Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

770 Eric Trist
of the ‘affiliated’
colleges obtain financial assistance from charitable foundations,
public and private subscriptions or ‘founding’ bodies.
20. The separation of undergraduate teaching and post-graduate studies in
conjunction with the dispersion and rapid growth of undergraduate colleges has
been criticised both in India and by foreign commentators. The continuing
expansion of colleges and ‘universities’ within the various Indian States since
independence is seen as an expression of the aspirations of the ‘lower’ castes to
improve their social and economic position. This they attempt to accomplish
by obtaining the ‘pass’ to government, professional and semi-professional
employment - a statutorily recognized degree. In doing so they imitate the
traditional pattern of upper caste careers under British rule. The university
comes to be perceived in a vocational context as a degree-giving body. This leads
to increasing demands for more ‘universal’ higher education as a matter of
social right and to over-concentration on the preparation and teaching of
examination programmes capable of being standardised across a large number
of quasi-independent units - the ‘colleges’. Post-graduate teaching and research
cease to be regarded as required in a university. Even where they are carried on,
their physical and administrative separation from the colleges and their limited
scale reduce their impact.
21. But, if a system of mass higher education has to be rapidly developed, is
the Indian solution so different from the American, where state colleges and
liberal arts colleges have been brought into existence alongside universities ?
Even the British have a reserve system of higher education in their technical
colleges. The Eastern European countries could only simultaneously develop a
system of tertiary education and a research capability by keeping them sharply
distinct in the early stages.
22. Among suggestions for improvement it is notable that the proposal of the
UGC gives priority to ensuring the best conditions for the few while allowing the
expansion of the colleges to proceed. It advocates setting up centres of advanced
study in selected departments or attached institutes embodying a mix of post-
graduate training and research. Such centres should be limited in number to
enable them to be staffed by a sufficient body of eminent scholars. They would
become ‘centres of excellence’. By 1965 twenty-six had been set up.
23. At the post-graduate level a considerable amount of training and research
is carried out in semi-autonomous bodies. Examples in the social sciences are:
the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics at Poona; the Tata Institute of
Social Sciences at Bombay; the Institute of Social Sciences at Agra, Benares
and Lucknow; and a number of agro-economic research centres. They are
linked to the university system at the post-graduate level. Their members may
hold chairs in university departments and offer courses leading to higher degrees.
Such institutes draw support from a variety of sources, public and private.
A proportion of their work is on contract for user-organizations. None are of
any great size. In 1963 the Gokhale Institute had a scientific staff of 26 and an
administrative staff of 8; the Tata Institute, a full-time scientific staff of 9, a
part-time staff of 4. Both the Tata Institute and the Gokhale Institute were
private foundations set up during the period of colonial rule. The latter now