Indian Education System : An Overview
Is college education in India not world class?
Before saying whether college education in India is world class or not, I would like to tell about
a few global personalities. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Software major Microsoft graduated from
MIT in India. So did the new CEO of Nokia. Continuing the list Narayan Murthy(Infosys
founder), Azim Premji(Wipro founder), Dr.Devishetty (leading Cardiac surgeon), Venkatraman
Ramakrishnan(Chemistry Nobel Prize winner), Nithin Nohria (Harvard Dean) all had most of
their college education in India. Barack Obama recently said in a speech that American students
will have to work harder otherwise they would be overtaken by Indian students. Hence telling
that College education in India is not world class one will be belittling ourselves in front of
others.
The problem with College education in India is not only that of Quality. IISC is one among the
top 20 universities in the world.4 IIT's figure among the top 100 colleges in the world.3 IIM's are
among the top 20 management institutes in the world. Quality is present but only at very few
places like the ones mentioned above and quality of intake into them are drastically low when
compared to our college going youth.1 IISC,13 IIM's, handful of IIT's, NIT's, AIIMS, MIT, etc
produce quality students but they cater to not even 1% of students. For such a large nation like
ours, these are just not enough. Creating such institutes is not easy because we lack
Infrastructural capabilities and there is shortage of Teachers, Professors and lecturers.
Moreover College education system in India is oriented more towards marks and grades than on
knowledge. This leads to superficial knowledge. A more industry oriented and knowledge
oriented education system will produce quality youth for the country. This requires a major
transformation of our Education system. Industry and Private sector will have to take a more
active part in the education system to accomplish this transformation because they will
ultimately be benefitted with quality students to hire from. Tie-up with global varsities for
bringing their branches to India can solve part of the problem.
We should feel sorry to see scores and scores of Engineers and Doctors opting for GRE, GMAT
and other competitive exams to pursue their higher education abroad. Most of them end up
working and settling there leading to Brain drain. It would be unfair to blame them completely
for this because the other country offered them better opportunities to grow. Instead we will have
to strengthen our college education system to reverse this trend.
Good colleges are present only in few cities. Effort will have to be made to provide rural students
good colleges. Presently India has a very large share of youth. We have to address all their
educational requirements.
Other countries like China spend a significant percentage of their GDP on higher education.
India lags behind them in spending on higher education. This can be attributed to the focus
mainly given to poverty alleviation, improvement of literacy rate, primary education, etc but the
Government will have to find a balance between these spendings. Most of the students are not
able to excel in college because of their poor school training. Hence focus should also be on
Primary and High school education as it is a prerequisite for college education. Nevertheless
utmost importance should be given to College education because only better graduates can shape
a bright future for India.
Every government has tried to increase the quality and scale of college education but whatever
has been done is just not enough for a fast growing nation like ours. At a time when India wants
to dominate the global scene, it needs highly qualified and competent people. This is possible
only by world class quality education on a large scale. Overnight one cannot expect drastic
changes to happen but sustained efforts over a few years with the help of the Government,
private sector and public will definitely take our nation to never before seen heights.
Study India Programme
The Study India Programme initiated by the Ministry is envisaged as a means of enhancing
engagement with the diaspora youth. The objective of the Scheme is to enable overseas Indian
youth i.e. foreign citizens of Indian origin in the age group of 18-26 years to undergo short term
courses in the nature of summer schools to familiarize them with the art & culture, heritage,
history, economy and development of India. Such short term courses shall aim at providing an
opportunity to the overseas Indian youth to better understand and appreciate contemporary India,
foster closer ties with the land of their ancestors and enhance their engagement with India.
The participants are selected based on recommendations received from Heads of India Missions /
Posts abroad. Selected participants are provided with full hospitality in India for the duration of
the Programme. 90% of the cost of air ticket by economy class (Direct flight) is refundable to the
participants on successful completion of the Programme by them.
The Scheme as envisaged will initially be implemented in partnership with select Indian
Universities /Institutions of repute. The course would include:
Academic content which would facilitate understanding of contemporary India and its
development, political and financial systems, economic, social and administrative structures.
Cultural content which would help the participants to be immersed in the Indian experience with
exposure to Indian mythology, history, arts, handicrafts, dance, music, cuisine, languages and
age-old tradition.
Visits will be organised to different institutions, industries of importance and rural areas to allow
the participants to gain first hand exposure to India.
