Academics, and Higher Education, per se, is intrinsically slow moving.
Change has been happening at an accelerating pace across industries. By virtue of the nature of industry, the pace varies. The pace of change for an EdTech company is much faster, than, say a steel company or a cement company. Just like a fruitfly or a butterfly transforms itself altogether few times in its life-cycle, a cement company, or s steel company, or a power sector entity faces changes more in its ends of supply chains, sourcing sides or sales side, with more real time information integration on demands, and planning backward on sourcing.The core technology or the plant and the machineries engaged in the production ofsteelor cement or power, dont undergo frequent changes; although demands have been more volatile than in the past. More volatility likely to be the norms of every industry and sector, going forward.
Universities have been attempting balanced or minimum inputs on liberal studies in all professional programs universities offer. That's a welcome step.
Jio Institute, new player but whose every move is closely watched, clearly stated it would focus on holistic, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach.
However, in spite of best efforts, and encouraging policy support from UGC, my own experience showed the transition was badly fought, due to big resistance from faculty members of private universities, belonging to certain mainstream schools/programs like engineering.
In hind sight, I see there were genuine concerns behind that do-or-die type resistance.
For example, introducing courses on liberal studies, like literature, basics of economics/psychology/sociology/history in programs of Computer Sciences at UG levels were not welcome by CS faculty members themselves.
Reasons were primarily two: Students don't see any value in them (students can easily be sold that by existing core faculty members), and if few more credits are to be added, we need to remove a few to balance. There are no scope to remove any course from the exiting ones. the current program structure has been finalized after lots of deliberations. These are the arguments offered.
I agree on one part. Need of cutting courses as students are already overloaded with too many courses/credits, but probably not the right ones.
One young bright promoter later informed me, that in CS program structure, too many credits allocated for electronics and electrical courses. True, those may be foundation of CS, but not outdated one. And his argument was, no recruiter would hire CS engineer for his understanding of electronics/electrical foundation knowledge.
As I look back and reflect, I realize the root of the resistance lied in number of faculty rationalization as most private universities saw dwindling student admissions, and costs were to be managed. It is obvious from their perspective that unless each faculty member gets a minimum number of credits in a year/semester; s/he may be under the chopping block.
No sensible human being will support a change when s/he would be the first victim, without any benefits in the horizon.
Much of these change initiatives are being taken up when universities, self-financed type and majority ones without deep corporate backing, are facing huge challenges. Demand for flagship engineering programs, beyond CS, has gone down hugely; as universities/engg. schools mushroomed in earlier decades. And faculty strength ballooned.
Any such reforms must be accompanied with an assurance from the management that job losses to be minimized. And reskilling, where ever possible, would be done.
Yes, we did not see the obvious human side of the story.
In all change management, most vital part is the human dimension. Unless taken care of, the change/transition would not lead to desired results. It is always critical to keep in mind how the change impact those who drive the change. If it adversely impacts the existing faculty members, the change is likely to fail. Unlike brick and mortar structure organizations, universities, by nature are soft infrastructure, has heart and soul. One cant damage that by pushing excessively. And the system fatigue, due to the unsustainable overcompetitive environment in which the universities have been operating now for decades, if not more, makes it even more exhausting. Employment opportunities for new graduates have been quite bleak, pushing the negative feedback loop from admission itself, for private higher education sector.