SHIMLA: The teachers bodies have expressed their concern over the state of affairs of Higher Education in the Himachal and in the country as a whole saying that it would be a "disaster to implement the New Education Policy(NEP) in haste, considering that there are around 100 colleges out of which 133 are without principals in Himachal".
Not only this, as many as 50 colleges are being run in private premises.
"Around 30 colleges have only two or three teachers, who are teaching everything from science and maths to Sanskrit and Hindi and English".
This story of higher education was highlighted by Himachal Pradesh's delegation of HGCTA members at the All India federation of University and College Teachers' Organisations' ( AIFUCTO) 32nd academic conference in Kurukshetra which was underway from 17- 19 March.
The HP delegation was represented by Dr R L Sharma and Dr Sanjay Jasrotia accompanied by Dr Bhupinder Singh Thakur, Dr Jagdish Chauhan, Dr T S Chauhan, Dr Madan Shandil, Dr Devender Sharma and Dr Chander Verma.
Theme of the conference is "75 Years of Independence: State of Higher Education in India".
As many as 2000 delegates from Universities and Colleges across the country attended the conference and raised the issues and challenges before higher education in context of the implementation of NEP 2020.
The delegates raised some serious concerns over the onslaught on higher education from all corners.
There are attempts to rewrite History irrationally, the delegates charged.
UGC is issuing notices to the colleges and universities to hold seminars on topics which are nowhere near to reality and logic, they said.
Secular fabric and pluralistic character of the country is being tried to be "eroded" by majoritarianism through the blatant change in education policies, the delegates charged in media statement.
Himachal Pradesh is going to be the first state to implement NEP in colleges from this session.
For example, there is no teacher of environment science at the Dr YS Parmar university of horticulture and forestry, Nauni where the students were given grace marks to promote them as they were all failed in the subject, revealed insiders.
Dr R L Sharma said without infrastructure and sufficient number of teachers it will be disastrous to implement the NEP in a hasty manner.
Without proper administration and infrastructural facilities, it is impossible to implement NEP from this session, he said.
He said for implementation of NEP state needs 500 more teachers' appointments in the colleges.
There should be a dialogue and deep deliberations between teachers and policy makers to chalk out the pros and cons of the NEP before its implementation, he said.
