The Media, the University, and the Public Sphere

Looking at the uneven phenomenon that higher education in India is, this paper focuses on the ways in which the mainstream English-language media represents issues related to the university. In particular, it looks at press coverage of the “controversy” that surrounded the introduction of a four-year undergraduate programme in Delhi University, and the ways in which it constructed a notion of the university in the public sphere. It also considers some of the television coverage on the rollback of the programme, while pointing to the substantial issues that seem to have been overlooked by the med