Improving Higher Education in India

Higher education in India unfortunately suffers from many qualitative and quantitative shortcomings; these come in the way of reaping demographic dividend. — Dr. Jaya Kakkar

Finally, India has overtaken China – it has become the most populous nation in the world. in April, with an estimated population of 1.42 billion India seized the crown from China. This means that India will provide more than a sixth of the increase in world’s population of working age (15-64) between 2023-2050. Twenty percent people below 25 years in the world are from India. It is a boon and bane at the same time. Time is actually running out for India to reap a demographic dividend. India skills report 2022 suggests that only about 49% of India’s educated youth are employable. And this employability does not proportionately increase when the youth becomes a university pass out; in other words higher education does not necessarily enhance the skill set. But if young people fail to pick up skills or some soil of vocation, they can hardly be expected to contribute towards making India a decent middle class society. This will not only entail a social, emotional, and political cost, but also a huge economic cost. India’s digital skills gap, for example, brings the biggest hurdle to GDP growth; one estimate is a downward risk of 23 percentage point every year, No mass employment would mean production of an army of idle youth who on one hand will not produce any economic dividend, while on the other they will join the army of goons. The structural unemployment problem carries within it the roots of social unrest; that is why we have increasing number of self styled vigilante groups who nothing but disturb the social order. Poor state of education, coupled with equally dismal healthcare and nutritional deficit, ensures that we are not investing enough in tomorrow’s workforce either. The Amrit Kal will not arrive, only 75 years of Independence will be completed. 

India is certainly a young country with nearly 65% of its 1.42 billion people under the age of 35, and nearly 600 million Indian aged 18-35. For the country to be able to achieve the goals set for Amrit Kal the young have to make their contribution, But for this we need, inter alia, a robust and highly goals delivering network of higher education institutions (HEIs).

Numbers do not mean quality of course. India has the second largest network of HEIs, with over 1000 universities and more than 41,000 colleges. But a majority of these perform very poorly on NAAC/NIRF parameters; ofcourse they remain outside the global ranking system. More importantly, their ability to impart skill based knowledge and produce employable youth remains woefully inadequate. In fact given the India’s geographical expanse the network of HEIs fails to spread itself all across.

However, as said earlier, even the existing ones have failed to deliver. These HEIs need to work together with the Central and state governments as well as with industries and civil society in capacity building and expanding the network of HEIs to the length of India, and across its breadth. While doing so they need to develop a better teaching and learning environment which should not only be sensitive to the needs of individuals but must also contribute towards building an inclusive, prosperous, and developed future.

So what ails our higher education systems?

Well, one important drag is lack of visionary, dynamic, and progressive leadership. But the publicity funded institutions have no autonomy in marking their appointments at the top level. As it is the talent pool to head HEIs in leadership role is rather limited; there may not be too many academics with proven leadership traits who can be invited to join in these roles. In any case most such appointments are made with relevant political allegiance in mind. 

Second, higher education cannot be strait jacketed. But in India there are two main issues: one, while NEP, 2020 envisions multidisciplinary education, actually there is rigid compartmentalization of learning through separated academic disciplines. Problems of society, economy, polity and others beg for multidisciplinary treatment. Problems, and therefore their solutions, in the real world need holistic treatment. Education needs to be interdisciplinary since this will enable the pupils to design an all encompassing solution to a problem. Medical science and environment studies need to be combined (perhaps juxtaposed with economics) so that a medical graduate is able to get at the root of a problem and suggest a treatment which is economically viable. This is just one example. Incidentally our ancient universities were actually interdisciplinary learning centres which welcomed international students. Two, the higher education system is guided (dictated?) by a rigid set of rules set by UGC. Not to talk of colleges, even universities have no freedom in setting their own syllabi, fixing the qualifications for faculty recruitment, or starting new courses. Of course, the government justification is that since it is funding – fully or partly – such institutions it has the legitimate right to guide them. However, this kills creativity and initiative. Moreover, it also leads to a lack of providing education that is needed for the economic, social, and cultural development of the region. Now, even the CUET (Central University Entrance Test) will be based on common syllabus which willy nilly would mean a common syllabus at school level.

Third, in India there is no equal access to all the seekers, especially due to economic constraints. It may come as a shocker that most higher education (70%) in India are funded privately, besides being expensive, and having an elitist bias (for example, instructions in English). Naturally, this handicap needs to be removed. Understandably in view of resources being scarce, and government having other commitments, government has never hit a desired target rate of 6% (of GDP) investment in India. And unfortunately philanthropy for education is not so popular here. Of course, spread of digital and online facilities is one way out.
Fourth, teaching and research are delinked in our education system. But cutting edge research is the only route to coming out with solutions to problems around us, be they in any sphere of life. It is not appreciated even by out faculty members that engaging classroom teaching is possible only when founded in excellent research.

To sum it all, what we lack is enough spread of HEIs on one hand and an enabling ecosystem for them to deliver on the other.  

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