Careers360 World-class universities: What can India learn? | Page 12

Northwestern University The University of Edinburgh Duke University University college of London The University of Tokyo 4.36 4.37 4.48 4.71 5.55 University of British Columbia 5.67 University of michigan-ann arbor 5.79 University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign The University of Manchester The University of Edinburgh University of Oxford Columbia University New York University Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich 9,407 9,128 8,639 8400 8150 6971 6579 Interview | Prof Sukhadeo Thorat Autonomy is very important in making a university world class Q. What ails the higher education Q. What according to you is a world class university? A. You measure the quality of any university by measuring the research work that the university produces. You measure its quality by the teaching and learning processes it has adopted and the type of good quality students it is producing. Q. What role does autonomy play in making a university world class? A. Autonomy is very important in making a university world class, there should be least political interference and autonomy should be given to education institutions. What’s important is that along with autonomy you need accountability. sector presently? A. First of all is the issue of gross enrollment ratio in higher education, which is very low. It is just around 18 percent while in other countries it is not less than 30. The second major problem is the disparity on caste line, inter-religious disparity, rural and urban disparity, gender disparity as girls are lagging behind, the poor are lacking behind. Privatization of education has played a very important role in creating this disparity in the society. The third issue is the quality of universities in India, which gives a university its position in any ranking. The university’s quality depends on its infrastructure, availability of academic programmes; examination system, which should provide more opportunity to the students for creativity, and not memorizing. 43 Careers 360 January 2014 The universities which are good universities are the ones that have done experiments with the examination system. In India one such university is JNU, which has done so, as written test constitutes only 50% of the marks, rest of it is term paper, essay, review, etc. It gives a student opportunity to be creative and also enriches the academic programme. The critical problem with the higher education system