Ernst and Young says by 2030 India will have 140 million people in the college-going age group, and one in four graduates in the world will be a product of Indian higher education. The optimistic view is that this demographic will not only drive India’s economy, but also be the engine of global growth at a time when both China and Europe’s populations will be ageing.

But there is a roadblock to this cheerful scenario, one that could turn the demographic dividend into a demographic nightmare: the state of India’s higher education itself. The problem with Indian higher education is that it is geared to produce job-doers, not job creators. The abysmal state of entrepreneurship education in this country is only one symptom of a larger problem: our education system stifles student initiative and enterprise, in favour of conformist herds.

As inheritors of the gurukul system, we believe the teacher must be put on a pedestal, while the student is supposed to meekly follow orders without challenging the teacher. This breeds conformists, not entrepreneurs who think differently, not visionaries who are ready to challenge conventional norms and build institutions that create jobs and wealth for the larger society. Conformism and enterprise do not go together: our education system, and indeed our teachers, promote the former and frown upon the latter. It should be the other way round.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google, one of their earliest mentors was a Stanford University computer science professor born in Jammu — Rajeev Motwani. Along with Page and Brin, Motwani wrote an influential paper on the PageRank algorithm, which went on to become the basis for Google’s search operations.

Motwani sat on Google’s board and mentored the company’s early developers. He later turned angel investor, helping a number of Silicon Valley start-ups, some started by his students, reach their potential.

After Motwani’s accidental drowning in 2009, Brin paid a rich tribute to his mentor: “…his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.”

Motwani’s legacy also has a very important lesson for the professors in India’s top technology and business schools. While many IIT students are now a crucial part of India’s exciting start-up ecosystem, (many of them are being helped by their alumni networks), how many IIT professors are mentoring their students the way Motwani did? How many professors in India are ready to leave behind the old guru- shishya relationship, and collaborate with their students to build technologies and institutions that change lives? Do Indian professors have those ambitions, or do they consider it beneath themselves to build companies along with their students?

There is also a fundamental misunderstanding in Indian academia about what constitutes entrepreneurship education. Business entry is fundamentally different from managing established companies, which is what is taught in our business schools. New product testing and development, equity negotiations, idea protection and ambiguity tolerance are intrinsic to early stage start-ups, but may not be needed in established companies. The typical management courses in India still do not include these streams in their curriculum. The focus at India’s top business schools is still on producing herds of management graduates who fit in as cogs in the wheels of big corporates, not ones who can chart their own course through enterprise.

In some ways micro-entrepreneurship education has a richer history in India. In government skill development centres, attendees are encouraged to build small businesses with their skills and small financing. While this has had some success, these micro-entrepreneurs are unlikely to create large-scale businesses that provide jobs to hundreds of workers. Also, the message appears to be that entrepreneurship is only for the unskilled and unemployable, not for the brightest tech and management students of the country.

This mindset needs a paradigm shift, and that change can be driven by the gurus: the professors of our best tech and business schools. There is perhaps a need to educate the educators to put innovation and entrepreneurship at the heart of tech and business education in the country. But to do that, India’s professors will also have to stop being gurus, and start treating their students as equals.

Here is something else Brin wrote in his tribute to Motwani: “In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile.”

How many professors in India leave their doors open?

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