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Govt should respect the autonomy of higher education institutes: GD Parikh

With time, growing numbers and the resultant overcrowding in institutions, or issues like that of the medium of instruction, may be expected, wrote GD Parikh in 1953.

The educational policies of the Indian Union and of some of the state governments have been responsible recently for raising the issue of academic freedom. The Universities (Regulation of Standards) Bill, circulated by the Ministry of Education to the universities for eliciting their opinion, came in for a strong criticism from these bodies on the ground that it threatened their autonomy and was likely to jeоpardise academic freedom. 

In UP, a controversy seems to be growing around the issue of interference by the state government in the working of the universities. In Bombay, a Bill to consolidate the law relating to the University of Bombay has been published and has come in for criticism on the ground of its failure to concede the autonomy of the university. These and similar other developments are likely to focus increasingly the attention of the people on the nature of the freedom of the institutions of higher education. The purpose of this note is to analyse briefly this problem and to bring out possible directions in which it can be tackled, given our concern for promoting the democratic way of life.

To formulate a clear definition of academic freedom and to indicate its precise limitations is a difficult task, not perhaps altogether free from controversy. What can better be attempted is a general description of it, which may serve a useful purpose in tackling problems pertaining to it on a practical level. It is generally recognised that such freedom is essential for institutions working at all the different levels of the educational pyramid. 

Although the respective spheres of ‘guidance’ and ‘spontaneity’ and the relation between the two at the early levels of education may be a matter of difference of opinion, prevention of indoctrination is a point of general agreement. At the same time, the responsibility of the public authority, national, regional or local, has generally been viewed as more direct at these levels, and a certain amount of control in their behalf as unavoidable. Instruction tends to become education, ‘method’ begins yielding place to ‘content,’ which again later comes to serve the purpose of promoting the quest of truth as we proceed higher up in the educational structure........

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