Education Improvement in India
The education system in India is managed by the state and only the upper class elites have access to better but more expensive education options. According to a recent study by ASSOCHAM, the country's chambers of commerce, India's state education system was considered significant behind other developing countries such as Brazil, China, South Africa, and Mexico.
Primary education in India is the most underdeveloped system where a majority of poor children do not go to school. Many of them have to support their families by working in the field, in clothing factories, shoes factories, or crafting factories. High school education and state college education in India are not better as they have not change in many years. Less than 20 percent of high school graduates go to college, the lowest among developing nations. The ASSOCHAM study concluded that India needs to put more children in school, educate them better, and ensure its college graduates are employable if it want to maintain its current economic growth rates and bring hundreds of millions out of poverty.
The study warned that India is in danger of actually being a less educated society in 2020 than it is now. In 2008, India had approximately 340 million people between 25 and 50 years without a college degree but that could surge to 480 million by 2014. If the education system is not improved soon, it will delay all future economic growth. Education is a time sensitive issue. If children do not have good education when they are in elementary school than many will not go to high school. If they do not receive good education in high school than you cannot expect many of them to go to college then the opportunity is lost forever. It only take one to two uneducated generation to push the country back several years and in this highly competitive world, it is not something any country can afford.
Although compulsory education for children until the age of 14 was the directive of the Indian Constitution, little was done to ensure this directive were implemented. The gap between the “Educated” and the “Uneducated” keep getting wider as more children had to go to work to support their families instead of going to school. In a recent report, a provincial government official complained: “If we enforce our directive, our education system will see an additional 8 to 10 million more children enrolling at schools. We do not have enough schools, we do not have enough teachers and we do not have enough books to support them. It is easy for congress to pass laws and guidelines for education, ensuring quality education, making it available to every citizen but no one want to implement it or funding it. they considered it is the local government responsibilities.”
Concerns about education improvement remain stagnated for many years. The Hindu newspaper, one of the most popular newspaper in the country recently ran a series of article about education reform. It mentioned that funding is inadequate for achieving the education objectives. There are too many plans, too many opinions, too many wishes that dilute the main purpose of educate a billion person nation. However, the newspaper also found that education is an incredibly profitable industry. It has more demand than supply with high revenue and that is why private schools are doing well. Today most middle class families prefer to send their children to private schools instead of state school. However, the issue of de-regulate the education sector by allowing more private schools is still a hot debate among Congress. Many argued that by allowing more private schools to open, the country will be further divided because only the rich can send their children to better private schools when poor children have to stay in archaic state schools.
However, many people are demanding a change in the education system by allowing more private schools. For many years of making promises, for many years of spending money in education but most Indian have not see any improvement in the state education system. After years of denial, the government in New Delhi finally seem to realize that things are broken and need fixing. In a speech in congress, a congressman stated the issue: “'In most developed countries, at least 50% of students go to college. The U.S has 82%, the UK has 64% even China has 60% but India has only 13% so we need to do something fast as we can”. However, other congressman considered it unfair to do such comparison. One congressman said: “We do not need statistics, we do not need data. We have more urgent things to solve. We go according to our own pace”.
During the colonial time and at the early days of independence, India has a few best public universities such as the world-class Indian Institutes Of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), and India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Indian Institute of Science. They are the institutions that developed Indian's top scientists, top managers, and top engineers but they are very selective. Only the best and the brightest can get in. These are students that have been prepared by their families for many years to pass the most strictest examinations to get admissions. Even when they are in, they are educated in the most disciplined, the most strictest education to be the best. These institutions are the “gold standard” of education, even today. However, these elite schools do not represent the current education system. They are the exception because the rest of the education system is much far below the average. One Indian friend told me: “In India we have the best and the worst. We have the richest people and the poorest people, the most educated people and the uneducated people. We do not have anything in between. We have the best public university like the IIT and many public universities that are not much different from a high school elsewhere.”
Since education improvement is a hot debate that has been discussed for many years without any result. A new solution has been suggested. When I was in India last summer, there was a debate in Congress regarding allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India. These universities will be exempt from government regulation on curriculum design, teacher compensation and other day-to-day operational matters, a significant departure from how domestic universities are currently controlled. Some people believe that by having more schools will create more competition and bring improvement. However, many people protested the idea as it is an “Insult to India by allowing foreigners to teach our children according to their values and culture.” Several people were afraid that “India will lose control if allow foreigners to train their citizen.”
When my Indian friends asked for my opinion I told them: “Establishing a school that replicate Harvard, Stanford, Oxford or Cambridge is very difficult. First, if it is easy than it already being done somewhere. Second these prestigious schools do not want to diluting their reputations with dubious quality or poor results. I do not think you will get them to open campuses in India. Personally, I think if the law pass, it will allow a lot of “profit-seeking, second-class universities” to jump in and take advantage of the high demand for education there. Today, we have so many “Fake universities” and “Phony universities” especially many on line universities with a lot of promises and poor trainings. Most are not even accredited at all but it seems they are doing very well in many developing countries. In my opinion, improving education should be done by the citizen of India and not by foreigners.”
Most of my friends were not comfortable with it. One told me that India needs to have between 1.4 million to 2 million software workers in the next five years and there is no way they can find them. If supply cannot meet demand than thing will change. If the outsourcing trends begin to shift direction and move from India to another country than they will lose the business. If customers find better skills, better costs elsewhere such as China or Brazil, it could be the end of the IT outsourcing trend and the economic growth that they have been enjoying for many years.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
