Essay on The Function of a University

The university occupies a place of overwhelming importance in our educational system. All our eyes are turned towards it. The universities in our country were originally planned by our colonial rulers to be factories for producing, on a large scale, certified clerks and copyists.

Hence, the function of an India University was for a long time to test the students, after a prescribed course of studies has been completed in the colleges. Nominal provision was made for the study of law, medicine and engineering and commerce. And so a vicious system has grown up; teachers help the students to memories for examination; students cram and load their mind with the odds and ends of learning; papers-setters demand of the examines a moderate reproductions of what they have memorized.

A country excepts its universities to provide leadership for different filed of the society. A University as the seat of higher learning may be said to have succeeded in its primary mission if it has given us leaders. It is not merely an examining body but has to serve as a centre of high academic studies and research.

But an Indian University with decided bias for arts and commerce is only turning out graduates. The complaint that our graduates are unemployed is a charge not against the University, which is not an employment bureau, but against the State whose duty is to remove unemployment. To require a University to find employment for her alumni will be a diversion of her function.

The allotted duty of a University is the advancement of learning, the pursuit of the sciences and the arts. Private donation, however liberal, is not an effective substitute for State help.

Lowering of educational standards is fatal to the ideals of a University. It should have well-equipped liberty up-to-date laboratories.

The University Grants Commission has been making grants for the present but it lays too much stress on stereotyped lectures that continue the methods of schools teaching. Instead, teachers should guide students and direct their studies in seminars and tutorial classes.

Every effort should be made to encourage students to think out things for themselves, to foster originality of ideas. They must be taught basic principles and how to apply them to the solution of practical problems. The system should be devised so as to allow full play to the inquisitive mind. This would promote freedom of thinking. If this is done, the University would cases to be a mere continuation of the school on a somewhat wide basis, or an examining body-issuing certificate of fitness.

A secondary function of the university is to create in its students a mental attitude. A University should help its alumni to develop a balanced mind, an unprejudiced judgment, independent thinking. It should turn out men who are competent to be leaders of the society.

In the modern world, a University must not be encouraged to remain aloof from the life of the people. After all, it is the society at large that pays for the un-keep of the University. So the University, in its turn, should have to repay the society by producing original thinkers.

The centre of learning should not be a secluded cloister. Not by enforced withdrawal from all commerce with the outside world, but by intellectual communication with it, does the modern University fulfills itself and justifies its existence. The old idea of having University towns away from the busy life of men is no longer favoured. Students must not develop what is called the ‘ivory-tower’ attitude. They must be taught to face the realities of life. Hence, modern Universities tens to grow up in the heart of industrial towns, in close contact with the real social life.

Though a University is mainly an academic body, its social side should not be overlooked. It is, of course, true that the University has no direct concern with the solution of such problems as those of employment, but it will be an unreal approach if it disowns all responsibilities. Every institution must perform a social function. When this is realized, it will be found that a University has the duty of so organizing its studies as to equip students to meet the demands of life, of the society at large. To deny this responsibility would lead only to ploughing the barren sands of futility.

“A University should be a place of light of liberty, and of learning’ said Disraeli. It should illuminate the mind, liberate the intellect and create a passion for learning in all disciplines.