Wednesday 3 September 2014

Vice Chancellors

The Allahabad University was once known as the Oxford of the East, and was renowned as a great centre of higher learning in India. it had eminent Vice Chancellors, like Dr.Ganga Nath Jha and Dr. Amar Nath Jha. Later, its reputation gradually fell, and one reason for this was that Vice Chancellors were successively appointed on political considerations, rather than for their academic eminence. There was one teacher of an intermediate college who was appointed the Vice Chancellor only because he was the astrologer of a state minister in the U.P. Government !

 I would like to tell about another Vice Chancellor of a University in U.P. There is a friend of mine who is a renowned medical doctor who wanted to set up a medical college in a western district in U.P. about 20 years ago. He is a man of very high integrity, and he told me this incident himself.

 For establishing a medical college one has to get it affiliated to some University, since the degree has to be of that University. He sought an appointment with the Vice Chancellor of a University in western U.P. He was asked to come to the residence of the Vice Chancellor the next morning at a certain time. When he went there the wife of the Vice Chancellor met him and asked for Rs. 2 crore for getting affiliation. He asked what this was for. The lady told him that money has to be given to the higher authorities. He said that he would himself handle the higher authorities, but what was the Vice Chancellor's demand. She said it was Rs. 50 lacs. He refused, and consequently he had to approach another University.

This is how higher education has been devalued in most of U.P. I do not know about other states, but I suppose the same must be the condition there too.

3 comments:

  1. Sir, this has been the case across India. With the advent of coaching classes couple of decades ago, education has been reduced to being a business. No wonder the once respected teaching profession attracts few talents these days. It's a pity our education system has been reduced to such levels due to corruption and political interferences.

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  2. It's true and Now situation has worsen. 90 percent of the new colleges granting higher education or professional courses belongs to some MP or MLA or they are directly or indirectly the trustee of educational institute. Where they collect huge fees from student and pay peanuts to the faculty and many of the time faculty don't deserve to be faculty at all in those institution. God bless our education system. In country where HRD minister doesn't know in which stream she has been graduated.

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  3. Teachers and Professors have become corrupt in Tamil nadu, despte getting a very good salary. The day the government diluted in the policy of recruitment by appointing sub standard persons as teachers by virtue of the caste, we have lost everything. I remember in Chennai Corporation School, 2 teachers were working for 18 years with 8th standard as their qualification and very recently removed from servic.

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