Quality Concerns

 

 

THAT the quality of India’s higher education should essentially be top class if the country wished to utilise its demographic dividend as a genuine growth accelerator, has been highlighted once again this time by none other than Mr. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor. Laying special emphasis on the next twenty years as a critical period to achieve the goal, Mr. Nageswaran has said that special efforts should be made to make members of young generations of the country competent as well as competitive. Though he has said that the National Education Policy has laid the foundation for the leap forward, the silent message from Mr. Nageswaran’s statement is that much more effort needs to be done to make higher education in India better and more competitive. Nobody can ever dispute this part of the statement of the Chief Economic Advisor. He needs to be taken very seriously. There is no doubt that India’s young dividend has tremendous potential.

 

There is no doubt that the young generations of Indians can work wonders if their members are educated properly and equipped with adequate skills in different challenge-areas. Unfortunately, political tall talk notwithstanding, higher education in India needs to be spruced up to come up level with the global standards. The country cannot rest on its laurels of a few iconic institutions that measure up to the world standards. Special efforts will have to be made to bring every possible higher education institute up to match world levels -- so that young generations get adequately educated and trained so as to match the world standards. Unfortunately, no sincere and serious attempt is being done in this regard. This is not being negative; this is being practical and realistic. It is not possible for anybody to deny the reality of average low quality of India’s higher education.

 

Those who make attempts to watch things from close quarters realise that higher education in India -- in form and in content -- lacks a sense of purpose and focus. There certainly are brilliant young people in colleges and they show promise of global standard. Unfortunately, their numbers are limited while the bigger numbers of young population demonstrate certain casualness about the learning process. They also appear to have become victims of digital and other addictions that deprive them of their vital energy that is so typical to youth. It is obvious from Mr. Nageswaran’s statement that he was expressing his ideas about higher education only against the background of the National Education Policy and the arrangements therein -- which is understandable since he is part of the Government that floated and implemented the NEP. It must, however, be noted that the NEP, too, has its limitations in the domain of higher education since its stress is on physical parameters more than on content of what is to be taught and communicated to young people. The NEP also talks of regulatory architecture and the norms the Government has created and proposed. The larger Indian society will have to go beyond those limitations if it wishes to prepare its young generations for the challenges of the rapidly changing world. Mr. Anantha Nageswaran has used the term “growth accelerators” for young people.

 

The term evokes a very dynamic imagery for our young people. If the nation is truly successful in transforming the demographic dividend into growth accelerators, then the impact it would create would be immensely valuable for India. The dynamism of the idea has certain kind of spiritual poeticism that can convert India into a youth powerhouse in just a few years. In this context, it must be said that the Government has given the framework of NEP. It is now up to the larger society to make the best use of that architecture and start working the hardest to make Indian youth into a very dynamic section of the population. That should be one of India’s national missions.