TCN News
Aligarh: “The commodification of education will lead to destruction of excellence, reason, epistemic exteriority, and the institutes will become bastions of patriarchy, casteism, ruthless discipline and its product will simply be commodities neatly packaged for the market”, said Emeritus Professor Prabhat Patnaik, JNU while delivering an extension lecture on “The Commoditisation of Higher Education” at the Department of Philosophy, Aligarh Muslim University.
Noted economist and ideologue, Professor Patnaik pointed out that giving autonomy to certain institutions of higher learning would eventually lead to financial autonomy which implies a hike in the education expenditure of individual students as compared to the current public funded system.
In his presidential remarks, Professor Emeritus Irfan Habib, Aligarh Muslim University advised that the funds for poor Indians should be utilised to galvanise critical thinking in them. He said, “It was a duty of all academicians to ensure critical thinking.”
Welcoming the guests, Prof Tariq Islam, Chairperson, Department of Philosophy, spoke on the Government of India’s recent decision to make some academic institutions autonomous, pointing out that AMU and other central universities and institutes were already autonomous bodies.