ForumIAS announcing GS Foundation Program for UPSC CSE 2025-26 from 10th August. Click Here for more information.
Context:
The recent American investor Steve Woziniak’s opinion has highlighted the issues affecting Indian higher education system
Structure of Higher Education System in India
Fast Facts: Higher Education in India
According to AIHES 2016-17,
- Total no of universities: 864 as compared to 799 in 2015-16
- Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER): 25.2 as compared to 24.5% in 2015-16. (Calculated for 18-23 years of age group)
- State with Highest GER: Tamil Nadu (46.9%)
- State with Lowest GER: Bihar (14.9%)
- Pupil Teacher Ratio: 21
- College Density (No. Of colleges per lakh population): 28
- Only 1.7% Colleges run Ph.D. programme and 33% Colleges run Post Graduate Level programmes
- 277 universities are privately managed
- NIRF Rankings: IISc Bangalore ranked first, IIT Madras best engineering college
Critical Issues in Indian Higher Education
Enrolment:
- GER of higher education in India is much behind that of USA (85.8%) and China (43.39%)
- Lack of capacity to absorb the increasing numbers of students coming out of secondary education into the college system
Issues related to Inclusiveness and Equal Access
- Variation in GER between male -female, between SC, ST, OBC and other, between religious groups, economic groups, rural-urban divide
- Inter-caste/ tribes disparities prominent. For Scheduled Castes, GER is 19.9% and for Scheduled Tribes, it is 14.2% as compared to the national GER of 24.5%
- Muslims have the lowest rate of enrolment in higher education. According to AISHE 2015-16, Muslims accounted 4.4% of students enrolled in higher education although they comprise of more than 14% of India’s population
- Caste-based discrimination in universities leading to suicides. Example: Rohit Vemula case
Funds:
- Inadequate funding in higher education
- Budget for both IITs and UGC reduced in budget 2018-19
- According to Economic Survey, only 0.6-0.7% of GDP has been spend on research in India in the last two decades. Most of the funding has come from government rather than private sector
- This is very low as compared to 2.4% of USA, China-2.1%, Japan-3.58% and South korea-4.29%
Quality:
- Only 3 universities feature in to 200 of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2018
- Major reasons for poor quality:
- Faculty:
- Vacant faculty positions,
- Inadequate teacher training
- High student teacher ratios
- Overload (teaching as well as clerical)
- Political interference in selections, appointments of vice chancellors and faculty
- Curriculum:
- Outdated, irrelevant curriculum
- Theoretical in nature; low scope for creativity
- Gap between industry requirements and curriculum- low employability of graduates
- Inadequate physical Infrastructure and facilities
Research:
- Poor fund allocation in research
- Low levels of PhD enrolment
- Few opportunities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research
- Low levels of industry engagement
- Low quality of research work
- Trends in quality of publications increasing slowly; India lags much behind USA and China
Regulation:
- High control and low on support and facilitation
- UGC has been accused of biased granting of funds
- Undermining independence of autonomous universities
- UGC’s flawed method of determining recruitment and career advancement of faculty: Academic Performance Indicator (API).
Private colleges and Deemed Universities:
- Arbitrary nature of fees; “capitation fees”
- Admissions manipulated- Management quotas
- Ill equipped to organize courses
- De facto management—the trustees of the sponsoring societies or trusts
Government Initiatives
- Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE):
- Aim: Increase investments in research and related infrastructure in premier educational institutions
- The RISE initiative will be funded by a restructured Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA)
- Total investment of ₹1, 00,000 crore in next four years.
- Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) Scheme:
- Aim: to enhance the quality of technical research
- Scholarship to 1,000 best BTech students each year from premier institutions to do PhD in IITs and IISc
- IMPRINT India:
- Joint initiative of IITs and IISc to address major and science and technology challenges in India
- Aims to boost original scientific and technological research in 10 fields: (1) Health care technology, (2) Energy security, (3) Rural urban housing design, (4) Nano technology, (5) Water/river system, (6) Advanced materials, (7) Computer science and ICT, (8) Manufacturing technology, (9) Advanced security and (10) Environment/climate change
- Global Initiative for Academics Network (GIAN):
- Aim: To facilitate the partnership between Higher Education Institutions of India and other foreign universities
- Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM): E-education platform
- Saksham scholarship scheme: Scholarship provided to disabled by AICTE to pursue technical education
- Unnat Bharat Abhiyan: Higher educational institutions to provide solutions for transforming rural India.
- Ucchtar Aavishkar Abhiyaan: To promote industry-specific need-based research
- National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF): Ranking of higher educational institutions: universities, engineering, management and pharmacy.
- Swayam Prabha: telecasting educational programmes in higher education domain
- Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP)
Best practice: China: · China has been funding nine of its top universities (called C9) to make them climb the global rankings. · Tsinghua University, part of the C9, has a global rank of 25 and is placed sixth in Asia. |
Way Forward:
- Adequate investment in education sector. Gap in investment to be filled by private sector
- Setting up/expansion of existing educational institutions; Full capacity utilization of existing institutions
- Providing necessary physical infrastructure; involvement of private sector in providing quality physical infrastructure
- Dilutions of selections standards for teachers to be checked; proper training for teachers
- According to Educationist P.Balakrishnan, API should be revamped to include only quality research and teaching. UGC should remove experience-related considerations for career advancement as it stagnates the best years of a faculty.
- Revamping curriculum- making curriculum industry-oriented, updated and practical
- Revamping traditional evaluation system. More focus on critical thinking, analytical reasoning,
problem-solving rather than memorizing and writing skills. Also, proper feedback to be provided to the examinee
- Innovations in classroom teaching- use of ICT, introduction of credit based system for classroom participation instead of compulsory attendance
- International collaboration to boost research and innovation
- UGC should act as a facilitator rather than a regulator. More autonomy to universities to be provided