Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/23

10 solution (which was recommended by many) would have been to divide the post-graduate staff into two distinct sections: (1) a moderate-sized permanent staff consisting of the irreducible minimum of men required for normal teaching work, each of them doing full work as in other Universities, and sure of payment from the Calcutta University’s permanent income and fixed Government subsidies, and (2) a varying body of temporary hands, consisting of young assistants on Rs. 200 or so, engaged during periods of inflation on the rolls and supported by special temporary grants from the public treasury and increase in the fees. In such a scheme, everyone would be sure of his future, and there would naturally be promotions from the second to the first class, as an incentive to honest work among the juniors.

The public cry was for retrenchment and reform, for combining genuine efficiency with wise economy at the sacrifice of spectacular expansion and rank luxuriance of staff which cannot possibly be maintained for long in such a country as ours. The Committee appointed in response to such a demand, however, reported by a majority in May last, and the Senate accepted its report (again in a divided house), that no retrenchment of superfluous branches should be made; on the contrary, the cost of the post-graduate teaching staff should go on increasing, creating an ever-increasing deficit,—of 2½ lakhs this year rising to 5½ lakhs five years hence, —which the Bengali tax-payer must supply, as the University could not provide it in spite of its normal income of 20 lakhs a year.

The die-hards forming the majority of the Committee have thus issued a defiant challenge to the public and the legislature, refusing to make any reform and demanding more money than ever before.

The daily papers have published some figures illustrating the Calcutta University’s wasteful methods in the post-graduate department. In English, each teacher delivers on an average 6½ lectures a week (against 18 lectures by the staff at Dacca); in History only 5 lectures (against 12 at Dacca), in Economics 7½, in Philosophy 4½, in Anthropology only 3½ lectures in the entire week.

In History there are 32 paid lecturers for 171 students, in Philosophy 17 lecturers for 65 pupils, in Experimental Psychology ten teachers for ten pupils. The climax is reached in comparative philology in which there are three lecturers on a pay of Rs. 1100 for two students, and in Pali fourteen lecturers for eight pupils!!! And the Bengali tax-payer must find money year after year to maintain this state of things, while unemployment is increasing in the land and the wages of our graduates are getting lower and lower.

As a writer in the Englishman has pointed out, these figures show that in several of the subjects the same amount of teaching work can be done by only one-half of the number now employed, and in some by a quarter of the present staff.

“The Minority Report contended that large savings can be effected without impairing efficiency if the unnecessarily large staff now employed be reduced, and instead of the low salary now given [to many] better provision be made (for a smaller staff)........ The Majority are not prepared for any reduction, while they recommend large increments of salary, often amounting to double..... It remains to be seen if the Government will agree to part with the tax-payers’ money for educational schemes which have obviously been planned without reference to the rudimentary principles of business.”

Quite apart from its financial wastefulness, the veteran scholar, Mahamahopadhyay Hara Prasad Shastri, has pointed out the educational absurdity of the artificially padded out Pali course in four groups. [His letter of 10th June.]

The majority have rejected the wise proposal to recognise the post-graduate staff by forming a nucleus of a strong well-paid professoriate (at the top) plus a small permanent junior staff and a fluctuating number of temporary hands according to the university’s needs, and means,—or in other words, a re-distribution of the same expenditure so as to have fewer men but greater efficiency and more work per head, within a smaller circle of subjects,—i.e., to ensure depth in the place of surface.

Thus we have the strange result, that a Committee appointed to explore avenues to economy has ended by submitting a more extravagant demand than ever before. No reform is promised or even proposed. Only a challenge has been issued to public criticism and the keepers of the public purse to pay unconditionally an ever-increasing subsidy. The