CSCS provides affiliation to Indian and international researchers for varying periods of time. In addition CSCS also invites academics to interact with faculty and students and to present their work at the Centre.
List of conferences and workshops held at and conducted by CSCS in recent years.
Current State: Published
Higher Education Cell
A collaboration with the Sir Ratan Tata Trust
About the HE Cell:
India’s Higher Education (HE) system is one of the largest in the world, including over 300 universities and thousands of colleges. Access to HE is a crucial issue, with only 7 to 8% of the relevant age group enrolled in HE institutions. The 2006 CSCS Strategy Recommendations Paper on HE pointed out that the three key locations of HE – the research centre, the university, and the undergraduate college – seldom have strong connections with one another, and have structurally been devised to stay apart. Envisioning a strategic convergence of these three fields could redefine the structure and role of higher education in India. The Paper recommended that such convergence, in key areas such as curriculum building, research and teacher training should form the cornerstone of interventions in this sector. It drew attention to several recent developments in the field, including moves towards privatization and greater autonomy as well as the emergence of new kinds of institutions. The Paper emphasized the relevance of curriculum building and teacher training for both private and state-supported institutions which would increasingly create new spaces open to experimentation in curricular innovations and institutional collaborations across the higher education sector.
The Higher Education Cell-CSCS (supported by the Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust) came into existence in July 2007. It engages with the Higher Education sector through collaborative Research in the field of HE (the outcomes of which include Analytical Reports/Reviews and Idea Incubation for the sector); Institutional Collaborations with key partners such as government agencies, research centres, universities, and undergraduate colleges for developing cutting-edge knowledge resources for higher education; Documentation and Archiving to create a rich HE database, and Grant Management for the Trusts.
The Cell has identified inter-institutional collaborations, interdisciplinarity in research and teaching, and integration of hitherto segregated forms of knowledge production (such as natural sciences and social sciences) as significant strategies through which the relevance of higher education could be increased and its capacity to address contemporary challenges enhanced. The interventions of the Cell work through five sectoral and thematic initiatives: Networked Higher Education, Regional Language Resources, Gender Studies, Social Justice in Higher Education and Integrated Science Education. The larger objective of the different initiatives of the Cell is to develop innovative approaches and efficient working models to address the current issues in Indian higher education. Through the work of the initiatives the Cell primarily supports activities including Curriculum Development, Production of Resource Materials, Teacher Training Initiatives, Skill-building for students and Building Research Capacity.
Networked Higher Education
The Networked Higher Education initiative seeks to address the common problems in curriculum building, pedagogy and research in the Higher Education sector through the process of creating digital networks of material and institutions. The initiative recognizes the drastic changes that are imminent in the systems of higher education, from the undergraduate college up to the highest levels of learning, following the digitization of both content and methods of delivery. In the light of this the initiative has developed a series of scalable projects with undergraduate colleges, universities and research centres. These joint projects primarily aim at:(i) tracking the impact of digitized education systems upon the classroom and the curriculum and enhancing existing pedagogic systems in undergraduate colleges through peer-to-peer learning strategies among students and instituting training in digital resources for teachers and (ii) using the institutional repository as a key tool both at the undergraduate and research levels to build a consortium of institutions for sharing resources and expertise and making this database available to a larger set of institutions in higher education. To achieve these ends the initiative partnered diverse organizations/institutions such as UGC’s INFLIBNET, select undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra and the southern states and select ICSSR and privately funded research centers.
Regional Language Resources
The Regional Language Resources initiative aims to intervene in Higher Education contexts where students do not have adequate access to English, which is the mandated medium of Higher Education in India. It seeks to bridge the disparity between the medium of instruction and students’ linguistic environment by producing multi-linguistic resources along with designing training modules for their use and by generating new research on language issues in India. The initiative has already embarked on pilot projects of survey into existing material and production of new material in regional languages across four Indian languages including Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi with key institutional partners. In addition, projects are ongoing to develop workshop clusters, produce interdisciplinary readers, work in translation projects and work with other initiatives in the Cell for addressing language difficulties in the under graduate space. The initiative has also planned a project for creating research training programmes for students at the PG level with the use of multi-linguistic resources and competencies.
