The proposal of delinking degrees
from jobs is not new. The public Service Committee reported in 1956 that the
degree qualifications should be abolished for clerical jobs and for the
appointment in the posts of junior officers. The national committee on the
educational structure (10+2+3) also wanted the government of India to delink
degrees from jobs. The National Institute of Educational Planning and
Administration (NIEPA) also expressed this view in 1982.
Various
arguments are put forward to delink degrees from jobs. Those who support it
argue that today’s education is not job-oriented and that the knowledge the
students acquire is not useful to them in practical life. The best way is to
have job-oriented courses and SSC. Degrees and marks are not the real
measurements of learning and intelligence. Students having no thorough
Knowledge of their subjects get through with good marks. There are many
intelligent young man and women who cannot pursue higher education because of
pecuniary difficulties. Since degrees
are indispensable to many jobs. Young men and women rush the college. This
reduces the standard of education and efficient functioning of college. The
ability of the candidate alone should determine his future and not degree. If
the proposed delinking is down, the pressure in the field of higher education
can be reduced and the universities can serve better candidates.
There
are also argument against the delinking. If it is introduced, it will result in
suppressing the poor and lower middle classes, who get their knowledge of
different subjects only in colleges. The children from these classes will find
themselves in a tight corner. College education will become useless in the eyes
of students and it will intensify the present unrest among the youth. It is at
the graduate and post graduate level that a young man or a woman begins to
think for himself or herself, or feels capable of thinking. The delinking will
expedite that rush for employment from a very early stage. It will affect the
efficiency of the civil service. One who has been under the care and guidance
of many intellectuals for three or five years in a college or a university can
fare better than one who passed SSC and one who has passed a test conducted by
a Public Services Commission or by some other recruiting agency.
After
examining the pros and cons of the question, we come to the conclusion that a
graduate or a post-graduate will be much more efficient either as a Clark or as
a junior officer than one who has passed SSC. Lately. The business to be
transacted in most of the government officers has increased considerably.
Clerical work is not a child’s play. A clerk has to study many orders, Acts,
rules and procedure. He has to work with expedition and promptness. The
efficiency of a government office depends on the efficiency of the clerks
working there. The training a graduate or a postgraduate has received, helps
him greatly in the efficient discharge of his duties. The university education
he has had “prepares him to fill any post with credit and to master any subject
with facility”. At present a boy a girl who has passed SSC in the first
division does not know how to write a letter in English without errors. If the
persons who have passed SSC alone are appointed in government services, there
will be inordinate delay in the disposal of files. We, therefore think that the
proposed delinking is not prudent.