REFORMS IN EDUCATION TO TURNAROUND ECONOMY
Published in University News, Vol. 56, No. 35, August 27- September 2, 2018
Education is key to facilitate
and enrich the socio-cultural, moral, scientific, technological, economic and
overall development of any society or nation. It is a potent and purposive
intervention to facilitate, object oriented learning, invoke utilitarian
skills, consolidate moral values, bring advancement in scientific and technical
know how, enhance individual and social commitments, reinforce one’s faith in
the self and shape the individual as well as societal behavior of generations
to come. So, education acquires key significance in a country like India, home
to one fifth of the global youth and endowed with, one of the world’s largest
higher education system. But, India needs to take an urgent call for low employability
and low innovativeness of its passing out graduates, as well as for low
international ratings, whereby India is able to attract only 0.61% of
international students
1 with no place in 50 top international destinations
for higher education. Besides, India has a very poor, 60
th rank in
the global innovations index (GII)
2.
Quality of education has wide ramifications
over the economy, including the manufacturing, trade, commerce, employment,
national security, human development and overall socio-cultural environment.
Country’s share in the world manufacturing has today plunged to a mere 2.1% vis
a vis 22% of China, 17.6% of the US and 7% of the Japan3. Japan has mere
1.6% of world population and 7 percent share in world manufacturing. While
India has 17.8 % of world population and mere 2.1 percent share in world
manufacturing. In world ship-building, India has less than 1.0% share, vis a
vis 26% share of South Korea having 5% of India’s population as well as area. Thus,
inspite of being 4th largest steel producer in the world India lags
far behind Korea in the ship-building due to poor education, research and
training in the maritime engineering in country. Same holds true across a broad
range of sectors. Commenting upon such a poor state of affairs the information
technology industry veteran and Chairman of Manipal Global Education, TV
Mohandas Pai has opined that, India failed to derive the demographic dividend
as it’s saddled with crores of youngsters with low skills unsuited to the
economy.4 He feels that there is a need to improve quality of
education and stop undue regulation and control of education.5 Indeed,
today India stands 60th in the global innovations index (GII), at
100th place in Global Hunger Index6 and at 131st
place in the Human Development Index7. Taking cognizance of such a
poor state of education, nutrition and health in the country the
Secretary-General of the industry body ASSOCHAM, D S Rawat has rightly said that
India must invest a lot in education, health and child nutrition so that the
human resource turns qualitatively superior. 8
This poor quality and low
innovativeness of education and research is fatefully reflected in the defence
hardware development as well. China has successfully developed two fifth
generation stealth fighter aircrafts on its own9, the J20 and the
J31. Whereas, India has yet been working on the 3rd generation (or
at the most 3.5 generation) Tejas and still striving to procure non-stealth 4th
generation or 4.5 generation Raeffel and F16 whose manufacturing has already
been stopped in the US. In view of its obsolescence vis a vis the fifth generation
fighter aircrafts with stealth capability (radar-evading ability) viz the F35
and Raptor2210. Likewise, our missiles viz. the Agni range of
missiles too can carry only single nuclear warhead, while Chinese missiles are
capable to carry multiple nuclear warheads. In the area of electronics, telecom
(4G as well as 5G technologies), nanotechnology, supercomputing, artificial
intelligence etc. too India has to take an urgent call from the developments
taking place world over.
To bring a turnaround in our manufacturing,
technology development, innovations and research (fundamental as well as
applied) and intellectual property creations, via effective human development,
India needs to take care of its education sector urgently. According to T. V.
Mohandas Pai, it takes time for educational reforms to impact, as reforms will
take ten years to impact; by which time this (the current) generation will be
lost. The State Bank of India to in its report has said that India has only one
decade to change its status into a developed country and will need to focus on
education, failing which the much-hailed ‘demographic dividend’ will turn into
a disadvantage, and it will never be able to go into the developed group of
nations. Then the country shall perpetually stay in emerging group of economies
only.11
India, otherwise is well blessed
with an ostentatiously vast and enviable number of around 150 elite institutes
and 665 plus state universities including the deemed and self financed
universities along with 43000 colleges including 374 autonomous colleges. The
elite institutes include 103 institutes of national importance, so declared by
the Parliament, including the IITs, NITs, AIIMS, IIITs, IIMs etc., along with 47
Central Universities. All of them are blessed with most liberal fiscal support and
access to cream of the nation’s talent, being admitted through most fiercely
contested entrance exams. The combined enrolment of all these institutes is around
3.2 crore students, almost equal to the population of Canada. The 150 elite
institutes of the country alone, outnumber the total number of universities in
several countries like, the Canada, UK and several European, Asian and Latin
American countries, whose universities make, almost a beeline among the top
ranking global universities, viz among the top 250 universities in the Times
Higher Education (THE) university rankings12. The 150 elite
institutes of the country, blessed with all the bounties from the exchequer and
absolute autonomy, devoid of any political and bureaucratic interferences,
could well usher India in the league of top innovating and manufacturing
countries, if they attempt to embark on the goal of quality teaching and
research. The non-elite, but public funded institutes and universities too have
been attracting a fairly talented cross-section of the society by virtue of
their lower and nominal fees vis a vis the self financed institutes and
universities. The self financed institutes have been offering education at
relatively higher and cost- based fees, for want of any fiscal support from the
state.
