DRAFT NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY 2019 : FATE OF NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITIES

The Draft National Education Policy, 2019 (hereinafter NEP) has been framed with the aim of establishing quality higher educational institutions that are multidisciplinary in nature which makes the young minds of India not only ready for the employment landscape of future but also transforms them into responsible citizens who would eventually build a matured community. The NEP aims at increasing the Gross Enrolment Ratio (hereinafter GER) in the higher educational institutions from 25% to at least 50% by 2035. (MHRD, 2019)

The draft talks at length about the menaces created by the fragmentation of higher educational institutions which has led to too much early specialization and streaming of students into discipline. This fragmentation has restricted the growth of liberal education and quality multidisciplinary research in the country. The draft aims at consolidating and restructuring the existing intuitions to make them multidisciplinary and build new ones. (MHRD, 2019) This goal of the NEP is in contravention of the structure of the various National Law Universities (hereinafter NLUs) in the country.  (CLAT, 2017)

The NLUs were created with the vision of revamping the standard of legal education in the country which was in the state of shambles and to produce quality lawyers who would be reminiscent of the glorious past of the country that had produced legends in the field of law. This vision led to the creation of 18 NLUs all across the country that was supposed to be the holy shrine of legal education in the country.  The institutions were to be the hub of Indian legal research much to the likes of its American counterparts who play a critical role in determining the legal policy of the country. However, the Indian dream was peculiar like the country itself, it decided to go for a system of higher education institution which is fragmented and more focused towards law as against the multidisciplinary university model followed by US and rest of the world.

However, the researches have shown that this dream turned out to be counterproductive. (Ministry of Higher Education, 2019) This is the era of multidisciplinary education. Segregating the law students from other disciplines has created a generation of lawyers whose skills are inept to solve the problems of the contemporary age. There are many areas of science, medicine, technology, and social sciences that interacts with law – law of outer space, medical negligence, criminology, international law, Laws of Intellectual Property, Cyber Law etc. To understand the nuances of these fields, it is pertinent that the lawyers, as well as the judges, have some idea about these disciplines. This is only possible in an academic space that is flexible enough to allow the students to interact with students from other disciplines with the help of interdisciplinary projects, seminars, and collaboration.

Secondly, the NEP aims at reducing the silos that have been created in our education system. Silos mean that students from one discipline are restrained from taking the courses from other disciplines. As the NEP states one of its goals to phase out all single stream HEIs to move towards multidisciplinary HEIs that would be flexible enough to do away with these silos and encourage the education of liberal arts i.e. knowledge of many arts, on the lines of historic universities like Nalanda and Takshashila.  (MHRD, 2019)

It would be interesting to see how the government implements this goal of restructuring the universities with respect to the NLUs.

Thirdly, it is the goal of the NEP to increase the access of students in higher education by opening-up multidisciplinary quality universities in areas which are socially and economically disadvantaged. This is also an important move with respect to NLUs as these universities are generally based in the capital cities of various states. Moreover, there exists a number of biases within NLUs with respect to the states in which they are established. Legal education is incomplete without a proper practical training given to the students in terms of internships in courts, law firms, NGOs and corporate bodies. Students studying in NLUs that are based in less developed areas like Patna, Guwahati, Raipur, etc. miss these glorious opportunities that are available to NLUs based in metros because of the lack of institutions located in the B towns of India. When NEP talks about creating institutions in socially-economically disadvantaged areas, the government will have to take into consideration this important aspect of legal education.

Fourthly, NEP also talks about revamping the existing curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and student support. While revamping the legal education a lot of effort should be made to ensure that the practical experience in the field of law is more important than the lecture system. As a result of which a lot of emphases should be given on practical learnings which many NLUs in the present environment are not doing.

Fifthly, NEP aims at granting more autonomy to the teachers and to the institutions and to restructure the regulatory structure to allow the excellent and innovative institutions in the country (including private institutions) to thrive. This is a welcoming goal from the perspective of private law universities in the country that are already multidisciplinary in nature and are doing a better job than many NLUs but they are restrained from growing due to excessive regulation by the government. Autonomy given to the teachers would allow teachers with innovative methods to join the field of academia which otherwise is considered to be drab by many bright minds.

Sixthly, NEP emphasizes on the role of the research in inculcating critical thinking abilities in students and teachers. The research funding of the government is given only to a few institutions in the country. NEP envisions to create a system of research funding which is transparent and peer-reviewed. This would create an incentive for the teachers as well the students to research more. It also proposes to establish a National Research Foundation for promoting research in the country. This is also a welcome move because the NLUs are producing lawyers who are choosing the corporate field over academia and research. The legal education is in the dearth of good faculties and this move would attract good candidates to choose the field of academia. Also, this would bring the NLUs closer to the dream of being the hub of legal research in the country.

 At the end I would like to conclude that the adoption of NEP will have a number of significant effects on the discipline of law. It would be very interesting to see as to how the fate of NLUs is decided. Although the number of law universities in the country is ever-increasing, the quality is not going up. It is to be noted that none of the law universities in the country feature in times higher education ranking. Moreover, India's name is not included in the law category in the subject wise list of universities. (Times Higher Education, 2019)This throws a grim light on the status of legal education in the country. In my view, the adoption of the NEP in a proper way would be crucial in determining the future of Indian legal education.

References

CLAT. (2017). Clatconsortiumofnlu.ac.in. Retrieved from https://clatconsortiumofnlu.ac.in/

MHRD. (2019). mhrd.gov.in. Retrieved from https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/.../Draft_NEP_2019_EN_Revised.pdf

Ministry of Higher Education, M. (2019). NIRF. Retrieved from https://nirfcdn.azureedge.net/2019/pdf/Report/IR2019_Report.pdf

Times Higher Education. (2019). The World University Ranking. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2019/subject-ranking/law#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats

SHREYA

PhD Law