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Dinesh K. Gupta
A view of Khalsa College, Amritsar. The physical infrastructure of most colleges in India is used for around 200 days a year for six to eight hours a day. Teachers also focus only on teaching, devoting little time to research, extension and consultancy. A Tribune file photo
INDIA has been ranked 60th in “The Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014”, released recently by the World Economic Forum, out of the 148 economies that were evaluated on a number of factors, primarily grouped as basic requirements, efficiency enhancers, and innovation and sophistication factors.
The evaluated economies have been further classified as factor driven, efficiency driven and innovation driven. India falls in the factor-driven economies group. China (Rank 29), Indonesia (38) and South Africa (53) are among the efficiency-driven economies, and Switzerland (1), Singapore (2), Finland (3), Germany (4), the USA (5) and Taiwan (12) under the innovation-driven economies. The Report stresses the importance of vitality and vibrancy of higher education and training if a nation intends to migrate from the cluster of ‘innovation poor’ nations to that of ‘innovation rich’ nations.
India slipping
Making a change
It will be apt to closely study the global ranking of Indian universities. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of top 500 universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is considered to be one the most trust worthy global university rankings as it follows a transparent methodology and uses reliable data. The ARWU 2013 ranking carries 149 universities from the US, 28 from China, six from Brazil, two from Russia and one from India. The sole institution of India figuring in this highly competitive ranking is the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
A comparison with ARWU 2009 reveals some disturbing facts. In 2009, the US had the distinction of having 160 universities, China two, Brazil six, Russia two, and India two (IISc, Bangalore, and IIT, Kharagpur). China has remarkably improved its higher education system over time and has substantially increased the number of institutions in the latest ranking.
Professor Shyam Sunder, James L Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics and Finance, at Yale School of Management, shared with me that US universities prefer Chinese students over Indian for highly specialised areas of research. As per the latest statistics released by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the US has become number one destination for quality education as it has attracted the largest number of foreign students in higher education, numbering 8,19,644 in 2012-13, with 28.7 per cent originating from China and 11.8 per cent from India.
This calls for a dispassionate assessment of the higher education system in India to make it a global player in delivering quality education, especially when India positions itself as one of the fastest growing economies.
There are a number of factors related to the issue, but here we take up infrastructure, responsiveness and leadership.
Infrastructure
It has been well documented that the Indian higher education system faces three fundamental challenges of access (captured by low Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 17.9 per cent (2011-12) as against world average of 26 per cent), equity (captured by wide disparity in GER across states, areas, communities and gender) and quality (in terms of poor availability and usage of physical and human capital).
India has one of the largest networks of higher education institutions in the world at more than 33,500, followed by the US and China. However, lack of quality gets remarkably clear with an average Indian college having nine books and 0.01 journals per student as against 53 and 0.40 for a student of IIT-Bombay, based on an analysis by Ernst & Young.
The National Accreditation Assessment Council (NAAC) has recently found 62 per cent of the universities and 90 per cent of the colleges have infrastructural deficiencies. This reflects only part of the problem. The abysmally low usage of physical and human capital is more serious. The physical infrastructure is used for roughly 200 days in a year for six to eight hours a day. Similar is the case of human capital. Teachers do not see their role beyond teaching. Their contribution to research, extension and consultancy is not creditable. Why can’t we put these scarce resources to optimal use? Why can’t we run courses in the evenings, on weekends, during autumn, winter and summer holidays? Why can’t we offer training and development programmes for those working in various sectors of economy?
Responsiveness
The higher education system is not responding to the needs of society. Several instances substantiate this argument. Assess the syllabus of a particular course from five years ago in any of the leading universities of India. Compare it with the most recent syllabus of the same course. You will not find much difference. Our institutions have become complacent and do not incorporate the advances in teaching and research through updated course curricula, participative classroom teaching and text books.
Educators also have to be clear about the fast changing requirements of society and design relevant courses. As per the 2012 “Knowledge Paper on Skill Development” of Ernest & Young, India is facing a high level of difficulty (48 per cent) in filling up jobs, because of non-availability of quality manpower, as against the global deficiency of 34 per cent. Almost half of the graduates in India are not employable in any sector, based on the industry standards of employability, as per the 2013 survey of the National Skill Development Agency of the Government of India.
In a survey conducted in 1976 regarding desirable skills that companies scout for, 13 skills were identified. The results showed that writing skills were the most important, followed by computational and reading skills. Accordingly, we have been empowering our students with such skills.
However, a similar survey conducted in 2007 rated teamwork as the most important skill, followed by problem solving, and interpersonal skills. These skills had been rated at the bottom in 1976. A 2008 study by the Society for Human Resource Management and Wall Street Journal titled “Critical Skills Needs and Resources for the Changing Workforce” found adaptability/flexibility, critical thinking/problem solving, and leadership as the most important skills.
It signifies that there is a strategic shift in the expectations from the higher education system. The focus should thus shift from content-based education to competency-based education. As a result, the role of teachers is poised for dramatic change in making universities hubs of opportunity for innovation and personal growth, says Prof Susan Crosson of Goizueta Business School, Emory University.
