In the hallowed halls of India's universities, a quiet but significant crisis is unfolding. The very language of scholarship, the medium through which complex ideas are exchanged and advanced, is showing signs of a worrying decline. This erosion of academic language proficiency among students and, alarmingly, some faculty members, threatens to undermine the quality of higher education and research output in the country.
The Roots of the Linguistic Erosion
The problem is multifaceted, stemming from a confluence of social, educational, and technological shifts. A primary driver is the changing landscape of school education. There is a growing emphasis on rote learning and exam-oriented preparation, often at the expense of deep reading, critical writing, and nuanced comprehension. Students arrive at university gates without having cultivated a rich vocabulary or the ability to construct sustained, logical arguments on paper.
Furthermore, the pervasive influence of digital communication is reshaping linguistic habits. The truncated, informal, and often grammatically lax style of texting and social media is increasingly seeping into academic work. Professors report receiving essays and research papers littered with colloquialisms, abbreviations like "u" for "you," and a general lack of formal tone appropriate for scholarly discourse.
Professor G. Viswanathan, Chancellor of VIT University, poignantly highlights a core irony. While students may be fluent in conversational English, they struggle immensely with its academic form. "They can speak well but cannot write a single sentence without a mistake," he observes, pointing to a critical disconnect between everyday and scholarly language use.
Consequences for Scholarship and Critical Thinking
The decline is not merely a matter of stylistic preference; it has serious intellectual ramifications. Academic language serves as the essential toolkit for critical thinking. It allows for precision, clarity, and the ability to engage with complex texts and theories. When this toolkit is blunted, the very process of knowledge creation and dissemination suffers.
Students find it difficult to comprehend primary sources, journal articles, and seminal texts in their fields. This impedes their ability to contribute original ideas. The problem extends to research output, where poorly drafted papers, theses, and grant proposals can obscure good science and humanities research, limiting its impact and global reach.
The issue also exacerbates existing inequalities. Students from English-medium backgrounds often retain an advantage, while those from regional language mediums, who might possess sharp intellects, face an additional, formidable barrier in expressing their ideas within the dominant academic framework.
Charting a Path to Revival: Solutions and Interventions
Confronting this challenge requires deliberate and sustained intervention at multiple levels. Universities and colleges are the primary battlegrounds for this revival. A key proposal is the integration of dedicated academic writing and communication courses into the core curriculum across all disciplines, not just the humanities.
These courses should move beyond basic grammar to teach students the specific conventions of academic discourse: how to structure an argument, cite sources ethically, synthesize literature, and maintain a formal yet clear tone. Professor D. P. Singh, former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC), advocates for a "finishing school" approach in the first year of college to bridge this critical gap.
Faculty development is equally crucial. Teachers themselves must be sensitized to the importance of modeling good academic language and consciously integrating writing instruction into their subject teaching. Encouraging wide reading beyond textbooks, assigning more analytical writing tasks, and providing detailed feedback are essential pedagogical shifts.
On a broader scale, there is a call for a national conversation to re-evaluate how language is taught in schools. The focus must shift from memorization to application, from testing comprehension to fostering expression. Promoting a culture of reading books, journals, and quality long-form journalism can help rebuild the linguistic foundation.
The fight to save academic language is, in essence, a fight to preserve the rigor and integrity of higher education in India. It is about equipping the next generation of thinkers, researchers, and professionals with the primary tool they need to understand the world and change it for the better. Without a concerted effort from educators, policymakers, and institutions, the decline in scholarly communication will continue, with lasting consequences for India's intellectual capital and its place in the global knowledge economy.
