Quality of Education in India

Quality of Education in India

Quality is the third aspect of the education policy under the leadership of HRD Minister of India Kapil Sibal. He is paying a lot of attention and importance to the quality the Indian education system, particularly at the higher education level. The goal of the policy is to improve quality of knowledge held, used, created disseminated by teachers and professors at school, college and university levels; quality of knowledge gained by students; quality of institutions, processes, equipment and labs in schools, colleges and universities; so that the average quality of the stock of human capital is the highest possible at a point in time, and the maximum possible increase in the average as a dynamic process.

This is important because the quality dimension along with the quantity of human capital determines a nation’s level of human achievement and progress in social, economic and financial, political, governance, scientific, and industrial aspects of a society. We know this from empirical evidence available from all countries and the cause and effect between the quantity and quality of education on the one hand and the level of economic and human development on the other. For example, the richer OECD countries are the top group of countries in terms of the overall standard living and the poor sub-Saharan and South Asian countries are at the bottom as measured by the Human Development index and other similar indices prepared by the UN and other organizations and research groups.

Quality in education is measurable in many ways: percentage marks of incoming and graduating students; content of courses from academic and application aspects; relevance of courses in current and future application and practical use; quantity and quality of facilities of libraries, the Internet, labs; activities in social life and networking on and off campus; number and quality of academic and non-academic leaders in all walks of life; joint programs with other schools, colleges and universities; and the qualifications and quality of teachers and professors in terms of their knowledge, teaching ability, research capability in terms of furthering knowledge and its applications, and input in educational content, curriculum and policy as well as evaluation of the inputs, the process and the outcomes.

There is also the external measurement of quality in terms of market salaries and positions offered to graduates, success in competitive exams in private and public sectors, advisory roles and general leadership positions offered to graduates and faculty, innovations created by the person or the institution.

How does the Indian education system stand up on all the above variables today, where has it come from since 1947 and how does it compete in terms of domestic and international dimensions of India’s progress in the future are the questions relevant to a policy on the quality aspect of an education policy. Much research needs to be done to measure the above mentioned variables. It would be reasonable to say that the quality of the system is good and that it has been improving over the last 60 years. This observation is based just on one variable: the success of Indians educated in India before and after Independence in the vastly expanded system of primary, secondary and higher education in India since 1947.

From the writers of Rig Veda to historical giants and modern Indian names like (in alphabetical order) Ambani, Ambedkar, Aryabhata, Aurobindo, Bhabha, Bhaskara, Bhagwati, Brahmagupta, Gandhi, Gokhale, Kautilya, Khurana, Madhava, Malviya, Menon, Mittal, Murthy, Nehru, Radhakrishnan, Ramanujam, Rao, Sen, Manmohan Singh, Somayaji, Swaminathan, Tagore, Tata, Tilak, Varahamihiva represent the best in Indian science, business, education, and politics. Indians educated in India, whether from IITs, IIMs or any of the Indian universities like Agra, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras, Mumbai, Patna, Rajasthan, etc., are excelling in all fields around the globe in the most advanced richest industrial to the poorest agrarian societies.

Two of the most important countries in world-United States and United Kingdom- have Indian professionals in nearly all colleges and universities, hospitals, all types of business firms including IT, entertainment, manufacturing and space. Graduates of all Indian universities, set up by the British or Indians, are found to be successful and in high positions in all fields in advanced societies. This is becoming so throughout the world. Therefore one can say that the Indian education system has a strong base of quality which should be strengthened.

One way to improve quality is to allow a more competitive knowledge production, dissemination and consumption system by increasing the role of the private sector, the non-profit sector, the government sector as well as private-public partnerships and partnerships of all kinds between Indian schools, colleges, universities, pure research centers and organizations and their foreign counterparts in all three sectors in all fields.

A small women’s college like Barnard (Columbia University), Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Radcliff (Harvard University), Smith, Mt. Holyoke to large state systems like CUNY, SUNY, UC system, Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State all could be encouraged to connect to the Indian institutions beyond the most prestigious names like Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, U Penn in the US, and Cambridge and Oxford in the UK.

Policy should be accommodating and flexible to give to more opportunities to Indian students and faculties to interact with and learn from foreign knowledge systems in Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Open and transparent educational links are needed to improve quality whether based on government budget or private budget. Return, surplus, profit, value added are desirable outcomes as they signify high value of the graduate of the Indian education system within India and abroad, in any sector or industry they are employed, become entrepreneurs and industrialists or civil servants and politicians.

We commend the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal for highlighting all three aspects-access, equity and quality-in his evolving new education policy of India as India connects more and more with the rest of the world and competes with it.