Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Basic sciences losing out to professional education

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI May 27. A phenomenal increase in the demand for professional education seems to be causing a major identity crisis for the basic sciences degree programmes offered by different universities in Tamil Nadu. The State's higher education scene, dominated by self-financing educators, has a stark picture to offer. Very few among the 247 unaided arts and science colleges are offering basic science programmes such as B.Sc in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry or Botany/Zoology. These colleges, claiming to meet the demand for "job-oriented courses," offer courses such as B.Sc in Computer Sciences, Electronic Sciences, Biochemistry, Microbiology or Information Technology.

Thus the burden of offering basic science courses fall on the rather unwilling shoulders of the government-run or aided colleges.

The standard of the B.Sc programmes can be gauged by the fact that of the 46,299 students who appeared for the final examinations last year, only 26,661 came out successful. Today, 1.62 lakh students study B.Sc courses in the 60 government-run arts and science colleges, 134 aided institutions, besides the 247 unaided or self-financing colleges. Although the government or aided colleges are lesser in number, they account for a larger student strength. In the B.Sc courses, the government colleges accounted for 42,600 students, the aided colleges 81,000-plus, while self-financing colleges accounted for 19,126 men and 18,767 women students last year. In the government and aided category, women accounted for more than 55 per cent of the student strength. But, the very poor turnout of degrees at the B.Sc level should cause concern for administrators.

However, it is disappointing that the Government this year did not make any policy announcement for improving basic science education, although it announced plans to improve engineering education infrastructure.

The lack of concern in the Directorate of Collegiate Education for improving B.Sc level programmes is apparent by the fact that besides not filling the large number of vacancies in teacher posts in the government colleges, the DCE does not even compile statistics to show how many students are actually studying various programmes such as Physics, Chemistry or Mathematics.

A former Vice-Chancellor, P.T. Manoharan notes that today, Indian higher education seems to be going in a direction which would ``totally starve out science.'' ``Indian scientific publications in journals reviewed by peers are going down alarmingly, compared to China, Israel or Brazil.

In most institutions, excepting in the IITs, science departments are called service departments. This approach will slowly kill India's S and T base," he says. The Dean of Sciences in Madras University, Prof. Yatindhra, says the process of degradation of science begins even in schools.

There is sheer lack of good teachers for science subjects. No longer is it a profession or passion. Teaching has become too mundane a job and so there is lack of enthusiasm in encouraging young people to turn to science education at school and later at higher levels.

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