The occasion was the annual convocation at
one of the better engineering institutes of the country. But the president of
India didn’t spare words while expressing his deep disappointment on the
sliding run of the universities of world’s third biggest economy in the world(in
terms of PPP).
Major concerns were drawn on the line of –
- · Not a single Indian university making a mark in top-200 universities of the world as per reports
- · Falling number of patents filed by the countrymen every year
When we closely look at the parameters
which decided rankings of these colleges, research and innovation was one area
where we lagged big time!
We take this parameter up for the
discussion in this post leaving others for later ones while keeping the
discussion attached to the engineering institutes only in order to narrow down
the scope of this article.
India currently boasts a massive network of
3393 engineering colleges which holds 14.85 lacs seats to be filled by
prospective engineers.
While the fact remains that more than 3 lacs
seats last year were left vacant, we still can safely assume that India is
churning out more than 10 lacs engineers an year, more than the total population
of many small nations of the world.
Add this figure with the latest
Employability figures released by Aspiring minds in collaboration with
Dun&Bradstreet which hangs at as low at 20%.
What does all the figures above suggests?
We are turning into a quantity education
hub rather than the quality education hub which everyone would have aspired
for.
There are multiple reasons for this
disaster-in-waiting.
Government policies to weaken the filtering
of students at school level, Over-liberal regulations in terms of granting accreditations
to universities and colleges, Inability to check the quality of education and efficiencies
of professional and higher education systems and Huge amount of investments
made on the establishment of this massive network of colleges, majorly by
founders with political background which leaves little to no scope for
professional management and administration of these institutes. Auditing
leakages and lack-lustre mechanism adds to the inefficiencies further.
One thing which is compromised over and
over again in this messy recipe is the quality of everything.
Quality of students inducted into the
institutions, quality of faculty recruited to these institutes, quality of
administration to exercise control and check for loopholes, quality of
education imparted and unfortunately, the last node of this cycle, quality of
students emanating from the institutes.
Though Mr.President did hit the nail by
pointing out the disastrous results on the patent filing and university
rankings, need of the hour is to pin-point at reason leading to this stage and
how can this be overpowered.
The kind of environment students get in
universities and colleges is far from conducive to participate and do research
and development. If we leave some of the top institutes like IITs, NITs, BITSs
and few other institutes, and look into the factors that lead to research and
development, it would become even more clear on where are we actually lagging.
Lack of Facilities, Guidance and Motivation
to undertake research and development for students of these institutes are
major deterrents and must be fine tuned as soon as possible.
However, what our HRD and Higher education
executives in government must first indulge in, is soul searching exercise of
what has gone wrong in this country which produced some astonishing
academicians once. What must also be considered is how relevant is the model we
are following in the current times.
The job is painstaking and difficult beyond
any reasonable doubt, but I wish we had alternative !!
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