Gender Studies
The Gender Studies initiative seeks to strengthen the scope and impact of Women’s Studies (WS), a field that was institutionalized in India in the 1970s with the mandate to provide knowledge inputs that would act as catalysts for bringing about transformation in women’s lives. In its efforts to aid the field’s objective of building relevant knowledge bases, the Gender Studies initiative i) incubates ideas with potential for revitalizing thinking in relation to gender in specific sectors; ii) develops new research models that can influence policy and advocacy practices; iii) collaborates with WS Centres and other university departments to reinvigorate classroom teaching; and iv) assists the production of materials that will inform debates in the public domain as well as support classroom pedagogy in different regional contexts. The initiative has made a significant beginning with respect to curriculum development, capacity building and materials production by partnering the Center for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi, the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram and the Women’s Studies Centres at the Jadavpur University (Kolkata) and Pune University. The initiative has recently commissioned a study on the gender training programmes in the development sector. The long term objective of the initiative is to function as a Resource Unit for Gender Studies that will work with state and non-state sectors in an effort to forge stronger connections between the WS Centres, policy-making bodies, implementing agencies and diverse groups of women themselves.
Social Justice in Higher Education
The Social Justice initiative seeks to address the crucial issues of equity and access in the higher education system in India today. The initiative tries to interrogate the centrality of the idea of social justice to education, by taking it beyond questions of policy and implementation. The broad objectives of this initiative are (a) to improve the quality of access to higher education at the under graduate level and (b) to build a viable model for social diversity on the campus thereby getting institutions to recognize its centrality to the sphere of higher education. The Pathways to Higher Education Programme, supported by the Ford Foundation, is currently the main project under this initiative. The focus of the programme is on skill-building for socially disadvantaged students so as to ease their integration into the mainstream of higher education. Activities under this programme will include (a) faculty and student workshops on curriculum development and training in new pedagogic strategies, and (b) campus initiatives with a view to sensitizing the institution as a whole to social diversity questions. The initiative also seeks in the long run to build a body of new research in the area of social diversity.
Integrated Science Education
The Integrated Science Education initiative is working to bridge the inherited gap between the study of natural and human worlds as also between knowledge and practice. The initiative argues for the need of an integrated approach of knowledge production both in terms of objects of enquiry and methodologies. At a more concrete level it is attempting to connect knowledges in existing Science and Social Science disciplines, as well as produce new knowledge which is inclusive of the perspectives of the user and recipient of such knowledges; the main attempt is to incubate new domains of knowledge. The initiative has commissioned reviews of existing integrated models of Science and Social Science teaching as well as into the history of integration efforts in Science education. Collaborative projects are ongoing with major science teaching and research institutions like IISc, Bangalore and IISER, Pune, for developing new models of integrated education and research. The initiative is also in the process of developing projects with institutions working in the field of public health for the study of the user pole with a long term goal of impacting curricularization in such areas.
(1) Gender and Culture (at Christ University, Bangalore)
Visit the Gender and Culture Course Blog at http://genderandcultureathecell.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
The CSCS Media Archive is a multiple database compilation intended exclusively for purposes of study, research and review. The link above will show the listed articles and news related to higher education.
Conferences, Workshops and Consultations
a) Future of Higher Education Date: 20-21 February 2006 Report
b) Consultation on Higher Education in India Date: 16-17 November 2006 Report
c) General Education Consultation: "General Education in Comparative Perspective: Legacies, Transformations and Innovations"
Date: 21-22 July 2007. Participants Report
d) Consultation on Regional Language Resources Date: 20th February 2008 Concept Note Participants Resource papers
h) IAWS: Southern regional workshop on Feminist Perspectives and the Struggle to Transform Disciplines
Date: 2-3 February 2007
Feminist Perspectives and the Struggle to Transform the Disciplines-Report
Programme Schedule
Participants
Papers presented at " Unviable Universities: A symposium on the crisis in Higher Education"
Ritty Lukose: Private/Public Divides
Itty Abraham: International Trends
N.V. Varghese: Reforming Education Financing
P.V Indiresan: W(h)ither IITs?
Rekha Kaul: Whither Equity?
A Majeed Khan: Encouraging Private Initiatives
A. G Krishna Menon: Educating the Architect
Devesh Kapur: Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half-Baked Socialism to Half-Baked Capitalism
Suman Sahai: Should There be Foreign Investment in Higher Education and Research?
