higher education reforms

8/14/2019 Higher Education Reforms

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DECLARATION

I, HARSH V. PATEL hereby declare that the report on Higher Education Reforms is aresult of my own work and my indebtedness to other work publications, if any, have been

duly acknowledged.

Place: CHANGA

Date: 16-12-2009 HARSH V. PATEL


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Background of education system

A significant portion of the worlds total youth population lives in India, which has 540million people under the age of 25 and nearly 200 million between 15-25 years ofage. In recent years(primarily after the liberalization of economy around 1991) the growth story of Indiahas been colored with the shade of a near-fantasy tale. Have you heard thebuzzwords with regard to India burgeoning young middle-class population,booming IT sector, or vast pool of English speaking, science-educated skilled laborforce around your morning breakfast, launch recess, evening tea, and weekendparty? I am not surprised that you have. I just wonder whether you also have heardabout some lesser known facts which are summarized as following,

84.5 million (highest in the world) young people lives under extreme poverty line (less than US $1 per day) in India. That is 44.2 % of total youthpopulation. (Source: World Youth Report, 2003);

44 million of Indian youth is under-nourished (again, highest in the world) which is 23% of the total youth population (Source: World Youth Report,2003);

Gross enrollment percentage of youth in higher education is 7%, as compared to 92% in US, 52% in UK, 45% in Japan, 11.1% in all Asia, even10.3% in all developing countries (Agarwal, 2007);

Largest percentage of unemployed population in India is educated youth.

Most intriguingly, in stark contrast to the OECD countries, the share ofunemployment increases as the average educational level goes up (Agarwal,2007);

Organized job sector is appallingly low at less than 5-6%. Almost 95% of newly created jobs are still in unorganized sectors.


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Educational reform

For proposing a pathway of meaningful educational reform, identification of thenature of the existing policies, their implications, and the inter-relation withemployment market is of paramount importance. According to a 2004-2005 statistics(Agarwal, 2007), India has overall lower unemployment rate (9.2%) than EuropeanUnion (9.5%), China (9.8%) or Brazil (11.5%). That is a creditable achievementconsidering the burgeoning population and limited industrialization in the country.The rate of unemployment among youth is quite larger than the overall nationalunemployment rate, which is actually a common trend for most of the nations in theworld, developed and developing countries alike. The alarming trend for India,however, is the higher unemployment rate among high-educated youth and young

people in urban areas. The lower youth unemployment in rural areas can beexplained in terms of the largest labor share in agriculture (59.2%) as compared toindustry (17.2%) or services (23.8%). Probably, the same reason can be cited forexplaining the incidence of the lowest unemployment rate among young peoplewithout any formal education or with bare minimum elementary education. Forexample, a potato farmer, in a remote village of India, is not unemployed,nonetheless happy with his ability to read notices and bills (written in regionallanguage) and do basic arithmetic necessary for rudimentary book-keeping.Clearly,the aspirations of half a billion youth for a better living standard and higher income jobs cannot be engineered by agricultural sector which accounts for 54% labormarket but only 22% of GDP contribution. Keeping pace with the demand of

globalized economy with shifting focus on knowledge-workers and skilled manpower


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Age group

Number of unemployed people per 1000 for various age groups in India

Indias youth needs to be empowered with such a value-based education, which

inculcates those necessary employment skills. Directly in the field of employment,

the human capital theory asserts that investments in higher education and training

enhance the degree of employability of youth by adding practical value to their

repertoire of job skills. For India, we see a generally upward trend for the overall

education budget over time, accompanied by a monotonically increasing share of

primary education sector and an uneven pie for the higher education. Specifically,

the post-secondary higher education is a largely neglected sector in terms of radicalmodernization and growth potential. Enrolment ratios in the school start dropping

sharply after the primary education level, but even the handful of students, which

make it to the post-secondary level, cannot get exposure to necessary skill

enhancement pedagogy and instruction. For comparison, even China spends 2.1%

of GDP in overall education (as compared to 3.3% for India), its secondary and

tertiary enrolment ratios are 72.5 and 19.1 respectively, as compared to 53.5 and

11.8 for India. Historically, the apparent problem seems to be the improper

structuring and absence of goal- oriented missions in higher education policies


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Comparative performance in education

(World Bank Cross-country Comparison Chart Tool,

www.worldbank.org/kam)

education of science, arts, and commerce without much impetus in specialized

technical, medical, or vocational training. There were few exceptions to this general

norm however. The IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and IIMs (Indian Institute of

