The Hindu Business Line : Can students mark up India's education system?

The usual letters I get in response to this column deal with the content of what I have to say. But this one was different. It did not have any comment on what I had written about but was a plaintive call for help. "We are students of Master of Commerce situated in a remote area in India," it began. They had been reading this column and somehow thought I may have ideas they could use.

They had been working to improve the culture of their department, to make both students and the faculty more responsive to better learning. They saw that they had major problems to overcome. They felt a majority of students were not serious about their course of study. Their department's goals were not clear.

More seriously, they complained that "out of six professors, three are not update (sic) and four are not willing to innovative teaching (sic). Department is not open to our innovative ideas."

The education sector in India is an integral part of the infrastructure that is seriously lagging behind the needs of a rapidly growing nation. Education is a subject that is theoretically under both the State and the Central Government, and in practice, nobody seems to be paying attention to it. Or perhaps, one should say, paying attention to all the wrong things about it.

Employers and think-tanks have been voicing concern over the problem of quality amidst quantity but there has been no apparent response from the policy makers. Where are the pressures for change likely to come from? Not from the politicians who have not been able to make up their mind as to how the public and private sectors can share the enormous space for education that is available.

MONOPOLY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

They are busy maintaining the monopoly of the public education system, and somehow think that the only way of establishing their socialist credentials is to maintain a fee structure that does not allow the institution to invest and build the quality of its resources. The only creative idea they get is how to distort the merit system further by reserving another chunk of the existing pie for another disadvantaged group rather than make the pie big enough for all.

The university administrators are busy maintaining a system of rationing in the institutions they run. They lay down minimum requirements of marks secured at the preceding examination, as though that is the sole index of the potential of a student. Once the student is admitted into a programme, it is akin to jumping on to a constantly moving assembly line with no option to take a break in the study for work or other life experiences, no option to switch to another subject even within the institution, or another programme at another institution.

The faculty, with tenure of appointment from the start, has no incentive to be creative in either programme design or delivery of content in the classroom. Teachers settle into a life-long stupor wherein they can deliver the same subject, as it was when they went to college, often from the same set of books that they read. Parents feel powerless in such a system structure. Having run from pillar to post to get their wards admitted into an institution at considerable cost of money and influence, they get prepared to do the same in seeking employment for that same person once the institution spits him out at the end of the programme.

STRESS ON QUALITY

Meanwhile, the world is rapidly changing. McKinsey and Co, the international consulting firm, in its June 2005 report focused on the global labour market observed that only 13 per cent of potential job candidates in degree specific occupations could successfully work at a multinational company. One of the debilitating reasons was the low quality of significant portions of the education system. The report advises that countries seeking to benefit from the growing global labour market should concentrate on improving the quality of the talent and not just the quantity of educated workers.

Several employers in India, and the software industry in particular, have regularly been complaining about the poor availability of quality manpower. Once you look beyond the seductive demographic data, such as over 50 per cent of the population is 24 years of age, or the thousands of graduates being turned out of institutions, everyone agrees that many are not employable.

CORPORATE INITIATIVE

A few companies have decided to do something about it. Wipro is among those that have taken the initiative though their private foundation at improving the quality of education at government schools.

Multinationals, which were first attracted to India by the quality of technical talent, are beginning to realise that it is only skin deep, which puts a limit on their expansion plans.

Intel, which found that engineers with the right skills are not available, began a programme to work with Tier-II and Tier-III institutions to help improve their curriculum.

The experience of the students who wrote to me is not something that is confined to the `remote area' they said they were in. The same situation exists in Mumbai, the commercial capital of the nation, and in colleges that have a better reputation than most.

A recent report in The New York Times declared that over 11 million students graduating from over 18,000 colleges and universities in India are being trained to memorise and repeat definitions and information straight out of textbooks without building any additional skills.

The students of Hinduja College, mentioned in the story, seem reconciled to be in an educational system that is not in keeping with the needs of society. The adult students are treated like errant adolescents and the pedagogy followed would kill what spark of innovation or creativity that is inherent in them.

VISION PLAN

So where is the push for change going to come from? The hope is that it will come from within the institutions. The President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, has provided a lead by travelling the country, igniting minds and challenging the students to have a vision for the future.

The students who wrote to me seem to have taken his advice to heart. They have a plan. They were going to write a Vision 2015 report on what needs to be done in their college and present it to all concerned, and hopefully begin to demand its implementation.

They wanted more interaction between professors and students, both in and out of the classroom, and increased innovation in what the school does. They say that they will pass on their vision as a living document to their juniors who will edit, and adapt to suit their needs and further pass it on to their successors. Thus, each generation in that college will work towards objectives they believe in and further enjoin their successors to continue with the challenge.

The students of all institutions will have to take up their cause and demand a better learning environment, better facilities, better pedagogy, more flexibility in the degree programmes, and so on. The student is both a customer and a product. As a fee-paying customer, it is her right to seek a quality of education that is valuable and marketable. Poor quality of education affects the careers and lives of each one of them whose potential is not fully realised.

As a product, it is up to society to demand a graduating individual who will fit with the needs of society. With society caught up in its own foggy notions of equity of fees, and stifling conditions of reservations, there is a serious shortage of people concerned with the quality and relevance of education.

Swami Vivekananda's clarion call to the nation is most relevant for the students: `Awake, arise, and stop not until the goal is reached.'

(The author is a professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. He can be reached at cgopinat@suffolk.edu)

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