Education system in India - Bright future or Not? Big point of argument for today..
In today's competitive times, where Asia is developing leading B-Schools and Universities, in the Sub-continent, India is still far behind in getting there. I personally have seen the efforts lately through Mr. Kapil Sibal and certain other ministers to improvise on this and it still makes my heart cry to think that due to the bureaucratic nature of our nation, we will still take a few years before we make good progress on this! (I'll be more than glad to be proved wrong - but the reality is this)
I don't want to sit out and just complaint, I rather point this out and try and bring about a movement, a change!
So what is it that India needs to make its education system a leading global one which attracts high quality international candidates?
We have a number of highly prestigious institutions like the various IIT's and IIM's but looking at the latest comments and reports, it just does not look like a bright future unless we move ahead with time or else, this will be history..
The 2 biggest assets of any institution are the students and the faculty, rest are all secondary. With the quality of faculty deteriorating, even the best students cannot progress as much! The same would have been the case if the situation was turned the other way. This clearly shows how dependent the 2 factors are on each other!
A comment published in Economic Times read "Opening of new IITs by government without recruiting new faculty has already burdened the existing faculty in IITs. Almost every citizen in the country is paying education cess to ensure that our gurus (IIT and other teachers) are paid well. Most of the IITs are already facing faculty shortage," IIT Kharagpur Alumni Association member Y.P.S. Suri told IANS.
"The current pay scales of IIT faculty are so unattractive that a fresh graduate from IIT attracts more salary," he said.
Programme director of the IIT Delhi Alumni Association V.K. Saluja agreed. "We appeal to the government to make faculty salary levels inspiring enough to attract new minds. Adding new IITs has made this problem more acute and hence the urgency of the matter," he said in a statement.
My question is, Where is all the money that everyone pays as education cess used? There needs to be some reporting and transparency. And secondly, we need to attract young blood to run the show! Younger faculty will mean more up-to-date teaching. No doubt that experience always matters, so ideally we need a good mix. But we have to bring new people with new attributes as well as a different attitude!
The other thing that can also be done is part privatization. It's already seen that private institutions are doing much better and turning good profits, at the end of the day - that's what a private business will look for! I don't mean to say that give it all away, but take some good bits out of the privately run institutions and adapt them to make our overall system more advanced!
I realize the concern being higher fees, but right now, education is already the 2nd biggest expense for a family! Looking at how fierce the competition is to get into the IIT's and IIM's or for that matter of fact any other highly regarded institution, there's abundance of great talent that is still left out who adopts various means to continue education but sometimes, they just cant. They deserve the best too, but due to the crazy competition, they feel lost in life.. And its not the education system's fault that this happens but its merely the fact that our population is 5 folds compared to the available resources! We need to develop more high-quality institutions to nurture talent and save it from leaving the country, to be self sufficient! Its like a cycle, if these people stay back and break into big businessmen in India itself, it brings money into the country.. Open scholarships or systems where people who can genuinely not afford it are given some kind of bursary or loan. Use the money we already have to our advantage and make it happen!
I believe its the need of the hour! We need to make changes and make more changes and make even more changes and developments! Then only, will there be a brighter future!
Happy to hear more thoughts...
Paras
A concerned citizen!
A voice is to make a sound, to be heard, to make a change!