Sanat Kaul: Higher Education in India: Seizing the Opportunity
A consultation Paper on Higher Education in India and GATS
Pawan Agarwal: Higher Education in India: The Need For Change
Michael Gibbons: Higher Education Relevance in the 21st Century
Diversity, Democracy and Higher Education: A view from three nations
J.B.J Tilak and N.V Varghese: Financing Higher Education in India
Suma Chitnis: Higher Education in India- Seriously Challenged
Sukhadeo Thorat: Higher Education in India: Emerging Issues Related to Access, Inclusiveness and Quality
P. Geetha Rani: Economic Reforms and Financing Higher Education in India
Privatisation of Higher Education in India: Constitutional Perspectives and Challenges
K.Kasthurirangan: Emerging Directions in Global Education
Pulapre Balakrishnan: Social Science Research in India: Concerns and Proposals
Mary E John: New Agendas for Social Science Research
Research Programmes for Engaged Social Sciences
Stella Anthony: Institutional Accreditation in India
Dr. Nazim Husain Jafri:Higher education- Growth and future options in context of India
Accreditation of Higher Education Institutions: Indian experience
Dynamics of Knowledge Management in Higher Education
Sujit Kumar Choudhary: Higher Education in India: a Socio-Historical Journey from Ancient Period to 2006-07
b) Globalization and Higher Education
Globalisation,Higher Education and Gender Are Millennium Development Goals Relevant for Academic Research? Globalisation:What Does It Mean For Higher Education? Mary Dixon: Globalisation and International Higher Education: Contested Positionings
Simon Marginson and Marijk van der Wende: Globalisation and Higher Education
Jane Knight :GATS, Trade and Higher Education Perspective 2003 - Where are we? Martin Carnoy: Globalisation, Educational Trends abd the Open Society
John Daniel: Automobiles, Bananas, Courses, Degress: An ABC of Higher Education and Globalisation
Jane Knight: GATS, Higher Education Implications
Robin Middlehurst: The Developing World of Borderless Higher Education
Dirk Van Dmme: Outlooks for the International Higher Education Community in Constructing the Global Knowledge Society
Zeynep Varoglu: Trade in Higher Education and GATS
Lazar Vlasceanu: Coping with Uncertainties of Higher Education; the clash between academic traditions, markets and GATS
D. Bruce Johnstone: The Financing and Management of Higher Education: A Status Report on Worldwide Reforms
Ajitava Raychaudhuri, Prabir De: Barriers to Trade in Higher Education Services in the Era of Globalisation
Jandhyala B G Tilak: Education in 2008-09 Union Budget
Challenges of Higher Education by K.S Chalam Asian Universities by Philip G. Altbach, To-ru Umakoshi
Transformative Links Between Higher and Basic Edcucation By Karuna Chanana
Private Prometheus; Privete Higher Education and Development in the 21st Century by Philip. G. Altbach
Introducing India in Liberal Education by Milton Singer
Education in New India by Humayun Kabir
Women and Higher Education in the 21st Century by Annette Kolodny
She who Rides a Peacock by Margarat. L. Cormack
Court Judgments Reports/Documents on Higher Education
Supreme court judgment on OBC quota in education institutions
Supreme Court judgment delivered on August 12, 2005 abolishing state quotas in private unaided pro college
Supreme Court judgment on Private Universities of Chhattisgarh
Allahabad High Court judgment on Aligarh Muslim University minority status
The University Grants Commission Act, 1956
The Kerala Professional Colleges (Prohibition of Capitation Fee, Regulation of Admission, Fixation of Non Exploitive Fee and Other Measures to Ensure Equity and Excellence in Professional Education) Bill, 2006
UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2007
The All India Council for Technical Education Act,1987
UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2007
Allahabad High Court judgment on Aligarh Muslim University minority status
National policy on education 1968
National policy on education: 1986
HRD Ministry directives to all Central education institutions on OBC admissions
Moily report : The Oversight Committee on The Implementation of The Reservation Policy in Higher Education
Development of Higher Education for Expansion, Inclusion and Excellence:Relevant Issues and Recommendations of Regional Conferences of the Vice Chancellors
Report of the Committee of Members of Parliament as Higher Education 1964
Report of the Committee on 'model act' for Universities'
Towards a unified pattern of higher education text books (report of review committee of the scheme of Granth academies/University cells university text book boards)
Report of the committee to enquire into the working of the central universities
Report of the UGC committee towards new educational management, 1990
UGC-funding of institution of higher education report of Justice Dr. K. Punayya committee, 1992-93
Vocationalisation of first -degree education September, 1993
T M A Pai Foundation vs State of Maharashtra
Bharathidasan University & Ans vs AICTE & Ors delivered on September 24, 2001
Report on university education in science (1994)
An evaluation of the vocational education scheme of UGC: IAMR report