What are Students missing in Higher Education in India?
What is higher education? To put it simply, it is a stage of learning that occurs after secondary education at the Universities, Colleges and Institutes of Technology. The aim of higher education is to prepare a person to play his part well, as an enlightened member of society.
During the last few years, universities have increased manifold and colleges have mushroomed all over our country to impart higher education. However, whether just the availability of educational institutes means do we have a robust higher education system?
Almost two third of our universities and 90% of colleges are rated below average in quality parameters…”
Unfortunately, we are lacking hugely in terms of quality output from our higher education institutes.
This is not true for Indians living abroad, so the talent is there but drive to achieve the results from this talent is not there.
Basic Problems: –
Overcrowded Classrooms: lack of adequate number of teachers and classrooms force many colleges to reduce their number of groups and merge them into larger groups making it impossible for a teacher to carry out effective classroom interaction.
Inadequate Student Services: Most of the higher education institutions today are not capable enough to provide services like conducting orientation programs, health services, hostel facilities, guidance and counseling services to the students.
Inadequate material resources: Most of the higher education institutions at present does not have proper material resources like building, playground, good number of classrooms, infrastructure, laboratory with sufficient equipments, toilet facility, and staffrooms.
Outdated Curriculum: Outdated, irrelevant curriculum that is dominantly theoretical in nature and has a low scope for creativity. There is a wide gap between industry requirements and universities’ curriculum that is the main reason for the low employability of graduates in India.
Research: Poor fund allocation in research, Low levels of PhD enrolment, fewer opportunities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, Low levels of industry engagement, Low quality of research work, etc. are some of the factors affecting the research ecosystem in India.
India’s investment in R&D has remained constant at around 0.6% to 0.7% of India’s GDP. This is below the expenditure of countries like the US (2.8), China (2.1), Israel (4.3) and Korea (4.2).
Higher Education versus Skill Acquisition
Generally, we don’t consider on skill acquisition in India. We are totally focused on theoretical part of education. This has been an issue. This issue causes a lot of students to be inferior while telling about their SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).
Skill acquisition means to accomplish any specialty. It can be in studies or in any field. But, when we put the skills in front of higher education, things seem to be little bit different. People are busy with their curriculum so that they cannot find what their skills are. This disturbs them while choosing a job or figuring out their career field.
Studies that require skill development are not generally conducted by institutes. Finding and incorporating skills can provide chances of discovering yourself in your field. Even, in engineering people need to focus on presentation and speaking but they are not part of their curriculum. This leads to people doing jobs in a call centre and it discourages many students to stop themselves from growing.
Apart from all these, Indian education system is quite different especially in North India. The roots of this starts from class 10th, parents decide student’s future and tells them what to do. If they score well in class 10th then they are asked to either go with science. If their marks are average then they are asked to go for commerce and below average students are supposed to go with humanities stream. Sometimes these streams feel like a caste system in India. Parents never give time to understand what students want to do, what is their hobby and what do they want to pursue.
During the time of placements or job interview, people do not know what a SWOT analysis is. SWOT denotes Strength Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats. It allows any person to identify their negative and positive parts and work on it so that they can deliver their work. Many institutions don’t do that ultimately leads to drastic failure of students.
The first step towards improvement has to be taken at school level with aptitude tests being introduced to know where the interest of the student lies. These students should then be encouraged to join those fields of interest. Emphasis should be laid on not just increasing the number of higher education institutes but Centre of excellence.
Today, all high school students start thinking about career options but the question is whether our country has the facilities to help our dreams soar in the sky or whether we have to go abroad to make our dreams come true.
The world has fast shrunk to a common platform of education and learning. In conclusion higher education means integrated development of personality which should be imparted through head, hand and heart. Rabindranath Tagore rightly said, “The higher education is that which does not merely give us information, but makes life in harmony with all existence”.
There are, of course, many good colleges and universities in India. But it is said that, as far as science and technology are concerned, many of them cannot hold a candle to some institutions of higher learning abroad.