After being closed for two years due to COVID, the campuses of universities and colleges have started functioning again. Renowned central universities like Delhi University, JNU and BHU have opened their doors for general education. As per the instructions sent by the Central Government to the State Governments, all COVID related controls should now be removed.
Campuses have been opened in states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Telangana. While the student community is feeling relieved by the decision to open the campus, a large section of them is also facing some difficulties. Lakhs of students in our country have to take the help of private hostels or PGs. Students who do not live in hostels have to travel daily from their homes by bus or train. The expected preparations to keep the hostel ready before the decision to open the campus may not have been done.
Regarding the opening of campuses, the UGC had also issued an order last week saying that higher education institutions have been allowed to open campuses, conduct classes and examinations online or in the traditional mode, provided they are given by the central and state governments. Keep following the covid-instructions. The UGC has also released an 18-page directory, which states that before opening the campus, the state governments will have to decide whether the city, town or place where the campus is located is not affected by COVID.
The decision to open campus should be welcomed by all, but 3.84 crore students studying in 1,000 universities and 45,000 colleges of the country will now have to face big challenges as well. The two-year lockdown on the campus will be said to be an unprecedented event in the history of higher education. The question that will arise from time to time is that how will the unprecedented damage caused by campus lockdown to the education and education of crores of students be compensated?
This campus closure has affected 3.84 crore young students and 28 crore school students in India. This loss of education is a world-class problem. The official figures that the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF have published in a report about the current crisis in education in the world and the way to deal with it, are shocking. The report said that the loss of studies caused by COVID to students around the world will result in a loss of $ 17 trillion in their future earnings. This loss is equal to 14 percent of the annual GDP of the world and six times the current GDP of India. The report said that the governments of all countries of the world should make a ‘learning recovery plan’ to ensure that the generation of students going through the COVID period is made as qualified, competent and employable as the previous generations. This will require changes in existing curriculum, longer classes, and more effective teaching methods.
Have we prepared any ‘Learning Recovery Plan’ at the national level or at the state level? Will we be able to make up for the academic loss of two years from the old curriculum and way of teaching? Have our class rooms, hostels, libraries and laboratories been prepared to make up for the loss of students quickly? Will we be able to train 1.2 million university teachers to deal with this unprecedented loss of higher education in the last 170 years? Till now we have been taking online classes thinking that we have given an option to the young students.
During the COVID period of the last two years, the central and state governments were engaged in dealing with the health crisis caused by the epidemic. Education seems to be not a priority in our thinking so far. Our governments have been worried about reopening factories, markets, restaurants, hotels, gyms, cinemas and malls, not opening schools and colleges. Perhaps it is assumed that students are studying online and work is in progress.
In the third decade of the 21st century, digitalisation, technology and online education are being considered as Aladdin’s lamp. In the COVID period, we also assumed that the students studying in schools and colleges can read and write at home in front of mobiles, laptops and computers. Nothing can be more wrong than the notion that online education is the solution to all problems. We should consider sympathetically the present condition of young students. Online education should not be the main medium of learning. Real learning should depend on the interaction between teachers and students in the classroom. The online medium can only play a supporting role in this. We also have to save from digital inequality by giving laptops, PCs or tablets to students from poor families. Increasing the budget for education has become more important than ever.
UNESCO says that ‘goal-focused’ technology can be used as much as possible to make learning more effective when the campus opens. In this, instead of teaching in the old way, the teacher adjusts his teaching by looking at the current situation of the students. Different students in the same class may have different levels. We don’t expect the students to match the level of the teacher. For goal-oriented learning, data on ‘learning loss’ will also be needed and we will also have to provide more and better resources for teaching teachers.
(These are the author’s own views)