Higher education system(HES) is the backbone of any nation for it produces nation-building intellectuals. The present HES in India is largely a British Legacy, even though world class universities like Nalanda existed centuries before that. Therefore a discussion of its evolution would be in order.
🔸Evolution
The British set up many universities and colleges(U&C) in India, including Madras Presidency College, Calcutta University, both for training their recruits and imparting western and eastern education to the Indian masses. Gradually, the British realized that these universities,owing to the moral education imparted in them, had become factories for producing nationalists, challenging the very regime. Consequently, the wood's despatch ,1854, recommended a radical transformation of these U&C. The new syllabi and teaching pattern became more instrumental and less value-laden. Thus, the universities started producing skilled labourers for the industry rather than thinkers, suiting British Interests. This impressed so deeply on our HES that the system is conspicuous even today.
In what follows, the structure, distribution and associated issues/problems of the HES are discussed for a comprehensive evaluation.
🔸Structure
The HES in India can be broadly divided into Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate. A sectoral(stream-wise) classification would be arts, commerce, science, engineering, management,law, medical and journalism. Another classification based on status is Deemed universities and affiliated colleges, run by both public and private.
🔸Distribution
The geographical distribution of these U&C is quite uneven as most are concentrated in metropolitan and other urban areas. While the Governments have attempted an equitable distribution, private U&C far outnumber public U&C and thus distort the distribution. On the other hand, stream-wise distribution is also uneven, where engineering and management institutes, running in lakhs, outnumber all other institutes. This not only represents the genuine incapability of the state to accommodate the increasing number of students, but also the structural distortion in the Indian economy, where the service sector dominates.
🔸Present state
It is well known that only two Indian universities, IIT Mumbai and IIT Kharagpur, feature in the top 200 world universities, and none in top 100. An overwhelmingly large number of them are from the west. Hence, prior to any evaluation of our HES it must be kept in mind that India is developing nation which is scarce in resources and lags behind on several socioeconomic parameters. All of this has a bearing on our HES.
A sectoral(stream-wise) evaluation, which discusses both the common and specific issues to the streams is in order.
🔸Common issues
The common factors which affect the quality of education of any HES are teachers, examination pattern and syllabus, regulation/autonomy,skill training, R&D output, academia-industry linkage, political intervention in technical matters and migration across streams and nations.
A large number of posts(as much as 50%) are vacant for teachers both in technical and nontechnical U&C. Attempts have been made by both the public and private sector to attract them by higher incentives, quick promotion etc, which have hardly been successful. Recently a scheme, Jawahar Lal Nehru Full-Bright Fellowship, for bringing the eminent scientist and academicians back from abroad to India, to work here as professors, was announced by GoI. The impact is yet to be measured, but it is clear that teaching has lost its sheen in India. The attitude of teachers is reflected in the examination pattern and the students.
Examinations in our U&C, barring few top U&C, test rote-learning more than conceptual clarity and value build up. Moreover, the syllabus of a majority of U&C is archaic and not revised regularly. As a result, the students passing out from these U&C lack specific skill sets and thus can not be employed by the industry. Hence,unsurprisingly, academiaindustry linkages, common in western U&C, are largely missing in India. There is no incentive for the industry to work with the former if they do not get quality. This impacts both the quality and quantity of R&D output in India. For, the U&C are constrained due to lack of funds both from the private sector( the missing linkages) and the genuine inability of the state to invest owing to other socio-economic obligations. A recent survey showed indicates that only 0.2% of the total number of journals and research papers published in India find mention in the High Impact Journals(the best ones in the world). A majority of the patents granted in India belong to the non-Indian MNCs.
Due to these structural, quality and commitment issues, a large number of students flee abroad for better quality of education, employment and R&D, also known as brain drain. This severely impacts India, as years of investment in building human capital builds the developed nations and not us. It is known that about one-third of the scientists in NASA are either from India or of Indian origin. These factors are aggravated by the fact that only about 15% of Indians students enter the HES. But, even this small percentage in unable to find employment suitable to their skill set resulting in underemployment and unemployment. This also discourages other families from sending their children for higher education,as they do not see returns.
Despite the prevalence of underemployment and unemployment, there has been a massive proliferation of private U&C in India post-1991 reforms. Owing to slack regulation by the UGC, AICTE and other such licensing and regulatory bodies, their quality of education has become .
🔸Specific Issues
There are also issues specific to the streams which impact HES. The arts and commerce U&C( like JNU, DU) usually lack vocational training courses to make their students employable. This acts as a deterrent for many seeking employment post graduation, rendering arts less popular.
In the engineering and medical U&C (IITs, NITs, AIIMS etc.) students often move from their parent stream to other streams like finance, consultancy. This severely impacts at least the government run U&C, for technical education is highly subsidized in India. Also, the number of PhDs,8,900, produced by these U&C is meagre when compared to 10,000 PhDs produced by China in only Agricultural Biotech. Multiple number of entrance examinations confuses students especially those from rural areas. Also, interestingly there is no mandatory requirement for private medical U&C to conduct medical entrance examinations. The Supreme Court recently ordered against a common NEET to be conducted by MCI, a regulatory body for medical education. Thus, there is no assurance about the much-needed quality of doctors graduating from these U&C.
🔸Conclusion
It took us years to understand the irrelevance of the western models of higher education. This was aggravated by lack of resources, new structures and excessive politicization of HES. The present state of HES has been a story of neglect and continuous erosion. Our U&C have failed to perform and deliver on every front in a highly competitive global environment. It is time to pay serious attention to the HES, if we want to reap the demographic dividend;create nation-builders, and not mere skilled labourers; and engage the best brains of India in the service of our nation rather than others. Though this seems a distant reality but the efforts of the government to reform the HES would hopefully bear fruits. The journey may not be an easy one.
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