The first Study India Programme (SIP) was organised from 25 September-23 October, 2012 in
Symbiosis Centre for International Education, Pune, Maharashtra .
What do we need to change about the Indian Education System?
Education has been a problem in our country and lack of it has been blamed for all sorts of evil
for hundreds of years. Even Rabindranath Tagore wrote lengthy articles about how Indian
education system needs to change. Funny thing is that from the colonial times, few things have
changed. We have established IITs, IIMs, law schools and other institutions of excellence;
students now routinely score 90% marks so that even students with 90+ percentage find it
difficult to get into the colleges of their choice; but we do more of the same old stuff.
Rote learning still plagues our system, students study only to score marks in exams, and
sometimes to crack exams like IIT JEE, AIIMS or CLAT. The colonial masters introduced
education systems in India to create clerks and civil servants, and we have not deviated much
from that pattern till today. If once the youngsters prepared en masse for civil services and bank
officers exams, they now prepare to become engineers. If there are a few centres of educational
excellence, for each of those there are thousands of mediocre and terrible schools, colleges and
now even universities that do not meet even minimum standards. If things have changed a little
bit somewhere, elsewhere things have sunk into further inertia, corruption and lack of ambition.
Creating a few more schools or allowing hundreds of colleges and private universities to
mushroom is not going to solve the crisis of education in India. And a crisis it is – we are in a
country where people are spending their parent’s life savings and borrowed money on education
– and even then not getting standard education, and struggling to find employment of their
choice. In this country, millions of students are victim of an unrealistic, pointless, mindless rat
race. The mind numbing competition and rote learning do not only crush the creativity and
originality of millions of Indian students every year, it also drives brilliant students to commit
suicide.
We also live in a country where the people see education as the means of climbing the social
and economic ladder. If the education system is failing – then it is certainly not due to lack of
demand for good education, or because a market for education does not exist.
Education system in India is failing because of more intrinsic reasons. There are systemic faults
that do not let our demand for good education translate into a great marketplace with excellent
education services. I discussed the reasons previously in this article: Will Education make a
comeback in India?
Let’s explore something else in this one: what should change in India education system? What
needs to be fixed at the earliest? Here is my wish list:
Focus on skill based education
Our education system is geared towards teaching and testing knowledge at every level as
opposed to teaching skills. “Give a man a fish and you feed him one day, teach him how to catch
fishes and you feed him for a lifetime.” I believe that if you teach a man a skill, you enable him
for a lifetime. Knowledge is largely forgotten after the semester exam is over. Still, year after
year Indian students focus on cramming information. The best crammers are rewarded by the
system. This is one of the fundamental flaws of our education system.
Reward creativity, original thinking, research and innovation
Our education system rarely rewards what deserves highest academic accolades. Deviance is
discouraged. Risk taking is mocked. Our testing and marking systems need to be built to
recognize original contributions, in form of creativity, problem solving, valuable original
research and innovation. If we could do this successfully Indian education system would have
changed overnight.
Memorising is no learning; the biggest flaw in our education system is perhaps that it
incentivizes memorizing above originality.
Get smarter people to teach
For way too long teaching became the sanctuary of the incompetent. Teaching jobs are until
today widely regarded as safe, well-paying, risk-free and low-pressure jobs. Once a teacher told
me in high school “Well, if you guys don’t study it is entirely your loss – I will get my salary at
the end of the month anyway.” He could not put across the lack of incentive for being good at
teaching any better. Thousands of terrible teachers all over India are wasting valuable time of
young children every day all over India.
It is high time to encourage a breed of superstar teachers. The internet has created this possibility
– the performance of a teacher now need not be restricted to a small classroom. Now the
performance of a teacher can be opened up for the world to see. The better teacher will be more
popular, and acquire more students. That’s the way of the future. Read here about why I think
that we are closing on to the age of rockstar teachers.
We need leaders, entrepreneurs in teaching positions, not salaried people trying to hold on to
their mantle.
Implement massive technology infrastructure for education
India needs to embrace internet and technology if it has to teach all of its huge population, the
majority of which is located in remote villages. Now that we have computers and internet, it
makes sense to invest in technological infrastructure that will make access to knowledge easier
than ever. Instead of focussing on outdated models of brick and mortar colleges and universities,
we need to create educational delivery mechanisms that can actually take the wealth of human
knowledge to the masses. The tools for this dissemination will be cheap smartphones, tablets and
computers with high speed internet connection. While all these are becoming more possible than
ever before, there is lot of innovation yet to take place in this space.
