"Education" is what brought many Assamnetters to where they are.
They surely want their old country folk to be properly educated to do
something better-live better-healthier-happier-more useful to the
world/humanity.
So at Thanksgiving 2007 after Turkey and Cranberry pudding they should pledge
to work out a very well thought out plan to enable Direction to Purposeful
Education for all in Oxom now and for the Future.
Time and tide waits for no man.
mm
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:56:41 -0600To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
[Assam] From Outlook India: An Indictment of In dian Higher Education
( Highlighting mine: cm)
We Do Need That Education...China is re-orienting and investing in its higher
education sector to meet the challenges of the future, but India continues to
ignore the systemic collapse that is crying out for an urgent and drastic
overhaul.HARSH V. PANTA few days back, two news stories appeared in the Indian
media. One was the absence of Indian universities from a list of top 200 (not
100!) higher educational institutions in the world while as many as 10 Chinese
universities made it to the list. The other was about the letter that the
Aligarh Muslim University Vice Chancellor has been forced to write to the
parents of his students threatening to convert the academic session into a
"Zero Year" in case of a repeat of campus violence -- in mid-September,
earlier in the year, the university had been forced to close down after
violence and arson on the campus in protest against the murder of a student.
These news items are symptomatic of the rot that has set in the Indian higher
education system, which seems to be in the news only for wrong reasons.Amid all
the claims about the rise of India as a major player in the international
system, it is often ignored that India continues to face some fundamental
obstacles in its drive to achieve its full potential. One of the most
significant of which is the crisis in India's higher education system,
something that gets drowned in the din of those feel-good stories about the
engineers and managers emerging from India's premier professional institutions
such as the IITs and the IIMs. Sometime back, inaugurating a national
conference of Vice Chancellors (VCs), organised by the University Grant
Commission, the union human resources development minister, Arjun Singh,
described higher education in India as a sick child and asked that it should be
given a new direction so as to be able to better serve the cause of the
nation's youth. Seeking a road map on higher education from the VCs, he asked
them to define "what should be the content, extent, methodology and basic
ingredients of higher education." While Singh's comments certainly need to be
welcomed, especially if they are able to generate a debate in the country on
the future of higher education, it is indeed surprising that it took him more
than three years to address what should have been his top priority when he
assumed office. It is also interesting to note that some of the minister's own
actions in the past three years have not exactly served the goals of improving
the quality of higher education in the country.
Knowledge is the key variable that will define the global distribution of power
in the 21st century and India has also embarked on a path of economic success
relying on its high-tech industries. But given the fragile state of India's
higher education system, it is not clear if India will be able to sustain its
present growth trajectory. While India's nearest competitor, China is
re-orienting and investing in its higher education sector to meet the
challenges of the future, India continues to ignore the problem as if the
absence of world-class research in Indian universities is something that will
rectify itself on its own. While India may be producing well-trained engineers
and managers from its flagship IITs and IIMs, it is not doing so in sufficient
numbers. There is also a growing concern that while private engineering and
management institutions are flourishing due to rising demand, their products
are not of the quality that can help India compete effectively in the global
marketplace.
India has the third largest higher education system in the world, behind only
the US and China, that is churning out around 2.5 million graduates every year.
Not only is this catering to just about 10 percent of India's youth but the
quality of this output is also below par.If we leave aside the IITs, the IIMs,
and some other institutions such as the AIIMs, the Indian Institute of Science,
and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, we will find a higher education
sector that is increasingly unwilling and unable to bear the weight of the
rising expectations of an emerging India. The Indian universities, which should
have been the centre of cutting edge research and hub of intellectual activity,
are more in the news for political machinations than for research excellence.
Years of under-investment in higher education and a mistaken belief in
providing uniform support to all universities irrespective of the quality of
their output has made sure that the academics have neither the adequate support
to provide top-quality education to their students nor do they have any
incentive to undertake cutting-edge research. India desperately needs
research-oriented globally recognised universities to be able to participate in
the modern-day knowledge-based global economy to its full potential.
In his perceptive meditation on the state of higher education in the US, The
Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom concludes that "a crisis in the
university, the home of reason, is perhaps the profoundest crisis" for a
democratic nation. Though the crisis that he was drawing attention to arose
from a different set of issues facing the US academia in the 1960s and 1970s,
the present crisis in the Indian universities is equally profound and has the
potential to directly affect the future of India.
This brings us to the larger issue that is at stake in this debate about the
future of higher education in India. Because of the demands of the market, most
students today find engineering, medicine or management to be the most
lucrative options to study. And the Indian education system is such that it has
created an artificial divide between various streams so the context in which
its engineers, its doctors and its managers are emerging is not shaped by the
liberal ethic of higher education, something that should be the essence of
higher education. Social science and humanities are being devalued today
vis-à-vis science and technology which can have some serious consequences.
Democracy requires a questioning citizenry brought up on liberal education that
gives its citizens the ability to interrogate and investigate the claims of
authority. The real value of liberal education comes from a distinctive quality
of mind and character that encourages the ability to explore moral and
political questions from a variety of perspectives. India's higher education
has long ceased to ask big questions, the most important of which should be:
What kind of citizens is the Indian education system producing?
Some scholars have pointed out that a process of privatisation of higher
education system is underway in India, a result not of some comprehensive
programme of education reform but as a consequence of the collapse of the
public sector and the withdrawal of the middle classes. This is indeed a
worrisome trend and it is hoped that the government realises that just by
pumping more money into the system or by building more universities it will not
be able to remedy the underlying rot in the system.
With the National Knowledge Commission calling for a fundamental change in
higher education and the HRD Minister finally realising that something drastic
needs to be done, the stage is hopefully set for a radical overhaul of the
higher education sector. However, despite its tall claims, the present
government's record so far inspires little confidence that it is up to this
task as it has continued to ignore the systemic collapse of Indian higher
education for the last three and a half years.It would be a grave travesty if a
government led by an educationist himself fails to do anything to stem the rot
in India's higher education.Harsh V. Pant teaches at King's College London
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