“Blended Mode of Learning”– UGC’s Another Push for Exit and Exclusion!”
In a very alarming development, The University Grants Commission (UGC) on May 20 released a concept note for implementation of the so-called “blended mode of learning” – a mix of online and offline teaching – in universities. The commission said that higher education institutes will be allowed to teach up to 40 per cent of each course online.
This is a very dangerous push towards online education and a blueprint for exit and exclusion. This new announcement is just another extension of the exclusionary New Education Policy (NEP) and will push out the students from marginalized sections with no access to computer, Smartphone and Internet connection from the sphere of higher education. NEP has brazenly promoted private and foreign universities at the cost of public funded higher education and NEP does not commit to implement reservation for SC/ST/OBCs in private institutions. This policy will further marginalize the students from deprived backgrounds, because of the massive digital divide in our country. Further, this blended mode will also adversely affect teaching in regular mode, massively decreasing the faculty positions in colleges and universities.
India’s existing education system does indeed need a radical overhaul. Educationists have for long pushed for replacing the current system of parallel public/private, rich/poor streams with a system of providing free education of an equitable standard for all. They have for long pushed for the government to prioritize spending on education so that no Indian is deprived of the best school and college/university education due to a lack of money or a shortage of seats. But the Modi regime’s proposal is designed to exclude and close the gates of education for the vast majority of India’s poor and deprived students; weaken social justice and reservations; open the floodgates for privatized, commercialized education; and institutionalize what Dr Ambedkar called “graded inequality”.
On behalf of AISA, we demand UGC must immediately take back this exclusionary policy of blended mode of learning.
