There is a need to overhaul our higher education system to cater to fast-changing requirements of the 21st century while stressing on learning-by-doing
Dr Manasvi M Kamat
“In a country growing at a fast rate, the aspirations of young people is very high. There is an unlimited demand for higher education, however this demand is not being met’, remarked Rajat Gupta, former MD of McKinsey, and also on the board of various organizations like Goldman Sachs. Gupta is the founder of Indian School of Business in Mohali and also formed Public Health Foundation of India lamented on the poor quality of education during his tour for promoting his new book, ‘Mind without Fear’.
The comments of the likes coming from Gupta are not new. The World Economic Forum has on record asserted that higher education is a ‘systemic failure’ failing to equip graduates with the skills needed to solve 21st century problems.
The statement from Gupta is to be viewed seriously in the Indian context as it comes from an institution builder and that too particularly at a time when public funded universities in India are in deep crisis, and education market is madly driven by the mushrooming growth of private universities. The protagonists of this idealism however look at such comments of Gupta, WEF, the Forbes and others as undesired move towards commodification of education, driven by profit motives.
Gupta blames the poor faculty in Indian universities and lack of academic research for a lacking education system and these we know for umpteen years as the issues plaguing higher education in India. The other issue, unfortunately, is that we still continue to debate the issue of ‘relevance’ of higher education when the UGC has already given the framework and established successfully the ‘Models’ for autonomy, privatization and vocationalisation of higher education in India.
In this context, first woman Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia said it is time for universities to redesign their courses which are old-fashioned as they have lost their market relevance. Moreover, she feels that the new courses have to be developed ‘in consultation with industries’ because ‘we have to learn to earn’. VC Prof. Najma Akhtar’s comments are bold and practical, but were not received too well by the ones with non-egalitarian view trying to put an ‘intrinsic’ value of education, beyond what the industry regards as a profit-making enterprise.
The radical views of the VC are opposed as some believed that universities must have a quest for foundational knowledge and must go long on its higher values. These protagonist believe that increasing reliance on industry-driven educational programs will take away interest from subjects like literature, philosophy, physics, arts, math and aesthetics. Thus protagonists of ‘idealist’ higher education mean to say that it would be a bad idea to measure learning outcome of a course in terms of economic feasibility, and very wrong to prioritize needs of the market and reduce learning into ‘training’ for ‘skills’ that industry would need.
Contrary to the above, what we see is fairly opposite. Public funded universities in India have continued to live for the vision proposing education in a much broader sense of the term, but in most cases are devoid of student strength. The private and the deemed universities on the other hand sell at higher price tags seats in courses for IT, Business, Marketing, Biotech, Genetics, Graphics and Instrumentation with endless waiting lists of students craving to get in,
The new wave in developed economies is completely radical and focuses on ‘nano-degrees’, which can be best described as micro-education that takes place within a corporation to train existing employees in technical and industry-related subjects. What if a higher number of fresh XII student opt for a more industry specific, time-saving and cost-effective way to spend a year instead of a formal degree in engineering from a traditional university? India is quickly gearing up for such ‘capsule-modules’ in higher education as a new model for education.
In the context of above debates there is a need to strike a balance. It is desired that the public funded universities remain committed to their broader goals with renewed vigor to lead the initiatives that will define the next generation of educational practices. In this regard and very recently, the Deloitte’s Center for Higher Education Excellence published a report titled ‘The Future(s) of Public Higher Education’, outlining five models public universities can adopt to catch up to 21st century demands.
These new models are expected to address new realities of and demands on public higher education institutions to improve student overall experience.
First is Entrepreneurial University where curricula would be centrally influenced through the definition of clear goals by the state and system. Second is Sharing University where campuses would link student and administrative services like legal, IT etc to realize efficiencies of scale and/or capitalize on the expertise of institutions.
The third model is of the Experiential University working on a cooperative model in which students work one-third to almost half of the time a student otherwise spends in school. The Subscription University is a platform that focuses on continual learning throughout a student’s lifetime while in the Partnership University model, the annual budgeting cycle would be extended across several years making it easier for institutions to plan and make strategic investments.
The need to overhaul our higher education system is desired to cater to fast changing requirements of the 21st century in different sectors stressing on learning-by-doing and is much more than remolding the syllabi and pedagogy.
