Dear Vice-Chancellor, JNU doesn’t want to be IIT

The compulsory attendance policy in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), introduced at the behest of vice-chancellor Dr M Jagadesh Kumar, has upset much of our student and faculty community.

The JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) and the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) have slammed the policy, calling it an unjustified curtailment of academic freedom and scholarly integrity. The vice-chancellor, a former professor of IIT Delhi, claims to envisage a work culture akin to the IITs, where such an attendance policy has long been in order.

The grossly flawed logic that underpins this policy is that “regular attendance results in high productivity”. The vice-chancellor clearly lacks the insight to understand that JNU’s exceptional reputation as an educational institution is not despite but because of its disregard to the misguided managerial evaluation metrics of compulsory attendance and high scores.

Aside from the honest argument made by JNUTA and JNUSU that such a policy is incompatible with the intellectual ethos of the campus, one must understand that JNU as a university striving for overall excellence has far greater practical concerns that affect student participation in classes. Only after remedying these infrastructural shortcomings can one even begin the debate on the alleged benefits of an attendance mandate.

No guaranteed accommodation

After taking admission in the MA course here in 2014, it took this university a full two semesters to grant me a hostel room. This is the story of over 60 per cent of freshers who come to JNU.

Having to manage boarding and lodging expenses on a shoestring budget, several of us are forced to live in far off inconvenient places and fend for our own meals while also managing coursework. In contrast, residential institutes such as the IITs guarantee every student and scholar hostel accommodation at the time of admission.

Despite the space crunch in hostels, it is our zeal to learn that always prodded us to attend classes, even at a time when attendance was not recorded. It is our professors’ condoning our justified occasional absence that helped battle these woes, not the fear of being detained on account of low attendance.

Lack of proper transportation on campus 

Navigation in a campus of 1019 acre is undoubtedly challenging, especially when one has to solely rely on foot, private transport or the two erratic public buses numbered 615 and 621. IIT Madras for example has a free shuttle service within the campus that runs from 6 am to 10 pm every day at intervals of 15 minutes. This shuttle service is used not only by students but also by faculty and the non-teaching staff.

A free, frequent and timely shuttle service to facilitate transport within the campus has been a long-standing demand of the students which remains unfulfilled to this day. It makes no sense for the university to mandate compulsory attendance when it hasn’t done the bare minimum to facilitate a better environment for students’ regular participation in classes.

Inadequate working space

The current attendance policy requires MPhil/PhD scholars who are past their coursework-year to sign attendance on a register that shall be maintained in their respective centre’s offices. It is bad enough to assume that a mere registration of their presence in the centre assures high productivity on the part of scholars.

What is even more bewildering is to realise that the infrastructure of the university is built under the assumption that only 1/10th of its strength is expected to be in campus and regularly avail of facilities. We know this because the central library of JNU has a total seating capacity of less than 700 when the student population of the university is well over 7,000. This will become an even bigger problem if the university increases its intake of students in the future.

While any infrastructure is expected to be built keeping in mind the needs of the future, JNU does not even have the means to accommodate its present needs. With flagrantly insufficient reading halls and lack of dedicated working space for individual scholars, it is evident that the imposition of compulsory attendance is not with the intention of encouraging increased academic productivity.

Compromised interdisciplinary education 

One of the primary reasons why JNU as a university stands apart from other educational institutions is its unconventional philosophy of multidisciplinary education. This allows postgraduate students to pick a number of electives from any other programme outside of one’s home centre.

Given the limited number of working hours in the university and the large number of courses offered, it is only natural that some courses across centres clash in timings. The students are encouraged to use their discretion to manage their participation in clashing courses. The compulsory attendance policy is a clear move to discourage this healthy character of multidisciplinary education in the university, as students will now have to avoid courses outside of their centre fearing timing clashes.

Furthermore, many research scholars are often found auditing courses just for a broader understanding in the respective discipline. These scholars are obviously not required to sign in their attendance as they receive no credits on the course. By the logic of the new attendance policy, the lack of their attendance records will consequently disregard their participation in the audited courses. Thus, one is once again reminded of how attendance as a metric of productivity is utterly vacuous.

Stipend and recognised work experience

Scholars enrolled in an MPhil or PhD programme are young adults of at least 23 years of age. As a research degree is a long-drawn heavy commitment, one is expected at some point to extend financial support to one’s family. Many scholars find alternate employment for this reason and even manage to juggle both work and research with finesse. Another reason why scholars consider it important to work while pursuing a PhD is for fear of being rendered over-qualified and under-experienced at the time of job-hunting after PhD.

Most universities abroad and even the IITs offer paid teaching assistantships which can not only equip the researcher with some preliminary experience in lectureship but also provide researchers with a decent remuneration. Encouraging students to work while studying is a common practice in academia in foreign universities to help them pay their bills and identify their best career paths.

Research scholars in JNU who have not qualified for Junior Research Fellowship in the university receive a frugal stipend of Rs 5,000 during MPhil and Rs 8,000 during PhD, which is barely enough for their own sustenance, let alone supporting their families. The teaching assistantship service that one may volunteer for in campus is also unpaid.

The certificate from the centre issued upon completion of teaching services is authorised by the centre and not the university registrar, because of which it does not qualify as valid work experience in the recruitment criteria for many central universities.

The compulsory attendance policy will therefore be a hard blow on all research scholars, who comprise 65 per cent of JNU’s student population. As a dangerous consequence, one can even expect this move to smother opportunities for bright young students from less privileged backgrounds, deterring them from aspiring for doctoral studies in JNU.

It is needless to say that the issues mentioned here ought to be addressed regardless of an attendance policy. The fact that we are expected to comply with this policy in the face of such adversities is only more revealing of the insensitivity and hypocrisy of the administration.

If JNU as a university is renowned for intellectual excellence despite its infrastructural shortcomings, what it can achieve with a better administration and resources is a no-brainer. If emulating the IIT culture means killing this very spirit of our perseverance, certainly, JNU does not want to be an IIT, dear Vice-Chancellor.