z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 301
ON UNIVERSITY REFORMS 301
College. Together there are about 12 men in the City of Bombay engaged in the teaching of economics. I know of no university in the world which has such a large number of men engaged in the teaching of one subject and yet all this plethora of professors is running to waste merely for the want of a better organization. And the University instead of attempting to stop, this waste had added to it by the appointing of two more professors of its own to the existing lot.
It is however obvious that if these colleges could be induced to pool their teaching and library resources it would not only produce a strong specialized professoriate but it will produce a professoriate adequate to deal with both undergraduate and post-graduate work and thus obviate the waste of university resources on the two university chairs of economics. To bring this about one has only to arrange that these twelve men do combine together to distribute among themselves the work of carrying out the economics curriculum of the University and agree to lecture to all students taking that course irrespective of the colleges in which they are enrolled. The same plan could be easily adopted in organizing the teaching of other subjects in the colleges in the City of Bombay. The only difficulty probably in the way of this plan is of the students having to run from college to college to attend these lectures. This difficulty can be easily met. I should say that all lectures on Political Science shall be delivered at the Sydenham College. All lectures on Philosophy and Psychology shall be delivered at the Wilson College and all lectures on Literature and languages shall be delivered at the Elphinstone College. By this arrangement the frequent run of students between colleges will be entirely obviated. The colleges should be declared to be halls of lectures on a particular subject and the lectures while remaining on the foundations of their respective colleges will coalesce together so as to form a homogeneous group and will have rooms at the college which is assigned for the subject they will be dealing with, and which will contain the portions of the libraries of the colleges on that particular subject.
I agree that University should be a centralized institution and if the plan of a new University were to be laid down ab integro it would be better to rule out the type in which a university was to be composed of affiliated colleges. But it must be recognized that universities cannot be sown broadcast and that where a number of institutions of collegiate status have come into being they cannot be lightly abolished in order to promote the success of centralizing institution. Under the plan I have outlined neither the standard of university education nor the independence of colleges is sacrificed. Administratively the colleges remain independent. Educationally they become integral parts of the University. In short the position becomes somewhat like the position at Oxford and Cambridge where the university is the colleges and the colleges form the university. Such an organization makes the most of the existing colleges and eliminates the waste.
Question 25 : My scheme of organizing University Education applies only