Educational Reforms - Some Crucial Recommendations

SOME CRUCIAL RECOMMENDATIONS

 

1.India has now more than 1billion in population and is still growing. It is young, about 54% below twenty five years. This youthful population is likely to be so even through 2050 when many developed countries including China are likely to have a large aged population and less of youthful workforce. Global analysts project it as an advantage for India.

2.Young population is good to have. But they become great core strength only when they are equipped with right knowledge and skills to meet the needs of economy and society. In addition they should have the capability for life long learning as the knowledge intensive societies (agriculture, manufacturing or services) require continual update of knowledge & skills.

3.Presently every age group of youth in India has about 20million. i.e 18 years old about 20million :15years old about 20 million : 5year olds about 20million. Of this only about less than 2% get some reasonable professional education required for industry, business and developmental tasks. About 10% some form of post +12 education, having little relevance for society, economy or for their own self employment. A large percentage do not cross primary stages of education, among them larger percentage are girls (70% or more).

 

4.Therefore a whole series of measures need to be taken with great urgency, sincerity and attention to the details of implementation, from pre-primary stages to PhD levels as well as for periodic upskilling of the entire work force already employed from bottom most levels to upper levels of organizational hierarchies.

5.While noting such a need this write-up cannot cover all these elements at one go. There are hundred of reports and recommendations, some being very good and most others being repetitive. Therefore this report gives specific action oriented recommendations on professional engineering / technical education in an integrated form and a few other recommendations which address a few other crucial issues of having large impact. Since the rationale of most recommendations are obvious due to past debates and reports, in the interest of brevity and focus the write up lists the recommendations.

Recommendations

1.Universal Primary Education up to 8th standard is a must for all Indians in order to achieve the goals of empowering a large number of Indians with relevant economic and social skills. This is the basic Foundation.

1.Central / State Governments may consider making the syllabus structure and other details flexible so that many local initiatives for creative learning can flourish. The obsession with a single uniform syllabus for the country or even at a State level must go. Let 10,000 flowers bloom !.

2.Increased use of ICT tools to supplement such a learning process may also be encouraged by all – Govt., philanthropists, companies doing Corporate Social Responsibility and others who can work part time for them..

3.Those who do such innovative methods may be freed to do by empowering the Head of Primary School to enter into such cooperative and creative partnerships.

4.Skill Development Initiatives such as the one launched by CII (and others, as relevant) may be dovetailed at the 7th and 8th standard stages themselves so that many children who cannot afford to learn more would have globally relevant skill for their livelihood.

2.Education for children can be encouraged remarkably when the adults are also literate.

1.Therefore the successfully demonstrated models of functional adult literacy (e.g TCS) may be encouraged by State/Central Govts and also by philanthropists, activists as local levels.

2.Corporate Industry may also adopt the local areas to spread such an adult literacy around he areas they function.

3.Coming now Degree level Engineering Education, presently

The country produces about 2,36,545 engineering degree holders from about 1300 engineering colleges each year. This number is increasing every year by about 5% (China produces about 3 times more than this number each year). Not all of them are of high quality. Even while recognizing the diversity of skills and knowledge bases required it is essential to improve the quality of the existing colleges. Most of the engineering colleges are privately funded in a self-financing mode with very little or nil Govt funds. Some the govt funded colleges are also being converted to self-financing mode in a number of States. Some immediate steps required to improve the relevance and quality to meet the industry / business needs are the following :

1.One full semester during the course of an engineering degree (about six months) are stipulated by most universities for industrial work experience. Many colleges are unable to fulfill this realistically and even by those who implement there are no systematic effort to work with Industry. If the colleges can work out their academic requirements and calender of the work semester in consultation with industries and also assure a continual supply of students over a period of 3 years or more many industries will be willing to integrate them as a part of their work force planning thus avoiding disruptions due to trainees and also giving much needed real industrial training. If this requires changes to rules by Universities concerned they may do so at the earliest in the interest of relevance and quality. The key is some crreative and innovative actions not bombastic announcements !

2.Effecting changes to syllabus and changing teaching methods in affiliated colleges are often very difficult and delay prone due to several problems of academic governance (Rules of Affiliating Universities, UGC, AICTE regulations / approval cycles, ruling by various courts etc). These require immediate attention for actual implementation. Free the colleges from plethora of centralised micro management guidelines.