The quality deficit, prevailing
across-the-board in teaching, research, publications, innovations and overall
intellectual property creation in the country's higher education network needs
to be addressed urgently. Indeed a formal system of academic performance audit
and continuous performance management needs to be put in place, for remedying
the lacunae in the vision, mission, priorities, targets and pedagogies. A clear
focus over an explicitly defined hierarchy of priorities, inter se, teaching,
pedagogy development, research, publications, innovations, industry-academia
cooperation too need to be developed urgently. An empowered and overarching
agency too needs to be put in place to effectively monitor, counsel and mentor all
the stakeholders, replacing the present
system, based upon, 'the accept or reject' regulatory-style.
Hardly 20 of the India’s universities and institutions,
including the elite institutes, being
sustained at a staggering cost of Rs. 75,000 crore, find place in the top 1000
universities of the world, that too towards
its tail end only. It is so, even when, the state funded institutes are catering
higher education-needs of less than 50% of the total number of students enrolled
in higher education today. More than 50% of the students, pursuing higher
education in the country are studying in the self financed institutes or in the
self-financed programmes of the public funded institutes, not getting any grant
from the state. Rather, instead of getting any support from the state, such
students even have to additionally bear several charges or levies, directly or
indirectly being imposed by the regulatory authorities or the state-run
universities. Such charges are either being directly imposed upon the students
of affiliated institutions or from such institutes for approval or affiliation,
which also devolve upon the students. To the contrary, in several countries
like Denmark etc, the governments, conscious of their responsibilities of a
welfare state, reimburse either in full or a large part of the fees being paid
by the students in the self-financing institutions. We have 1.7 million
engineering seats13, the highest in the world, but more than half
are lying vacant solely for want of ability of the prospective students to pay
the cost-based fees of self-financing institutes. Hence a system of fee
reimbursement, atleast in part, can only remedy the poor GER, underutilization
of capacity and poor quality.
In India, on excluding such
students, pursuing higher education in the self financed institutions, the self
financed programs of the public funded institutes by the distance mode and as
non-collegiate, the per-student expenditure, calculated on the purchasing power
parity basis for public funded institutions, is fairly comparable with the
expenditures being incurred in several high performing countries. Yet, there
are only 7 Indian universities in the world’s top 500 universities, as ranked
by the Times Higher Education (THE). The universities of the US, Europe and
even from our Asian as well as BRICS counterparts, like China, Japan, South
Korea, other ASEAN nations and some of the BRICS nations make a beeline to the
top, in the world university rankings. Even the tiny nations like Singapore, Hong
Kong, Israel or Denmark with 5 to 8 million populations, have atleast 1-3
universities in the top 100, where we never figure. For want of quality in
teaching and research, inspite of the education being most affordable in India,
barring the countries offering free higher education, we do not even rank among
the 50 top destinations, attracting international students. Hardly 36 of
India’s universities and institutions have place, towards the tail end among
top 1100 universities in the, THE world rankings. Out of these 36 institutes as
well, 11 are self financed. If they are also supported by state grants and via
reimbursement of fee of their students, they can also enhance their
performance, when get all their seats filled.
We also have a very dismal share
in the international patent applications being made, or in creating other forms
of intellectual properties. Our share in international research publications is
also abysmally low. Besides, more than 35% of the research papers being
published in pay and publish category of journals in the world are of the
Indian scholars. Our share in international research citations is also quite dismal
at 3.1 percent, inspite of a very vast higher education-network. UK has only
133 universities, less than a sixth of the number in India and even less in
number than the 150 elite institutes of India. Population-wise as well, the UK
has just 1% of global population, but it has a 12% share in the international
citation frequency of its research-publications. While, we have 3.1% share in
international research citations, notwithstanding being home to world's 20%
youth and one of the world’s largest education network. We are also home to 17.8%
of the world's Population. The top 50 universities of the world-constituting
the alma mater of most of the Nobel Prize winners, have each produced between
12-151 Nobel laurrettes in the preceding years.14 The lowest score
is of 12 Nobel Laurrettes for the Duke University and Kings College University
of Washington, and the highest number of 151 is from Harvard University (a
private university). There are universities with double digit Nobel winners
from tiny countries like Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, having a miniscule
population of 50 to 90 lacs. As a nation, US has highest 353 Nobel laurrettes
followed by the UK 125, Germany 105, France 61 and so on. Netherland, Norway
and Israel, having a population of mere 1.7 cr, 52 lac and 85 lac have 19, 13 and
12 Nobel Prize winners. India has only one noble laureate till date, Bharat
Ratna Dr. C.V Raman, who could alone bag a Noble prize for the research
conducted in India, that too prior to Independence in 1930. Likewise, as per the data released by the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and even after a 7% growth, the
patent filings from India had been mere 1529 in 2016 vis a vis 56,595 of the US, 45,239 of Japan and 43,168 of China, under the WIPO’s patent
cooperation Treaty (PCT). India has even seen a drop in international patent
applications to 1,423 under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2015, while US had
57,385, Japan (44,235), China (29,846) and Korea (14,626), all figuring in the
top-10 list, registering a rise 20%, 14% and 7%, respectively, from last year.15
India fared no better in terms of global trademark filings as well, under the
Madrid System. It ranked 36th with only 150 trademarks field in 2015, down from
153 in 2014, when it had seen a more than 70% increase in trademark registrations.