What radical changes have been made in the higher education system in order to empower the students with the skills that will enhance their employability in the 21st century? How have we organised our course curricula to ensure that the students gain desired skills? How has our pedagogy and classroom experience undergone a change in order to impart these critical skills? How effectively are we using the power of information technology to enable students to acquire knowledge anytime anywhere? Most of us engaged in higher education will fumble to find satisfactory answers.
How many of the courses that we offer are outdated and do not find favour with recruiters, who could be top-tier educational institutions, business enterprises, publication houses or non-governmental organisations. There is a great demand of quality students even from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Also ponder over the number of overseas students enrolled in a university.
According to a recent survey published by FICCI, there will be a huge deficit in the net supply of quality skilled manpower by 2020. The US will be short of 17 million employees, China of 10 million, Japan 9 million, and Russia 6 million. However, India will have a surplus manpower of 47 million. India being second largest in the world in terms of student enrolment of 25.9 million, has a great opportunity to seize by offering quality manpower to these countries. Otherwise, to create jobs for such a large number of young people in India will be a herculean task.
Leadership
A number of factors could be blamed for the unresponsiveness of the higher education system, ranging from absence of a strong placements-oriented performance evaluation system for institutions and teachers; inability to harness the wealth imbedded in alumni relations; to the absence of innovative and entrepreneurial orientation.
However, lack of academic leadership is an important factor responsible for the current state of affairs. Any top-ranking institution will have a qualitatively different culture that has been religiously nurtured over time by the top people. The physical and human resources of an institution will remain the same. You can’t replace them. However, you can drive them in a better manner with quality leadership. There is a lingering cost of poor leadership.
The higher education system direly needs unique leaders who have the ability to deliver intellectual value par excellence by nurturing serious talent and creating a thriving workplace. One of the distinguishing qualities of a leader is the ability to envision. Most educational leaders do not take a long-term view. They struggle to fix short-term problems. In “Competing for the Future”, Professors Gary Hamel and C K Prahalad highlight that managers do not spend even 3 per cent of their time in building shared view of the future of the organisation.
What is needed at the moment is looking for transformational leaders who could navigate institutions of higher learning by creating a culture of urgency motivation, meritocracy, accountability, and experimentation and innovation with a long-term perspective.
The writer teaches at University Business School of Panjab University, Chandigarh
Dinesh K. Gupta
A view of Khalsa College, Amritsar. The physical infrastructure of most colleges in India is used for around 200 days a year for six to eight hours a day. Teachers also focus only on teaching, devoting little time to research, extension and consultancy. A Tribune file photo
INDIA has been ranked 60th in “The Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014”, released recently by the World Economic Forum, out of the 148 economies that were evaluated on a number of factors, primarily grouped as basic requirements, efficiency enhancers, and innovation and sophistication factors.
The evaluated economies have been further classified as factor driven, efficiency driven and innovation driven. India falls in the factor-driven economies group. China (Rank 29), Indonesia (38) and South Africa (53) are among the efficiency-driven economies, and Switzerland (1), Singapore (2), Finland (3), Germany (4), the USA (5) and Taiwan (12) under the innovation-driven economies. The Report stresses the importance of vitality and vibrancy of higher education and training if a nation intends to migrate from the cluster of ‘innovation poor’ nations to that of ‘innovation rich’ nations.India slipping
Making a change
A global ranking of top 500 universities has 149 from the US, 28 from China, six from Brazil, two from Russia and one from India (IISc, Bangalore).
It will be apt to closely study the global ranking of Indian universities. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of top 500 universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is considered to be one the most trust worthy global university rankings as it follows a transparent methodology and uses reliable data. The ARWU 2013 ranking carries 149 universities from the US, 28 from China, six from Brazil, two from Russia and one from India. The sole institution of India figuring in this highly competitive ranking is the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
A comparison with ARWU 2009 reveals some disturbing facts. In 2009, the US had the distinction of having 160 universities, China two, Brazil six, Russia two, and India two (IISc, Bangalore, and IIT, Kharagpur). China has remarkably improved its higher education system over time and has substantially increased the number of institutions in the latest ranking.
Professor Shyam Sunder, James L Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics and Finance, at Yale School of Management, shared with me that US universities prefer Chinese students over Indian for highly specialised areas of research. As per the latest statistics released by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the US has become number one destination for quality education as it has attracted the largest number of foreign students in higher education, numbering 8,19,644 in 2012-13, with 28.7 per cent originating from China and 11.8 per cent from India.
This calls for a dispassionate assessment of the higher education system in India to make it a global player in delivering quality education, especially when India positions itself as one of the fastest growing economies.
There are a number of factors related to the issue, but here we take up infrastructure, responsiveness and leadership.
Infrastructure
It has been well documented that the Indian higher education system faces three fundamental challenges of access (captured by low Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 17.9 per cent (2011-12) as against world average of 26 per cent), equity (captured by wide disparity in GER across states, areas, communities and gender) and quality (in terms of poor availability and usage of physical and human capital).
