Inclusivity: Expanding the Universe of Universities

Abstract (English)

We live in a strange and difficult times, our education system has failed to integrate the rural knowledge, social realities, people and rural engagement into the curriculum, and it is like curriculum without people. An important part of education, particularly higher education is to learn to ask questions and to develop the capacity and depositions for reasoned arguments and critical thinking. Higher Education Institutions suffers from a lack of vision and academic freedom. Universities need to be the spaces of learning for all. Any exclusion of learner is exclusion of learning and attendant of knowledge. Why there is an intellectual poverty and crisis of vision in the institutions, people don’t trust and believe each other in the institutions. Why there is a growing culture of silence in our university spaces. Why our curriculum does not address about rural knowledge, peasant crisis, social realities, geopolitics, soft power, 64 arts (kalas) and rural engagement. In the name of globalization various market forces are entering in our university spaces and forcing for corporate need-based curriculum and constantly targeted at skills or making perfect candidates who seem like they have come out of cookies, cutters and factories. Universities are turning like schools, most of our educational institutions are aiming at turning students into individuals who are able to fend for themselves rather than moulding sensible and responsible citizens. The change in social composition of student’s demographic dividend and their intelligence varies in universities, how our universities are responding to new entrant is need of the hour. One side today’s classroom is socially manufactured and other side universities follows one set of pedagogical practices and most of the curriculum don’t accommodating intersectionality and diversities in its spaces. Compartmentalization not only have access to certain types of knowledge but are actually denied via personal preferences from going beyond their allowable sphere and narrow the actual functioning of various centers, departments, and schools in transaction of knowledge. A truly inclusive campus takes more holistic approach, it takes an entire campus from administration to architecture to academics, strive for democratic spaces and social justice. In this context, this paper describes and gives a meaningful platform to discuss inclusivity, inclusive universities, best practices and how our universities are expanding their universe from narrow, conservative minded individuals and their ill practices.