Impact of New National Education Policy on Economics

Overall

Critical points:

·         Policy proposed to have a National Research Foundation to focus on the research funding within the educational system.

·         The proposed functions of NRF are: Bring in synergies between the stakeholders and research groups, create a mechanism for monitoring and mid-course corrections, and strengthen the linkages between universities and their counterparts at the global level will all be addressed.

·         Considering these functions of NRF, the main drawback of such foundation is that there is a chance that "certain research" will be recognized and these researches will only get fund through this centralized model. There is a chance of having "centre sponsored research to preserve the state interest"

·         In current scenario where autonomy of the existing institutions is under threat, NRF can be used as a tool to promote the center's interest in state institutions.

·         Policy identifies the early childhood care and education as an important factor in whole education chain. Policy takes effort to restructure and establish the regulatory set up to connect the early childhood educational institutions with remaining part.

·         But while focusing on the quality and access to early childhood education, policy doesn't focus on the issues of anganwadi sevak. The situation of anganwadi is not good at all at ground level. Infrastructure is not in good shape. The infrastructure is highlighted by the policy but the issue of human capital i.e. anganwadi sevak is not highlighted by the policy. Without considering teacher or anganwadi sevak as an important pillar in the system, the efforts to improve the early child education will become meaningless.

·         Policy recommends the high level changes in the whole classroom like making student friendly environment etc but how anganwadis are going implement by considering the fact

 

 

 

·         that there is huge problem on finance side. Policy doesn't talk about financial constraints and the solution for that.

·         Policy recognizes the socio eco background as an important factor behind early childhood education.

·         Policy also recognizes the importance of the local community, volunteers and social workers. But how to incentivize the local community is not discussed by the policy. Assuming that community will take a part in the process, without providing the incentive to the community to take a part in the policy

·         As far as higher education system is concerned, the existing differentiation of the universities will be changed and three types of higher educational institutions will be existed: research university, teaching university and colleges. Colleges will have power to grant the degrees. The previous differentiation of universities like deemed to be university', 'affiliating university', 'unitary university' etc will be abolished. Universities will be identified only as public, private, or private-aided. The higher educational institutions will be restructured as multidisciplinary institutions.

·         Traditionally, our higher education institutions are in isolation. For example, there is no such practical link between Mumbai University and let say Shivaji University, Kolhapur. Same apply for IITs and other institutions. Now after restructuring the HEI into three time, even it is continuous i.e. college can become teaching university and teaching university can become research university, it will isolate the HEI from each other. Under the name of autonomous colleges, are we isolating colleges from universities? Universities are the place where all new innovative things come. Ideal then it is responsibility of universities to pass these things to the colleges. Now with new categorization, it is difficult in reality to pass the knowledge from university i.e. from research university to teaching university and from teaching university to the colleges.

·         The policy focuses on the multi-disciplinary research. According to policy, multi-disciplinary colleges are those who offer one or two courses in humanities and arts. But this doesn't solve the purpose of the multi-disciplinary research (which means combininor involving several academic disciplines professional specializations in an approach to a topic or problem). To become a multi-disciplinary institutions, college might start sub-standard courses.

·         From having multiple entry exit, early child care and education to restructuring the HEI, policy recommends long term solution but the country is in crisis as far as employment is concerned. Employability of student is questionable and policy doesn't have any new short term immediate solution for this problem.

·         Interestingly policy identifies and highlights the role of the public sector in education while on contradictory, government has taken steps to privatize the education. The implementation of the policy assuming the previous steps taken by the government is questionable.

 

In Economics

After the formation of National Research Foundation, research will be encouraged in all field. Therefore Economics which has a potential to bring change lacks the proper research. But NRF will encourage the research in the Economics.

Second important is that the main focus of the NEP is to have multi-disciplinary education. In Economics multi-disciplinary research can be done on large scale. Economics has some established link with other subjects like political science, psychology, sociology, social sciences, basic sciences (like neurology), mathematics, commerce, technical subject etc. Economics will be the one subject which will be benefited more. And this will produces more matured and high quality research. Now a day, behavior economics, neuroeconomics, political economy are the main areas of the research abroad. Multi-disciplinary research will encourage same kind of research in India.

After giving status of research university to the centrally fund universities, these university will also focus more on the research on such subject as currently there are interested but are unable to do that since lack of proper incentive from government.

Mutliple exit entry option will encourage only those student to study economics who like the subject. That will again create positive externality in overall development.

According to the NEP, institutions will have also power to award degree at their own. Therefore institutions like Madras School of Economics, Centre for Development Studies will get that power to award the degree. That will help them to have more research scholar at Campus as currently Phd is awarded by the Madras University or Central university or JNU for CDS.

One potential problem as mentioned above, is that the redefinition of the institutions, research universities and teaching universities might create the isolation. That will increase the disparity between same degree i.e. BA Economics awarded by Research university, teaching university and institutions.

 

 

Reference

Draft National policy 2019