Re-define the purpose of the education system
Our education system is still a colonial education system geared towards generating babus and
pen-pushers under the newly acquired skin of modernity. We may have the most number of
engineering graduates in the world, but that certainly has not translated into much technological
innovation here. Rather, we are busy running the call centres of the rest of the world – that is
where our engineering skills end.
The goal of our new education system should be to create entrepreneurs, innovators, artists,
scientists, thinkers and writers who can establish the foundation of a knowledge based economy
rather than the low-quality service provider nation that we are turning into.
Effective deregulation
Until today, an institute of higher education in India must be operating on a not-for profit basis.
This is discouraging for entrepreneurs and innovators who could have worked in these spaces.
On the other hand, many people are using education institutions to hide their black money, and
often earning a hefty income from education business through clever structuring and therefore
bypassing the rule with respect to not earning profit from recognized educational institutions. As
a matter of fact, private equity companies have been investing in some education service
provider companies which in turn provide services to not-for-profit educational institutions and
earn enviable profits. Sometimes these institutes are so costly that they are outside the rich of
most Indian students.
There is an urgent need for effective de-regulation of Indian education sector so that there is
infusion of sufficient capital and those who provide or create extraordinary educational products
or services are adequately rewarded.
Take mediocrity out of the system
Our education system today encourages mediocrity – in students, in teachers, throughout the
system. It is easy to survive as a mediocre student, or a mediocre tea
cher in an educational institution. No one shuts down a mediocre college or mediocre school.
Hard work is always tough, the path to excellence is fraught with difficulties. Mediocrity is
comfortable. Our education system will remain sub-par or mediocre until we make it clear that it
is not ok to be mediocre. If we want excellence, mediocrity cannot be tolerated. Mediocrity has
to be discarded as an option. Life of those who are mediocre must be made difficult so that
excellence
Personalize education – one size does not fit all
Assembly line education prepares assembly line workers. However, the drift of economic world
is away from assembly line production. Indian education system is built on the presumption that
if something is good for one kid, it is good for all kids.
Some kids learn faster, some are comparatively slow. Some people are visual learners, others are
auditory learners, and still some others learn faster from exper
ience. If one massive monolithic education system has to provide education to everyone, then
there is no option but to assume that one size fits all. If however, we can effectively decentralize
education, and if the government did not obsessively control what would be the “syllabus” and
what will be the method of instruction, there could be an explosion of new and innovative
courses geared towards serving various niches of learners,
Take for example, the market for learning dancing. There are very different dance forms that
attract students with different tastes. More importantly, different teachers and institutes have
developed different ways of teaching dancing. This could never happen if there was a central
board of dancing education which enforced strict standards of what will be taught and how such
things are to be taught.
Central regulation kills choice, and stifles innovation too. As far as education is concerned,
availability of choices, de-regulation, profitability, entrepreneurship and emergence of niche
courses are all inter-connected.
Allow private capital in education
The government cannot afford to provide higher education to all the people in the country. It is
too costly for the government to do so. The central government spends about 4% of budget
expenditure on education, compared to 40% on defence. Historically, the government just did not
have enough money to spend on even opening new schools and universities, forget overhauling
the entire system and investing in technology and innovation related to the education system.
Still, until today, at least on paper only non-profit organizations are allowed to run educational
institutions apart from government institutions. Naturally, the good money, coming from honest
investors who want to earn from honest but high impact businesses do not get into education
sector. Rather, there are crooks, money launderers and politicians opening “private” educational
institutions which extract money from the educational institution through creative structuring.
The focus is on marketing rather than innovation or providing great educational service – one of
the major examples of this being IIPM.
Allowing profit making will encourage serious entrepreneurs, innovators and investors to take
interest in the education sector. The government does not have enough money to provide higher
education of reasonable quality to all of us, and it has no excuse to prevent private capital from
coming into the educational sector.
Make reservation irrelevant
We have reservation in education today because education is not available universally. Education
has to be rationed. This is not a long –term solution. If we want to emerge as a country build on a
knowledge economy, driven by highly educated people – we need to make good education so
universally available that reservation will lose its meaning.
There is no reservation in online education – because it scales. Today top universities worldwide
are taking various courses online, and today you can easily attend a live class taught by a top
professor of Harvard University online if you want, no matter which country is belong to. This is
the future, this is the easy way to beat reservation and make it inconsequential.
What are the most important changes you want to see in the India education system? Share your
ideas.
