Indian Education System – Need for Radical Reforms

Indian Education System – Need for Radical Reforms

Despite the mushrooming colleges, schools and universities, the Indian education system falls short on many accounts. Alok evaluates the current educational system and looks a the reforms can revolutionize the system.

Alok Kumar Dash

Ist Year, PDGM

India has been widely hailed for being the second fastest growing economy in the world, with an 8%+ GDP growth over the past few years; up until the current global financial crisis set in. We are witnessing a gradual transition towards being a knowledge economy from being a service-oriented economy. Highly skilled knowledge workers are the fuel required to drive this transition. The need for quality education has never been so acutely felt before. So let’s look at the Indian education system to find out what is the ground reality.      

2001 census holds the national literacy to be around 64.84%. The rate of increase of literacy is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Female literacy was at a national average of 53.63% whereas the male literacy stood at 75.26%. Among the Indian states, Kerala has shown the highest literacy rates of 90.02% whereas Bihar averaged lower than 50% literacy; the lowest in India. The 2001 statistics also indicated that the total number of 'absolute non-literates' in the country was 30.4 crore.

India has made a huge progress in terms of increasing primary education attendance rate and expanding literacy to approximately two thirds of the population. Although no Indian university made to the top 300 of the Chinese-conducted Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2006, three Indian universities/institutes were listed in the Times Higher Education list of the world’s top 200 universities – Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2005 and 2006. Six Indian Institutes of Technology and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani were listed among the top 20 science and technology schools in Asia by Asiaweek. The Indian School of Business (ISB) situated in Hyderabad was ranked number 15 in global MBA rankings by the Financial Times of London in 2009; ^.while the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has been recognized as a global leader in medical research and treatment. The private education market in India is estimated to be worth $40 billion (about Rs. 2, 00,000 crore, almost double the size of the FMCG market in India) in 2008 and will increase to $68 billion by 2012, according to reports.

There is 1,346 degree-granting engineering colleges in India with an annual student intake of 440,000 and 1,244 polytechnics with an annual intake of 265,000. The higher education systems in India comprise of more than 17, 000 colleges, 20 central universities, 217 State Universities, 106 Deemed Universities and 13 institutes of national importance. This number will soon inflate as the setting up of 30 more central universities, 8 new IITs, 7 IIMs and 5 new Indian Institutes of Science are now proposed.

However  things  are  not  all  that  hunky-dory  as  they might appear at the outset. Thousands of crores of  Rupees  has  been  pumped  into  the  education  sector, which  continues  to  be  a  state  subject, since  independence.  Every  year  the  annual  budget  allocates  astronomical  amounts  for  primary  and  secondary  education  but  any  significant  qualitative  improvement  still  remains  to  be  seen,  especially  in  the  primary  education  arena.  Despite growing investment in education, 40% of the population is illiterate and only 15% of the students reach high school. As of 2008, India's post-secondary high schools offer only enough seats for 7% of India's college-age population. About 25% of teaching positions nationwide are vacant, and 57% of college professors lack either a master's or PhD degree. The Gross Enrolment Ratio in Indian higher education is estimated to be about 12.4%, as compared to estimated world average of 26%. We  may  boast  of  our  IITs  and  IIMs  as centres  of  excellence  in  education  in  India. But  even  they  are  fraught  with  several administrative and infrastructural problems which  prevent  them  from  being the global  centres  of  educational  excellence  like  Harvard, Stanford and  other  Ivy  League  universities. About 500 students refused to take admission in the newly set-up IITs owing to poor infrastructure and inadequate faculty forcing the HRD Ministry to rethink on setting up more IITs and IIMs.

In the Union Budget 2009 a substantial hike in the Plan Budget for higher education, a new loan interest subsidy scheme and scholarships for university-level education, along with a National Mission in Education through ICT are some of the key features. Education has been allocated Rs 36, 400 crore with Rs 26,800 being earmarked for school education and Rs 9,600 crore for higher education. The allocation, including the non-plan component, is Rs 44,528.21 crore; up by 19 per cent. But the funds are not spent completely in most cases. Reasons cited are that the state governments do not release funds in time or the implementing agencies are inefficient and only wake up to expenditure at the end of the year before the reporting process begins.

