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Higher Education In India Needs Proper Policy

By Dr. Syed Arshad Hussain

06 February, 2014
Countercurrents.org

The undergraduate education in India is booming (Nature, vol 472, 24 – 26, 2011) and government is increasing investment towards research and higher education. However, lack of quality education as well as proper policy remains the major concern till today. Accordingly, Indian science is lagging behind not just developed nations, but also newly industrialized countries such as China.

According to a recent scientometric analysis (Curr. Sci. vol 99 no 5 577 – 587, 2010) number of publications from Indian institutions in higher impact journals like Nature, Science, Cell etc is very poor. Almost all top Asian universities published more than the Indian institutions. Although publication in high quality journal always reflects the quality of research in science & technology of a country.

University Grants Commission, the controlling body of Indian universities recently launches academic performance indicator (API) based system for recruiting and promoting professors in college and universities [http://www.ugc.ac.in/policy/englishgazette.pdf]. The API score for paper in referred journal is 15 and would be augmented as follows: for (i) indexed journals – 5 points (ii) paper with impact factor (IF) between 1 & 2 by 10 points (iii) paper with IF between 2 & 5 by 15 points (iii) paper with IF between 5 & 10 by 25 points (iv) for a paper in non referred journal API score is 10. The API for joint publications will have to be divided. One can earn 10 API score presenting a paper in a seminar. This in turn will discourage collaborative research, as it will cause division of API score. Also the corresponding author and first author will share maximum points. eg. Suppose there are 4 author publishing a paper in a journal with IF 4. Then total API score = 30 (15+15). Out of which first author and corresponding author will share 60% = 18. The remaining two author will have 6 API score each. So publishing a paper in high impact (IF=4) journal 3 rd and 4th author get API 6 points. Whereas, publishing a paper in a non-referred journal (only with ISSN/ISBN) a single author can have 10 points. Even attending a national conference one can have API score 7.5 points. Now a days seminar is almost like a picnic, lots of seminars are being organized and there is hardly any quality control except top 1-2% of total seminar/conference held. Also there are lot of paid journal has come up. It is very easy to publish in these journals. Eventually people are trying to attend more seminars and to publish more paper in non referred journals to earn maximum score.

Therefore in order to fulfill the dream to be a developed nation India should frame proper policy to boost up the quality research and higher education in university and institutions. Otherwise quantity will reign over quality. In this regard, India may adopt proper research policies that have proved successful in other countries.

References:

1. A. Nayar, Nature, vol 472, 24 – 26, 2011

2. K. P. Raghuraman, R. Chander, G. Madras, Curr. Sci. vol 99 no 5 577 – 587, 2010

3. “The Gazette of India, September 18, 2010 (Bhadra 27, 1932) [Part III – Sec. 4] http://www.ugc.ac.in/policy/englishgazette.pdf

Dr. Syed Arshad Hussain (M.Sc. 2001 & Ph.D, 2007, Tripura University, India) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, Tripura University. His major fields of interest are Thin Films and Nanoscience. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow of K.U. Leuven, Belgium (2007-08). He received Jagdish Chandra Bose Award 2008-2009, TSCST, Govt. of Tripura; Young Scientist Research Award by DAE, Govt of India. He has undertaken several research projects. He has published 57 research papers in international journals and attended several scientific conferences in India and abroad. Email: [email protected], website: http://sahussaintu.wordpress.com/.

 



 

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