(Premium) Gist of Yojana: December 2013

Premium Gist of Yojana: December 2013

India’s Initiative to Education for All

TTA conference on education entitled “Educatio N e x t - T h e Way Forward” held in Delhi earlier this year, the Minister for Human Resources Development Shri Kapil Sibal, in his inaugural address, launched the idea of India as “the Education Super Power of the Future”. I could see that if used successfully these strategies could transform education in the country and make it the strong and powerful engine of advance that the country desperately needs in order to be able to forge ahead in today’s highly competitive global economy.

A four point program was outlined in the conference : (i) Increasing enrolment in higher education from the existing12.2 per cent of the population of the relevant age group to 30 per cent by 2025. (ii) The introduction of hundreds of new courses. (iii) The massive use of modern technologies for the delivery of education. And (iv) The inclusion of private players and the corporate sector as partners in the provision of education. The principal strength of the plan is the idea of making an extensive use of technology. The five point program which runs as follows:

(1) Low cost devices such as tablets and mobile telephones
(2) T h e proliferation of cloud computing.
(3) Open education, provided through information technology highways.
(4) The provision of hundreds of courses with the idea of giving students extensive choice and the freedom to make combinations of their choice-for instance music and mathematics
(5) The creation of a communications structure designed to give students exposures such as hands on work experience , laboratory experimentation and research.

Finally to start with, 2.5 lakh villages will be connected with the use of fiber optics to create a powerful information highway.

The second major strength of the plan is the inclusive spirit in which private bodies and the corporate sector have been invited to partner the Government’s efforts - “….it is not the sole responsibility of the Government to offer quality education at all levels, private institutions and corporates should also pitch in, partner and share the mammoth task of providing quality education to all. “ the Minister says. The private sector has been a provider from the times the British Government started providing education in India. Its contribution has been taken for granted without ever being acknowledged in the manner deserved. On the contrary, the functioning of private institutions is e n c u m b e r e d b y r i g i d , o f t e n anachronistic and poorly administered rules and requirements on the part of the Government The corporate sector is a relative newcomer to education. It has a great deal to offer. As one sees in the case of some of the education ventures of the Tatas, such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay or the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, this sector has a capacity for fresh vision and initiatives and apart from, and in addition to funding , it can bring new management skills to the building and administration of educational institutions. Both the private sector and the corporate sector, can do a great deal for education. But only if the Minister’s warm invitation to these sectors to share the task of providing education for the country is followed up by honest and careful efforts on the part of the Government to enable them to do this effectively.

It is evident that the plan is promising. But it is challenging and we need to be aware of the challenges involved. It is not possible to list them comprehensively within the space of this paper, but it should be possible to briefly identify those which come with each of the four points in the plan.

First, about the target to increase enrolment from 12 percent to 30 per cent by 2025.The demand for higher education has been growing by leaps - latest official statistics reveal that within the last four years enrollment has increased from 12 percent to 20 percent-and therefore, the achievement of this target should not be difficult. The Minister mentioned that a total of 800 universities and 50,000 colleges will have to be added to the system to accommodate the growth. In addition, there will be open universities. This should not be difficult either. Over the course of the last decade the phenomenal growth in the demand for higher education has stimulated an equally phenomenal growth of private entrepreneurship in education and private bodies will happily set up the institutions needed. However, managing the growth will be a major challenge. Experience indicates that many private bodies establishing and running institutions for higher education in the country are merely gold diggers eager to reap profits from the demand for education without any commitment either to their students or to the country’s needs. The first challenge will be to keep such educators out. Another major challenge will be to find qualified faculty and administrators for the new institutions. Already, many positions at colleges and university departments lie vacant for want of suitable personnel.

However, by far the bigger and more difficult challenge will be to gear education to market needs and to improve quality. At present 70 percent of the graduates from the technical stream and 85 percent from the general stream are either unemployed or under employed. At the same time scores of positions in industry, in government and other sectors of employment lie vacant for want of suitably qualified personnel. The simple explanation for this sad and ironical situation is that there is a serious mismatch between what educational institutions produce and what the market needs. When facilities for higher education in the country are expanded this problem will have to be carefully addressed.

As one can imagine this challenge is extremely complex to deal with. Changes in market needs follow changes in the economy and these are difficult to anticipate and to track. Moreover, rapid developments in knowledge in the developed world lead to rapid flows of new technologies in the market - as is easily visible in fields such as information technology, communications , medicine o r engineering. Because of globalization these technologies flood our markets in rapid flows. So far educators in the country are unable to develop courses at the pace required to keep in step with the rapidity with which new technologies keep coming . The challenge is to overcome this inadequacy.

Finally, it is important to recognize that the mismatch between t h e qualifications of graduates and market needs is not the only explanation for their unemployment and under employment. Graduates are often rejected for the simple reason that the quality of their education is not on par with market needs. It is common knowledge that with the mushrooming of institutions of higher education in the country the overall quality of higher education has dropped , often miserably. Cognitive skills, and the ability to think independently and creatively is not adequately developed. Nor is the ability to respond to or critique ideas. As a consequence degrees and diplomas are often certificates without substance. Thus, while our standards ought to be internationally comparable, as we compete in a global society even the best of our institutions such as the IITs. and IIMs are not world class, as one gathers from the concern voiced by the President of India, when, at a convocation address that he delivered in July this year, he expressed concern that not a single Indian university had made it to the list of the top 200 universities across the globe in the qS World University Rankings report recently released. The challenge is to understand why overall standards have been declining so severely, find out how they can be lifted and lift them. Unless this is done, growth in terms of an increase in enrolment and the addition of institutions will be empty.

Finally, gearing higher education to then eeds of the market an d improving quality are only part of the challenge. Institutions for higher education, particularly Universities are expected to function as vehicles o f discovery, a scentersforthe interaction and generation of ideas, for the growth of new knowledge and for the development of new skills and technologies. Our institutions for higher education do not measure up to this expectation. Lifting them firmly up to a level that they meet this expectation must be part of the agenda for “hundreds of new courses”

The Minister’s third point is the planned use of sophisticated technologies to deliver education. The technologies are available and we have the competence to use them. However, building the infrastructure for the employment of the strategies on the scale proposed, maintaining it and operationalising the programs proposed will be a big challenge. Further, we are told that the budget for higher education in the Twelfth Plan will be five times what it was in the Eleventh. But is that enough given the ambitious plans for the use of technology ?.

The poor level of education in our workforce as compared to China’s provides a valuable clue to the state of school education in the country. The statistics are as given in the table.

Modern and modernizing economies require a work force that is minimally primary school and preferably secondary school educated. Going by the figures stated in the table, we are in extremely poor shape on that count. As much as 79 percent of the Chinese workforce belongs to that category as compared to 48 percent of the Indian. A shocking 47 percent of our work force is illiterate as compared to18 percent of China’s . We urgently need to improve schooling in the country.

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