The  government  has  certainly  been  ordinary  in  its  achievements  in  the  primary  education  sector.  A host of programs like the Universal Primary Education, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan etc. have not yielded desirable results. There is certainly no significant improvement at the grass-root level i.e. primary schools in the rural  areas,  where  65%  of  India still lives. We  no  more  require  ‘just  literates’  in  this  age  of  science  and  technology. 

Reforms for the Future

By radical reforms, three things are imminent. These are deregulation, globalization and privatization. The  liberalisation  process,  started  way  back  in  1991,  has  helped  India  become  one  of  the  most  happening  economies  in  the  world  with  considerable  development  across  all  sectors.  However  a  similar  liberalisation  process  in  education  is  drastically  needed  to  sustain  India’s  8%+  GDP  growth  for  the  next  3  to  4  decades;  to  achieve  the  status  of an  economically  developed  nation,  ready  to  take  on  anyone,  in  any  field.

1. Deregulation: We need to have a single umbrella regulator named Education Regulatory and Development Authority with 100% authority to regulate the various players and create a level playing field for all the ‘for-profit’ and ‘not-for-profit’ players in this area, thereby ensuring the overall quality standards. It should not pose unnecessary barriers on the entry of domestic or foreign players. It should stress on educating the students by coming up with authentic quality ratings for all the institutions and let them decide on their own. However, it must take strong action against unscrupulous and fly-by-night operators.

2. Globalization: “What Dr Manmohan Singh did to the economy in 1991, should be done to the education sector in 2009”, said Kapil Sibal, the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, on the sidelines of the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers. The  government  is encouraging  reputed  foreign  universities  to  set  up  base  in  India  so as  to  upgrade  the  quality  of   higher  education  and stem the exodus of students to foreign shores, which is an welcome move by all means. The IITs and the IIMs should also be allowed to set up campuses abroad to foster globalization of quality Indian education.

3. Privatization: The entire primary education sector needs to be privatized. Education is too critically important for the future of India for it to be left to the government. In today’s world, more than ever, education is a dynamic service. It requires innovation, creativity, entrepreneurial talent, risk-taking ability and human resources – all of which are sorely missing in the government. Corporate  foundations,  under  corporate  social  responsibility,   have  done  a  commendable  job  in  providing  elementary  education  in  the  remotest  of  villages  in  India;  like  the  Infosys  Foundation. This fact adds to the credibility of this idea.

The consequences of privatization are manifold. The supply of educational services will increase, the quality will improve, and prices will come down. These are all everyday first-order efficiency effects of letting markets work. Secondly, there will be increased productivity, increased production, and better allocate efficiency within the sector. Thirdly, benefits will arise from the increasing returns to scale associated with the production of education. Finally, there are very important forward and backward linkages that bind the sector with the overall economy. One of them is the use of information and communications technology (ICT) tools. It will give a boost to the IT sector in a way that is unthinkable in any other endeavour. Companies like Educomp and NIIT have leveraged the opportunities available in this area to make profits by providing digital lessons and computer hardware to rural Indian schools.

Access  to  quality  primary  education  must  be  made  free  for  all  those  who  cannot  afford  it,  so  that  the  goal  of  social  equality  can  be  achieved. Quotas  in  premiere  institutes  is  just  a  quick-fix  solution  with deeper ramifications. There  needs  to  be  a  paradigm  shift  from  rote-learning  to  conceptual  learning  with  better  teaching  aids; and a need to create an  environment  where  learners  can   ignite   their  inherent  desire  to learn. The  evaluation  system  which  is  heavily  marks-based,  needs  to  be  replaced  by  one  that  tests  the  students’  conceptual  clarity  and  innovative  thinking. We    can  certainly take  many  cues  from  the  American  higher  education  system  in   this  regard.

Nothing short of a radical surgery of the entire education system is required if India has to really compete with China and other developing economies. It  is  beyond  doubt  that  we  Indians  are  highly  talented,  but  we  need  to  have  that  necessary  education  system  that  can  produce  the  likes  of  CV Raman, Amartya Sen, N. R. Narayana  Murthy and  others. Lastly,  although  this  is  an  issue  of  considerable  debate  and  controversy,  affirmative  action  is  absolutely  essential. After  the  Green  Revolution  and  the  Telecom  Revolution ,  India  seriously  needs  an  Education  Revolution  that  shall  catapult it from the quagmire of poverty and mediocrity to the zenith of prosperity and brilliance.