REFORMS IN EDUCATION TO TURNAROUND ECONOMY

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 students¹ 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 4^th 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 60^th in the global innovations index (GII), at 100^th place in Global Hunger Index⁶ and at 131^st 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 3^rd generation (or at the most 3.5 generation) Tejas and still striving to procure non-stealth 4^th 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