There was a time ~ albeit not very long ago ~ when the term, higher education, (HE), meant chiefly teaching educational programmes at higher (postsecondary) levels in diverse disciplines and academic research conducted in educational institutions such as colleges and universities funded, in large part, by the state for promotion and cultivation of such precious public goods as scientific (original) inventions, new knowledge, new theoretical/analytical discovery and insights into major dimensions of human history, society, arts and culture. Unlike primary or secondary schools which impart universal basic education, the HE-arena was historically supposed to be thronged by those who happen to have not only proven intellectual superiority but also an innate thirst for deeper knowledge/truth and its persistent scholarly pursuits. This is how the HE-system has been, for long, perhaps until the 1970s, a distinguished, sustainable and steady source of overall societal progression and flourish ~ scientifically, technologically, socially, politically and culturally.

However, there has been an unpalatably skewed participation in HE by elite and socio-economically well-off sections of population ~ a fact which has reflected, for long, a social injustice rooted in the economic and political systems as a breeding-ground of perennial inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. Lately ~ especially over the post-WWII decades ~ many concerted criticisms and analyses of this historical inequity in traditional HE have been voiced chiefly from political standpoints and mainly by socio-political activists. However, these ca – mpaigns for greater equality in HE in terms of participation of all classes and castes seems often to remain oblivious to the historic fact that it is only the intellectually able and innately academic-minded candidates, and not other members even of the elite and wealthy families, that used to get admission to institutions of higher learning and research.

Advertisement

Although this reflects squarely a top priority that used to be traditionally accorded to the maintenance of intellectual excellence and standards of HE, this should by no means be construed as an alibi for stark social inequity manifest in a disproportionately meagre participation of candidates from socio economically weaker sections of whom many naturally are born with no less intellectual potential and innately academic inclinations than their counterparts from well-to-do households. Most of the former group remain deprived of HE, because their households cannot afford to spare even a single adult family member ~ however academically brilliant and motivated ~ for higher learning for even a single year without working and contributing to the survival of the family itself.

Advertisement

Therefore, there has........

© The Statesman