The second recommendation that should alarm is this. There is much truth in the charge that given modern life spans, our ages of retirement are too low. So the possibility of retaining talented faculty even up to the age of 70 is not altogether unwelcome. But the haste with which we want to expand will ensure that almost all current teaching staff will get extensions. Given the proportion of dead wood to active faculty in current institutions, this will only ensure continued mediocrity. The honest truth is that many Indian universities need a VRS before there is any hope of quality expansion.

The third suggestion that will be disastrous is this. The committee is apparently going to exempt largely research institutions like TIFR from the ambit of reservations. But in other institutions, faculty is going to be offered incentives to teach more, possibly do even double shifts. There is no doubt that the physical assets of universities, like buildings and labs, are underused. But unwittingly this strategy is an even more insidious way of destroying institutions. For one, it reinstates a distinction between research institutions and universities/teaching institutions that has been fatal to higher education. You cannot sustain good teaching institutions in the long run without vibrant research.

Much of the recent discussion has been around reintegrating teaching and research. But the drive to mindless expansion, where you convert even your good institutions into teaching shops, where faculty is pressured to take more classes rather than do research, will make these universities even less vibrant than they are. While the committee talks of attracting good talent, the truth is that even that self-selected group that would like to go into academia is deterred from doing so because of its appalling research environment. In current university budgets, there is very little money for anything other than salaries, and this expansion will enhance that trend.

... contd.