The recently released National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2025 does not include a single university in Maharashtra in its top ten list. Universities that have made the honours mostly consist of central universities such as JNU, Delhi University, Jadavpur University, Banaras Hindu University and the University of Hyderabad. This is a pity, considering that Bombay University (as it was then known) was one of the three Presidency universities, along with Calcutta University and the University of Madras, founded in 1857, the year of the Uprising.
As far as Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) is concerned, its rank has plummeted from 37th to 91st place. For someone who has taught at SPPU since its halcyon days and is now retired, this is traumatic.
The Vice Chancellor, Dr Suresh Gosavi, has rightly put his finger on one of the reasons for the decline, which is unfilled faculty positions. This, he says, has a detrimental effect on the faculty-student ratio and research output.
But why are faculty positions not filled when there is already so much unemployment in the country? It isn’t as if there are no qualified professors to fill the posts. But if governments have a step-motherly attitude towards higher education, especially of the traditional kind, which isn’t self-financing and job-oriented, departments are bound to suffer. Many departments in SPPU and other state universities are run with ad hoc and contractual staff rather than with tenured faculty. Such teachers do not have the requisite experience to teach postgraduate classes and mentor research. The rule that postgraduate teachers must have at least five years of teaching experience in undergraduate classes is wantonly flouted. Departments are known to run with Teaching Assistants, who are none other than last year’s students, freshly passed out.
As regards the other criteria that make up a teacher’s Academic Performance Index (API) score, the less said the better. Publications in refereed peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and books themselves are all a necessity for university teachers all over the world. But most teachers here either don’t have these, or if they do, their articles are in second-rate journals to which they are forced to subscribe, and their book chapters and books are published by unknown publishers. PhD researchers today are content to merely receive their degrees, and hardly aspire to revise their thesis and ready it to be published as a book to be put out in the world, as we did in the past. In this respect, the science departments fare slightly better than the arts, humanities, language and social science departments. Even so, the standards leave much to be desired.
In the 20th century, SPPU’s glory stemmed from the fact that its campus was truly international, with students from all over the world who enrolled for its various courses, or who came here as exchange students who spent a semester on campus. Besides, there were students from different parts of India who took pride in studying in what was then known as the University of Pune. By the 21st century, the foreign students, as well as students from other states, had quickly disappeared. The university seems to have taken the term ‘state university’ too literally and opened its doors mainly to students from within Maharashtra. This eroded its international image and its cosmopolitan nature, and converted it into a regional university. Several foreign universities that had Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with Pune University withdrew and looked for greener pastures.
At one time, international conferences and seminars across departments were a regular feature at SPPU. I myself remember convening and attending so many of them in my own department during my nearly 30-year tenure. Today, if one drives through campus, as road-diversions at the university circle make necessary, one hardly sees a banner or posters announcing a conference. And it’s not as if the banners and posters are there, but have merely gone digital. They are simply non-existent.
A drop from 37th to 91st place in the rankings is a major drop indeed. It should worry everyone concerned, beginning with the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor. More so, at one time, Pune University was regarded as the best university in the state, overtaking even Bombay University. The effort should be to return to those days of excellence. But unless this is taken up on a war footing, it will remain only a pipe-dream.
(The writer is a well-known author and former head of the English Department at Savitribai Phule Pune University)
