The Hindu Business Line : <I>Crisis in higher education </I>

Amidst euphoria about the economy, the stock market and industrial growth, this year-end story strikes a discordant note. After months of working with developers in Bangalore a US-based software executive is ready to bolt for greener pastures, The rate of attrition due to the young employees switching jobs rapidly is simply unaffordable. Some US corporations are reportedly looking at Russia, Mexico, Argentina, and Vietnam as options to relocate their businesses. Many are fed up with the city, where salaries are growing at 12-14 per cent a year, turnover is increasing, and an influx of workers is straining city's resources.

The dismal state

Equally worrying is the increasingly strident warnings about the dismal state of our higher education. Two important and separate aspects need urgent attention. One is the numbers. A few IITs and NITs alone are never going to meet the needs of the economy, after allowing for the inevitable emigration of the star pupils to foreign shores for research degrees and jobs. The second is the appalling shortage of quality teaching staff, which is in turn ascribed to the bureaucratic flaws of academic system and unrealistically low salaries. As a result, the output of original research and applied work either in technology or industry-oriented management themes, is abysmally low if not absent. Our best exports, meanwhile, seem to be the highly valued faculty of the Ivy League style universities of the West, while our own universities are languishing. Sadly, there is little prospect of our political system paying more than lip service to this. The political leadership is far too embroiled in scoring points off one another, showing off their sympathy to the cause of the minorities. Meanwhile comes a report from one of our big three IT companies that only around one-fifth of our engineering graduates are truly employable. Consider this along with a supply gap, projected by NASSCOM, of around 500,000 in the next five years — it makes alarming reading.

Active interplay needed

Are any solutions in sight? Intelligent and enlightened captains of industry and bankers along with intellectuals ought to deal with this as their own concern. An active interplay of the developers and users of scientific and technical knowledge is the only even remotely feasible answer. What shape it should take can be left to the leaders of academia and business.

Consultancy, establishment of chairs for research, alternating spells in industry and teaching, are some of the possibilities. Looking for government help is of no use. Institutes owned or led by the State can never be expected to keep pace with market salaries, because they seem to be disinclined to look at facts or be detached from some vague ideological belief. Otherwise, what explains the professor of 30 years standing being paid a small fraction of what his graduates earn within a year or two of leaving the institution? Of course, it is true that teachers the world over are paid less than their counterparts in the commercial sector. Yet, the gap in India between a decent living wage and what the educators receive seems designed to run down the system forever. This situation has gone past the stage of speeches and ritual wringing of hands.

S. Ramachander