Management) were structured following the best private engineering and

management educational enterprises of the west and consequently they bred the

bunch of entrepreneurs and self-motivated youths who went to become successful

industry leaders, or wealth-creators, in India and abroad. The unfortunate fact is that

the student body in these elite institutes represents a micro-fraction of the society

and cannot (and should not) influence the employment dynamics for the larger Indian

youth in any meaningful way. The aimless expansion of higher education, without

any feedback from industries, coupled with a restrictive regime of closed-market

economy, inevitably resulted in huge unemployment rates among highly educated

youth and the growth engine lost its steam significantly. Resource allocation level

went down and pressed by the limited financial constriction the focus of the

government shifted towards other priorities, leaving inefficient pedagogicalmachinery for educating a burgeoning mass of youth. Apart from the absence of

goal-oriented approach, Indian education system has been plagued by overdose of

bureaucracy and centralized control. During the expansion era of higher education,

the number of degree-level colleges and their enrolment increased by significant

amount (4152 in 1980-81 to 9906 in 1999-00) along with only a modest increase

(206 to 349) in the number of universities (Geetha Rani, 2001), to which they are all

affiliated. This created a huge burden on individual universities and slowed down

their overall growth rate and seriously hindered any dynamic quality enhancement

potential. Furthermore, lack of any autonomous decision-making power on the partof the colleges and their rigid affiliation to a parent university restricts them from

implementing any dynamic change in pedagogical methods, training materials,

evaluation systems or self-supporting mechanisms for resource generation. The

affiliation mechanism and the rigid regulatory framework, although created to

ascertain uniformity in educational quality, have rendered the entire process of

educational reform inflexible and non- adaptive with regard to the demand from

practical job market. Here also IITs and IIMs serve as the example as the only

institutes with complete self-governance and autonomous decision- making authority

which flourished to become lone centers of excellence enjoying the freedom from the

iron grip of regulatory regime. Traditionally in India, public enterprise has been the


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primary supporter of educational institutes with state government bearing almost 80-

90% financial burden and central government accounting for the rest (Geetha Rani,

2001). However, a radical transformation in the arena of key players for educational

service sector began to take place after 1980-81. Numerous private enterprises

ventured into the sector primarily responding to the demand from the industry.

An integrated approach for introducing educational reforms

An integrated approach for introducing educational reforms considering both

organized and unorganized job markets in India. conditions. As per 2001 census,

61.6% labor force is engaged in agriculture as compared to 17.2% in industry and

21.2% in services. There are some continual changes with slowly increasing laborparticipation rate in services and decreasing share of agriculture with industry labor

share remaining almost constant. Indias growth (in GDP terms or in labor

participation terms) has followed a non-conventional trajectory of shifting the growth

engine directly from agriculture to services almost bypassing the labor-intensive

industrial or manufacturing sector. This has a far reaching implication in terms of

absolute numbers of job creation because of lower labor intake of service sector as

compared to industry. However, growth in services particularly enhances the

employment opportunity for high educated youth (with at least a post-secondary

degree) and in reality, India is slated to face a skill shortage in that sector due to low

enrolment rate in higher education and absence of employability skills among the

educated youth. The critical issue is, however, the low ratio of skilled to unskilled

labor (Agarwal, 2007) in India (0.15) as compared to USA (0.54), Japan (0.22), UK

(0.39) or Russia (0.39) which prohibits the growth of new skill- intensive and skill-

specific job markets in the expanding knowledge-based economy. On the positive

side, due to the sheer size of the labor population (and the expanding base of future

labor population i.e. current youth), even that low ratio can translate to a formidable

force, if correct policies are implemented and basic skills are imparted in right

manner. The dominance of informal, unorganized sector is likely to continue in near

future although organized sector adds much higher value per unit workforce input tothe overall economy. Moreover, bulk of the high- educated youth (graduates and

above) are currently employed or continue to seek jobs in the organized job sector.

But, given the low gross enrolment ratio and the capacity limitation of the higher

education system, informal sector will continue to be the employment base for the

largest share of upcoming young labor force. Therefore, right policies have to be

implemented which not only focuses on the high end skill development of formally

educated youth, but also addresses the responsibility of providing informal and

vocational education to youth with less formal education to help them achieve self-

reliance and financial freedom. Let us now discuss the propositions for thenecessary educational reforms to empowering Indian youth with right employment


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skills and knowledge to participate in the local, national, and global economy in a

meaningful manner. As mentioned before, due to strong coupling between the

holistic education and job market dynamics, propositions may often be in the

borderline between pure educational policies and labor market responsive measures

or a blend of these two. The specifics are as following,

Various steps taken by government

Higher de-centralization of education governance and deregulation: This is a

major step towards granting more autonomy to the degree-granting colleges and

diploma-granting technical institutions allowing them to operate in an environment of

more academic freedom. This will facilitate implementing adaptive curricula, flexibleevaluation system, and specific goal-oriented rapid changes within the pedagogical

process as and when necessary. The burden on the central universities will lessen

as well as propagation of inertia from the decades-old, slow-acting education

system, which can held back rapid, short-term developments, will reduce.

Enhanced focus on entrepreneurial, communication, and inter-personnel skill

development: Emphasis on essential behavioral, communication, and

entrepreneurial skills in classroom education is almost missing in India while thesesoft skills continue to get the highest priority on the list of employers. And

undoubtedly, acquirement of these skills helps an individual not only in job sector but

also to be successful in social interactions and to practice good citizenship. Simple

but highly effective measures could be a) teaching students about basic economic

principles, constitutional laws, and social decrees and encouraging them to question

the validity and applicability of the same, b) training young students in inter-

personnel communication through idea presentation, group discussion on their

favorite topic, group-based simple project demonstration, group and personal essay

contests, etc., c) encouraging and rewarding students for independent thinking and

problem-solving attitude and discouraging rote-learning tendency.

