z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 303
ON UNIVERSITY REFORMS 303
Question 28 : Bombay and Poona are the only places ripe for immediate expansion into universities and I suggest that these be at once incorporated into separate universities. Ahmedabad is likely to be ripe in the near future. It has already an Arts College and a Science Institute and may be converted into a University.
Pending the establishment of universities in the centres marked above the three universities of Bombay, Poona and Ahmedabad should have an external side like the University of London whereby arrangements could be made to grant degrees to students of the other colleges appearing at their examinations.
If the future universities to be established in this Presidency shape themselves into centralized institutions then the problems raised in these questions will not arise. For, then, the university will be in full control of its staff and teaching arrangements. But I will assume that our future universities will be a cluster or constituent colleges independent in their organization. At any rate it will be so of the new universities of Bombay and Poona. Under the scheme of having constituent colleges, the colleges will still continue to be places licensed by the university to provide University education. The plan of inter-collegiate teaching will remove the waste duplication and dissipation of resources by the constituent colleges. But will that arrangements be sufficient to ensure that the standard of university education will be maintained at a high level. That depends upon the standing of the teaching staff engaged in imparting University education. At present the teachers are attached to the colleges and their pay and status are regulated by the authorities governing the colleges. But the colleges do not seem to be making the appointments solely from the sense of obtaining the most qualified persons nor regulating their grades, tenure, pay and promotion in such a manner as to open a career to the best and most qualified member of the staff. The whole educational work carried on by Government is entrusted to the educational services in the three grades of which are included all the administrative and inspecting officers, and all the teachers in Government colleges and schools from the most responsible to the most junior. As in all services the principle of seniority is so deeply rooted that it has become a sacred convention that all superior posts should go by seniority. The principal drawback of this system so far as the work of University education is concerned is that rewards are regulated not by depth of scholarship but by the length of service. Teachers of a college who are subject to be transferred from place to place as is the case with the members of the Government service cannot but feel that the body corporate which claims their loyalty and obedience is not the college but the service and more often than not their ambition is directed to securing service promotions than that of creating a school of learning with which their names will be identified. The invidious distinction drawn between the I.E.S.