3.Govt at present funds IIT’s substantially and REC’s named as National Institutes of Technology – NIT) declared as Deemed Universities receive reasonable funds. Another hundred out the 1300 better performing deemed universities/ or colleges may be selected by a groups of Academics & Industry experts. Let there be focus on these 100 colleges/ deemed universities to improve quality on the following lines. Let them not be government funded ones. Let privately funded colleges be also selected on merits. There are Govt. colleges which are funded reasonably but do not perform well. They should not be placed in this 100 colleges. Here only performance merit counts.

Quality or education in such good quality engineering colleges (non-IIT’s) need to be improved along 4 key dimensions –a) governance and administration, b) financial autonomy, c) faculty and curriculum development, d) increasing electronic connectivity.

Governance and administration : This should be restructured with best practices from IITs and also other innovative ideas which may not have been experimented. Quality of students could be improved by offering admission to those who take JEE and other equivalent tests.

Financial autonomy : Government grant should be increased by at least Rs.5cr/year to each institution. Such a grant to a private institution should not become a method of introducing Govt. controls. (They should byte as free as before). Colleges should be encouraged to generate their own resources (research/consultancy etc) and government should encourage such efforts by matching such earnings rupee for rupee. Low interest student loans of longer tenure could help charge higher fees from students. An initial corpus for 4 years provided b y the govt could fund the loans on a sustainable basis.

Faculty / curriculum development : Sabbatical leaves for the faculty, and other types of encouragement should be continually provided to enhance faculty knowledge and skills. Post Graduate courses should be offered only on the basis of faculty interests, competence and facilities along with industry needs, thus restricting the number of such courses, but greatly enhancing quality.

Increasing electronic connectivity : Substantial investments in building wide bandwidth need to be undertaken. This could enable several far-reaching measures such as distance education from IITs, shared library resources and real-time exchange for knowledge and also some reputed foreign Universities.

4.Long term solution to improve engineering education for relevance, excellence and quality would require two steps:

1.All round increase of science, maths and computer –English teaching in all the 10+2 schools in the country using ICT tools and creative participation by Industries and other Academics. A number of awards at regional and national levels may be instituted by Govt., Industries and Industry and Business Associations to focus on the importance on excellence in Science – Math – Computer – English for school stages themselves. This should also include concerted effort English proficiency as higher education is in English. Children from Rural / Small town background students should have special attention and regional award system may be tailored to encourage them as well in substantial numbers.

2.Reforms for Higher Professional Educations are a must. The colleges themselves must be empowered to teach variations of courses with full autonomy for exams as well. To avoid over centrailised system which have introduced delays and have not avoided unhealthy practices, it is recommended that such reforms for autonomy may also include the mandatory disclosure of crucial process in such colleges, performances data (such a placements etc) in the public domain, including Websites (compulsorily), so that all can access & evaluate. In addition similar to the profession of Chartered Accountants, each year Independent (non-Govt).

Chartered Educationists (Comprising only those who have academic teaching and administrative experience with special training to evaluate) may be allowed to certify performance and their reports may be placed on public domain. A national debate on Higher educational Reforms as was done for Economic Reforms may be done, in order to capture many ideas and implement with speed and due diligence.

4.Similar actions are required for MBA courses offered by about 900 colleges/departments B.Pharma courses, and other professional courses.

4.Indian Industry may introduce a Human Resources Regeneration Schemes for continually upgrading the skills of their existing work force including managers.

4.Based on the few successful experimentation and demonstrated models by CII, time is now ripe for a TQM / TPM movement in Educational sector (Primary to Higher Educational levels) as was initiated by CII for manufacturing Industries during 1980’s. This will go a long way to create a self- evaluation and self-improvement process within each institution. This is crucial for sustaining the Quality in a period when new knowledge / skills are rapidly generated and some of earlier knowledge / skill bases become obsolete.

8.We have to keep our optimism alive about the opportunities for rapid action, and to transform India as a Global Human Capital Centre for the World. Youth are wealth only when they are empowered with the knowledge and skills required for the modern world and all those in work are provided opportunities for Life Long Learning. Our aim should be to have 40% eligible Indians to have relevant higher education (i.e. about 4 years after 10 + 2) through Direct, Distant, or through Life Long Learning process. All others should have excellent marketable skills. They also should have opportunities for higher education through flexible processes briefly outlined above. Let us not make Education a rigid process for a few lucky ones. Also let us learn to integrate “Humanities” at all levels of education as they provide the much needed human dimensions to professional knowledge.

Also see other Vu graph titled “India’s Demographic Dilemma”, “Education User Domain” which may appear in this website. If at the time you read you don’t see it, please ask for it.

 

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