It shows a very miserable scene on the front of new product and brand launches.
Against a paltry figure of 150 filings of India, the trademark filings of the
US (7,340), Germany (6,831), France (4,021), China (2,401), Japan (2,205) are
14 to 48 times.
Data from the WIPO-Report on “the
Breakthrough Innovations and Economic Growth” also highlight the vast gap with
which the Indian elite institutes are lagging behind even their Chinese
counterparts in research, that the IITs, though endeavoring to move ahead on
research in nanotechnology with over 5,000 scientific papers and 14 patents
since 1970, are yet miles behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences which excels
with 29,591 publications and 705 patent filings in nanotechnology. Therefore,
our education and research has a long distance to go, in promoting innovations
and research at par with contemporary trends. The figure, on comparing with
China, is embarrassingly low for the elite institutes of India, constituting an
icon at home. The elite as well as non-elite institutes need counseling and
support services for improving their curricula, pedagogy, quality of research
and publications and all other parameters of performance. The self-financed ones
too need to be extended residuary fiscal support to incentivise for quality of
education and research.
Regulatory scope needs to be
redefined to focus upon mentoring all the stakeholder, including the education
providers towards better capacity building through consultative regulation and
negotiated rulemaking, instead of colonial styled accept or reject mode.
Besides, facilitating adoption of newer teaching-learning approaches like ‘problem-cum-project-based
learning’ along with other emerging teaching-learning approaches, like the
andragogies, peeragogy, heutagogy, ubuntogogy, transition pedagogy, and
transformative pedagogy; supported by continuous industry interaction, including
consortium approach, by large number of industry-university consortia. It is also
high time to assign defined targets of performance to all education providers
in terms of quality of passing out students, quality of research, publications
and innovations. India too can emulate the Euro-American practice of
consultative regulation and negotiated rule making, to enhance capabilities of all
types of education providers, while keeping in view the ambitions of all the
stakeholders, viz. the students, parents, faculty, industry and education
providers. Indeed, the goals of inclusive growth in the economy with
sustainable development and reorientation of our societal values can be
realised only by holistic enrichment and reform of our education, with lesser
regulation and greater facilitation. Over regulation only dampens quality. A
truly facilitating and enabling environment for all stakeholders viz., the
faculty, the education seekers, and the education providers need to be put in
place with periodic review against quality benchmarks with remedial support of
all kinds, including fiscal support can quickly transform higher education in
the country to excel worldwide.
Notes:
1. Quamar Furquan & Bhalla Veena, Internationalisation of Higher Education in India, AIU 2017, N. Delhi p6
2. Issac Wolfe, India moves up six places to rank 60 in Global Innovation Index, Jun 15, 2017, www.forbesindia.com/ article/ special/ india-moves-up/ 47267/1
3. China has a Dominant Share of World Manufacturing, 1.6.2014, www.mapi.net/blog/2014 /01/china-has-
4. https:// m.dailyhunt.in/ news/ india/ english/ edexlive-epaper-edex/india+has+over+10 + cr+youth+but+are+they+skill ed + to+ take+ up+ competitive+ jobs-newsid- 90348821
5. ibid
6. Why hunges in India is worse than in Nepal Oct. 13, 2017, www.times of india .indiatimes.com/india/ why-hunger/ 61063380.cms
7. India ranks 131 on Human Development Index, Norway No. 1 livemint, Mar 22, 2017, livemint.com>politics>India....
8. ibid 4
9. Fifth Generation Fighter Jets, November 21, 2012, MIGFLUG, www.migflug .com >jetflights>fifth-gen...
10. ibid
11. ibid 4
12. No Indian University In World’s Top 250, www.indiaspend.com >cover story.
13. Amarnath K. Menon, When a stream goes dry, August 4, 2016, indiatoday.indiatoday.in
14. 50 Universities with the Most Nobel Prize Winners www.bestmastersprograms.org
15. World Intellectual Property Indicators-2016, World Intellectual Property Organisaton, www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/ wipo_pub_941_2016.pdf