Increased public spending on informal, distance, and vocational education:

For empowering youth from economically, socially or logistically disadvantaged

areas or families (who has a high likelihood of being unable to avail formal

education), greater emphasis on informal education should be placed. Distance

education (in the form of E-learning, postal correspondence courses) can be a useful

tool to educate youth in remote rural locations. Polytechnic institutes and craftsman

training centers should be set up in greater numbers and existing ones should beupgraded with requisite material support. Recently, a study by National Council for


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Applied Economic Research (Shukla, 2006) found that television is an

overwhelmingly important source of information for Indian youth (and also for adults).

This powerful and ubiquitous media can be utilized to create an information network

which educate youth about career opportunities and modalities (for example

information about public service job examinations, educational loan, self- financedsmall business initiative loan, basic usage of computers and electronic media and

accessories, etc).

Locally and nationally integrated framework of informal learning and

vocational training: To reduce the administrative and logistical cost of the large

number of informal/ vocational education centers, an integrated networked body of

teachers and administrators may be set up. Exchange program of students and

instructors, where geographically feasible, should be encouraged to optimally spend

the public resources for educating the youth. Mutual collaboration and knowledge

exchange would automatically promote healthy competition enhancing the standard

and shape their goal-centric education approach.

Creation of feedback loop-based structure within formal education for

enhanced job market responsiveness:Upgradation and adaptation of pedagogical

techniques and tools must take into account the feedback from the employment

sector as to the needs of specific skills that are expected of the young students.

Although exhaustive overhaul of the formal textbook curricula may be slow and

impractical (given limited resource allocation for the educational sector) semi- formal

methods can be employed for greater interaction and transparency between industry

and


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Integrated counseling, evaluation, and career guidance initiatives: Public or

private institutes alike, the necessity of proper guidance to the student for helping

him/her choosing right career need not be over-emphasized. This process shouldbegin at the pre-selection phase of a professional course and should continue

throughout. The young mind, which is being educated, has a right to know the

purpose of that very education in a practical world scenario and counseling could be

that window through which he/she sees the educational exercise in its fuller

perspective. This practice can be implemented in an integrated framework, involving

multiple institutions to set up an umbrella body for advising students on multi-

disciplinary career perspectives. In a deregulated academia, this integrated

approach can be all the more effective to help discrete centers of education and

learning to contribute in a holistic manner to the greater cause of youth development.Integrated evaluation process (for example a common skill test across the country in

a particular field leading to a certification) will help immensely the discrete bodies of

the deregulated academia to self-evaluate their quality of instruction. Standardization

of universal evaluation method will also give much confidence to the industrial

employer in hiring a young graduate.

To provide financial resources for these reforms a combined effort is much

needed where public expenditure is optimized, burden of excessive regulation on

private investment into public institution is relaxed, and self-financing measures are

encouraged and given high priority. The shares of sales and services andendowment in USA higher education public expenditure are 22.6% and 5.3%


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respectively (Kapur, 2004). These numbers for India are 0.43% and 0.0% (probably

the author could not compute the fractional percentage)! Even a moderate increase.


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Conclusion

For India, the issue of youth employment and associated educational reform

is highly critical because of her extremely diverse scenario of youth development.

This is a country, whose young scientists, technocrats, and business executives

demonstrate highest level of excellence and commitment in diverse professional

fields and command highest level of respect among peers and employers, all around

the world. This is also a country, where 84 million youths do not get sufficient food

for nutrition after a days hard work. But this diversity is at the essential core of this

nation. For more than four thousands years, this nation has progressed through

unimaginable diversity of language, culture, religion, caste, creed, and socio-

economic stratifications. She can handle this one too. Worlds largest democracy is

still a treasure-trove of human resources. And, youth is unquestionably the lifeblood

of that society. Half a billion young people in this country aspire for a better living

standard, for quality education, healthcare, and family resources. Government,

lawmakers, politicians, industrial houses, social leaders have huge responsibility to

empower these youth for self-sustainability. It is a difficult task, but not impossible

one. Sincere analysis of the situation, honest policy formulation, rapid deployment,

and integrated effort can gift Indian youth a nation.


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Reference

1. Agarwal, P., Higher education and the labor market in India, 2007.

2. Geetha Rani, P., Economic reforms and financing higher education in

India, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration Report,

2001.

3. Kapur, D., Mehta, P.B., Indian higher education reform: from half-baked

socialism to half- baked capitalism, Center for International Development

Working Paper, No. 103, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2004.

4. Lam, D., The demography of youth in developing countries and its

economic implications, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4022,

included in world development report, 2007.

5. Ray, S. and Chand, R., Socio-Economic Dimensions of Unemployment in

India, NSSO, New Delhi.

6. Shukla, R., India Science Report, National Council for Applied Economic

Research, 2006.7. World Youth Report, United Nations, 2003.

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