India has one of the largest networks of higher education institutions in the world at more than 33,500, followed by the US and China. However, lack of quality gets remarkably clear with an average Indian college having nine books and 0.01 journals per student as against 53 and 0.40 for a student of IIT-Bombay, based on an analysis by Ernst & Young.
The National Accreditation Assessment Council (NAAC) has recently found 62 per cent of the universities and 90 per cent of the colleges have infrastructural deficiencies. This reflects only part of the problem. The abysmally low usage of physical and human capital is more serious. The physical infrastructure is used for roughly 200 days in a year for six to eight hours a day. Similar is the case of human capital. Teachers do not see their role beyond teaching. Their contribution to research, extension and consultancy is not creditable. Why can’t we put these scarce resources to optimal use? Why can’t we run courses in the evenings, on weekends, during autumn, winter and summer holidays? Why can’t we offer training and development programmes for those working in various sectors of economy?
Responsiveness
The higher education system is not responding to the needs of society. Several instances substantiate this argument. Assess the syllabus of a particular course from five years ago in any of the leading universities of India. Compare it with the most recent syllabus of the same course. You will not find much difference. Our institutions have become complacent and do not incorporate the advances in teaching and research through updated course curricula, participative classroom teaching and text books.
Educators also have to be clear about the fast changing requirements of society and design relevant courses. As per the 2012 “Knowledge Paper on Skill Development” of Ernest & Young, India is facing a high level of difficulty (48 per cent) in filling up jobs, because of non-availability of quality manpower, as against the global deficiency of 34 per cent. Almost half of the graduates in India are not employable in any sector, based on the industry standards of employability, as per the 2013 survey of the National Skill Development Agency of the Government of India.
In a survey conducted in 1976 regarding desirable skills that companies scout for, 13 skills were identified. The results showed that writing skills were the most important, followed by computational and reading skills. Accordingly, we have been empowering our students with such skills.
However, a similar survey conducted in 2007 rated teamwork as the most important skill, followed by problem solving, and interpersonal skills. These skills had been rated at the bottom in 1976. A 2008 study by the Society for Human Resource Management and Wall Street Journal titled “Critical Skills Needs and Resources for the Changing Workforce” found adaptability/flexibility, critical thinking/problem solving, and leadership as the most important skills.
It signifies that there is a strategic shift in the expectations from the higher education system. The focus should thus shift from content-based education to competency-based education. As a result, the role of teachers is poised for dramatic change in making universities hubs of opportunity for innovation and personal growth, says Prof Susan Crosson of Goizueta Business School, Emory University.
What radical changes have been made in the higher education system in order to empower the students with the skills that will enhance their employability in the 21st century? How have we organised our course curricula to ensure that the students gain desired skills? How has our pedagogy and classroom experience undergone a change in order to impart these critical skills? How effectively are we using the power of information technology to enable students to acquire knowledge anytime anywhere? Most of us engaged in higher education will fumble to find satisfactory answers.
How many of the courses that we offer are outdated and do not find favour with recruiters, who could be top-tier educational institutions, business enterprises, publication houses or non-governmental organisations. There is a great demand of quality students even from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Also ponder over the number of overseas students enrolled in a university.
According to a recent survey published by FICCI, there will be a huge deficit in the net supply of quality skilled manpower by 2020. The US will be short of 17 million employees, China of 10 million, Japan 9 million, and Russia 6 million. However, India will have a surplus manpower of 47 million. India being second largest in the world in terms of student enrolment of 25.9 million, has a great opportunity to seize by offering quality manpower to these countries. Otherwise, to create jobs for such a large number of young people in India will be a herculean task.
Leadership
A number of factors could be blamed for the unresponsiveness of the higher education system, ranging from absence of a strong placements-oriented performance evaluation system for institutions and teachers; inability to harness the wealth imbedded in alumni relations; to the absence of innovative and entrepreneurial orientation.
However, lack of academic leadership is an important factor responsible for the current state of affairs. Any top-ranking institution will have a qualitatively different culture that has been religiously nurtured over time by the top people. The physical and human resources of an institution will remain the same. You can’t replace them. However, you can drive them in a better manner with quality leadership. There is a lingering cost of poor leadership.
The higher education system direly needs unique leaders who have the ability to deliver intellectual value par excellence by nurturing serious talent and creating a thriving workplace. One of the distinguishing qualities of a leader is the ability to envision. Most educational leaders do not take a long-term view. They struggle to fix short-term problems. In “Competing for the Future”, Professors Gary Hamel and C K Prahalad highlight that managers do not spend even 3 per cent of their time in building shared view of the future of the organisation.
What is needed at the moment is looking for transformational leaders who could navigate institutions of higher learning by creating a culture of urgency motivation, meritocracy, accountability, and experimentation and innovation with a long-term perspective.
The writer teaches at University Business School of Panjab University, Chandigarh
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