are at crossroads. There is immense criticism of the present university system as also there is advise as to how a university should be and what it is that it should do. Then there is an evolving future of work, the contrast between ‘real’ education and skills, and the millennial student and the millennial faculty.
Universities today have a multiplicity of things, they are expected to do. They are expected to do several things at a time. To quote a few it is supposed to educate the next generation to become meaningful to the society, generate new knowledge, be an engine of economic growth for the region, find solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, and be the ground for raising start-ups. There is nothing wrong with either of the expectations. The problem is that the universities have taken on, or perhaps had imposed on them by society, too many goals. And then comes the moot question, what happens to the fundamental purpose of a university that is – to educate.
The universities today have become service providers where the services are consumed by the students (customers). They consume these services by borrowing heavily in the hope that will get a good occupation which hopefully generates enough surplus to pay off these large loans. The services are extended to them by faculty whose primary effort is to minimise their loads and maximise their own opportunities. Above all of this we have a system which governs all this in the fashion of a factory model where the work output is measured by the hourly contribution of the participants of the system.
The Latin origin of the word ‘education’ is ‘educere’. It means to open up and lead forth, to open up minds to new perspectives and then lead them forward to a lifetime of learning.
If you go to a school today, you are in front of young kids, and you explain something to them in an interesting manner, they will have a question, perhaps questions. They will go on and on with their quest to know more. Contrast this with a normal class in a university. Students will be in the class bodily. A few might be texting, some might be on social media, an odd one may even be dozing off. The most will have their writing instruments ready to record what goes on in the class with a hope that the class will be over soon.
If you try and dwell on this contrast between young kids and college going ones, one starts wondering why the difference. Possibly, when you are young and in school, you are curious about something, you ask a question. By the time you get to an age of say 18 you discover that there is so much to know that you are overwhelmed and do not feel like going deeper and eventually, you know that it is all there on Google, so what is the point of asking a question? Then, once you are in college, you understand that you have to come out on top and ace the competition. Therefore, what is needed to be done for that with a minimum amount of effort is good enough. Why do more? And finally, due to the environment a student already feels like a customer and thinks, I am paying for a degree and not an education.
When the entire structure of the university, its teaching methods and evaluation matrices are setup to enforce this kind of thinking who can blame the student. We have not reached to this stage in a day. It has been a roller coaster ride of changing priorities and goals for a university for over last two centuries. The models, perceptions, practices, mindset’s are so deeply entrenched in the psyche that it is extremely difficult to make a change leave aside causing a difference. There are hundreds of successful experiments across the world to mitigate the issues, but they have mostly remained isolated and have failed to be mainstream.
How about imagining a blank slate and start to create a university? Imagining no context past, present or future, and driven by sole purpose to educate, shall we think of a university for the 21st century, a university that will facilitate its graduates to face the formidable problems of our century and equip them with tools to do that, and is also aimed at digital natives absorbed in a culture that promotes multitasking.
What would be the goals for such a university? What would be its institutional structure, and its curriculum? How will we deliver that curriculum?
Starting with the goal, it could be simple. Instead of an array of goals that a university takes up, let’s have a sole goal that it is to educate to open minds and lead ahead.
All modern universities have been designed on the unit of expertise. You get together a group of experts from a particular filed. Then you find a group of experts from other domain and then more domains. All these domains come along on one plane, the university campus.
Inherent by their character, they build silos around them. The more enthusiastic ones build taller silos so they can look down upon other domains and seek prominence and have more of those resources allocated to themselves. These taller silos are called departments in universities.
Now the icing on the cake. The departments are populated by PhDs. As we all know, getting a Ph.D. is an art of learning more about less and less until you know absolutely everything about nothing. Now all these people who all know the same thing that is nothing come together. They have not much to interact with each other, no motivation. Adding to this complexity, is the layers of faculty distinguished by their number of years of teaching experience and sometimes qualifications.
So the institutional structure should be such that there are no departments. The buildings are without departmental boundaries where members of faculty from distinct disciplines sit together. A science faculty sits with the design faculty and an engineering faculty sits with the faculty from humanities. Basically, no edges or boundaries separated by disciplines or separation by how many years that faculty has been teaching.
The term professor itself means, to profess. How about we have faculty who actually teach, who build an environment where there is a two-way communication and where the students and faculty in unison enrich the understanding of the subject matter being deal with.
The classrooms instead of being a place where there is a sage on the stage delivering some sermons which the subjects should faithfully listen and try and understand, how about we have classrooms meant for active learning where students sit in one large oval or a circle or they sit in small clusters around round tables and the faculty is at the centre of this arrangement encouraging students to think and discussing what is being thought in an active and inclusive manner.
Finally, what to teach. A liberal curriculum. Not liberal arts in its narrow meaning as another new discipline on the block. Liberal comes from libre, which means free. It’s what free people do. Hence a curriculum where the first half of the program is a set of interdisciplinary courses from broad disciplines which puts an effective foundation for young person which opens their minds to the intellectual tools that different disciplines have developed so they can synthesize those tools into a way of addressing the complex problems which are not going to be solved from a disciplinary perspective. This becomes the foundation for them from where to think, look beyond the horizon and prepare themselves for enquiry in to a particular direction.
The foundation curriculum could be a set of core courses which could be helpful to understand the societal needs, make use of digital technologies, understanding self, basic mathematics, sciences and economics.
Now the students are ready to explore further in the direction of their chosen pursuit. They may have started with something in their mind. After a grounding of a two year foundation, their minds are clearer and more determined about the path they wish to follow. There are several approaches that could be taken. The university could offer specialised pathways for the students to choose from. The pathways could be identified not on the basis of disciplines with the real problems of the world which are being experienced now or are anticipated in the future.
Alternatively, the students could think of a unique quest of their own. The university faculty could help them to develop that quest and determine a series of courses that they should take, the experiential learning that they should experience and other educational experiences they should be inspired with.
This entire experience is supplemented a real-world perspective and global exposure through interventions like internships, study trips, living in communities, collaboration with start-ups and more. Finally, it is capped with a major project.
How do we deliver this? Human beings are not designed for multitasking. We could be good at many things, but not good at doing many things at the same time. Hence it would be ideal, if the classes are conducted in a linear fashion instead of in a parallel manner. That means at a given time a student is learning one course only, for a given period of time and then moves on to another course. This approach would help bring in the required focus and spotlight on the subject. This could also pave way for bringing in the experiential component to the course delivery as the faculty need not worry about the students’ other schedule.
Now, with large numbers this may not be exactly possible to do. So one could try and have a mixed approach where in a term, certain courses are being run in a linear fashion and some courses are run parallel to the ones going on linearly.
About 2500 years back, Confucius said:
- Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I’ll remember.
- Involve me, and I’ll understand.
The modern university system while quoting Confucius often essentially operate on – Tell me, and I’ll forget. Adding a bit of “Show me, and I’ll remember” to it via PowerPoint presentations maybe a little better, but is ineffective.
The model, here is based on “Involving” the student. Here a student is enriched by learning from multiple disciplines and is facilitated by effective communication. Therefore they understand. Here lateral thinking is rewarded, collaboration is celebrated in lieu of competition, and failure is acknowledged to be vital on the journey of success.
