PATNA: Outgoing Bihar governor-cum-chancellor of universities Satya Pal Malik , who has been transferred to Jammu and Kashmir, will be remembered for a long time by the academics for his pro-active role in revamping the “ailing” higher education system in the state.In less than 11 months, he made his presence felt in every sphere of university education. Malik launched a crusade against the mafia controlling a large number of private teachers’ training colleges in the state, earning crores of rupees at the cost of poor people and also degrading the quality of teacher education.At his initiative, statues prescribing common entrance for admission of students to the BEd courses running in all training colleges in the state were framed by the chancellor’s secretariat. The maiden state-level entrance test was organized by Nalanda Open University and all admissions were channelized through the results of this test. Even as some private colleges did oppose the move, it was a success in ensuring admission of meritorious candidates. It is an open secret that most training colleges in the state are being run by influential people and they would try their best to resist any move for reformative measure. But foolproof measures were adopted to ensure all fairness in the conduct of teacher education.“I don’t bother for the powerful lobby behind all this and the defaulters would be brought to book. The rules of grating affiliation to private training colleges would be made stricter,” Malik had declared.With a view to streamlining financial discipline in the universities, he made selection of financial advisors for all the universities through proper interview. Then, in an unprecedented move, Malik appointed ex-army personnel, including brigadiers and colonels, as registrars in all the universities with a view to improving law and order on the campus.Sometime after his joining, Malik convened a meeting of the VCs in November and learnt that the decisions of the last meeting of VCs held about a year ago were yet to be implemented. He decided that the VCs’ meeting should be held every month to review the progress of implementation of the decisions already taken. Time-bound action programmes for revision of curricula in the light of the choice-based credit system, introduction of biometric attendance for teachers and non-teaching staff, installation of CCTV at strategic locations and provision of toilet and girls’ common room in every institution were launched.When he found that elections to student unions have not been conducted in different universities for the last 35 years, Malik asked the VCs of all universities to hold the same at the earliest. Initially, the VCs were reluctant to hold the elections for fear of violence, but the chancellor convinced them about the desirability of having duly elected students unions. “If you have student unions, you will talk to genuine students. And, if you do not have duly elected unions, you will have to talk to goons and mawalis,” he is reported to have told the VCs.The actions of Mailk reminded the academics of similar academic reforms initiated by former chancellor R S Gavai and his “dynamic” OSD R Krishna Kumar about a decade back. Academics still remember the various reformative measures launched by Gavai.One hopes incumbent Lalji Tandon will continue the tempo created by Malik and work for the betterment of higher education in the state.

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