Universities at the crossroads

Discussion and debate on our universities is marked by sharp and growing disagreement between proponents of two different and opposite points of view. There are those who maintain that the universities should be governed solely by pure merit without any consideration of their social composition; they do not generally pause to consider whether merit itself can be defined unequivocally by one single criterion. On the other side are those who maintain that the universities should become fully inclusive socially and give representation to all castes and communities in proportion to their numbers; they have little sympathy for the university's need to discriminate among students and teachers on the basis of their academic ability and performance. If the universities value their autonomy and want to protect it, they must show more initiative in devising and adopting policies that will change their social composition in the long run and make them more diverse and socially more inclusive. That it is possible to do this without seriously compromising academic standards has been shown repeatedly by universities in other countries.