Ideas galore for Presidency overhaul

KOLKATA: What should the new Presidency University aim at — a world-class institute for grooming students, an ideal knowledge hub with an emphasis on research more than teaching, or a mix of both? Perceptions varied among the illustrious alumni of the Presidency College about the roadmap to excellence at a panel discussion held at the Calcutta University Centenary Hall on Saturday.
While former director of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics loves to see Presidency grow as a “university with a difference” with a marriage of intellect and talent from across the world opening up new multidisciplinary areas, ISI professor Abhirup Sarkar laid emphasis on undergraduate teaching. Director of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science Kankan Bhattacharyya, however, held that research and a few outstanding teachers are enough to “fire the young minds.”
Reminiscing the golden days of Presidency College, Sinha said, “When I went to Cambridge for further studies, I found that teachers there knew about Amal Roy Chowdhury and Shyamal Sengupta. When I told them that I attended their classes, my teacher at Cambridge told me that I do not need to attend his classes. Such was the opinion about these illustrious teachers,” Sinha said.
Renowned English scholar Sukanta Chaudhuri, however, felt that the most important thing for the new university is to get rid of the “bureaucratic red tape” that has been ailing teaching in government colleges. “Teachers handling the administration could give little time to teach or research,” said Chaudhuri. He asked his classmate and university vicechancellor Amita Chatterjee about her experience. “How long did you take to get Presidency University recognised in finance department files? Or, for that matter, by the Centre?” Chaudhuri asked. “I took five months from November to March to make the finance department take note of this university, and the Centre entered it in the list of universities in April,” the V-C said.
Chatterjee also placed a factsheet of the existing campus with its poor infrastructure, space crunch, inadequate library and laboratory facilities, dearth of teaching and non-teaching staff, that need huge funds to meet the rising expectations.
What’s more is that she also raised questions over ways to achieve that. “It isn’t enough to ‘fare forward’ as TS Eliot has said in one of its quartets. I would rather side with Amartya Sen who has argued in his The Idea of Justice that it is more important to ‘fare well,” the Presidency V-C said pointing to the prevailing uncertainty among the college teachers over their future.
ISI professor Abhirup Sarkar stressed on quality teacher recruitment. “I am not going into the history, but I need to mention that it was not done properly. I do not believe that all the teaching posts can be filled in three months. Let some posts remain vacant. Let us keep all the posts open to all from government college teachers including the ones in Presidency College to young talents who have done their PhD abroad. ,” Sarkar said.
Chaudhuri, however, pointed to the gap in payscales of teachers in state universities and central universities, that often come in the way of recruiting the best scholars and teachers.