3 Imperative Reforms for High Schools in India.

Recently I was invited to an environmental awareness and training program for high school teachers in my district, organised by OISCA south India. After a brief talk with the delegates of OISCA, I was asked to talk for a few minutes about the differences that I found in Japanese high schools and Indian high schools. Since its an impromptu and brief speech I decided to speak only about reforms we need here.The current school system in India is archaic and dates back to the colonial period. Three significant differences struck my mind. I am not arguing these three attributes are peculiar to Japan. In fact most developed countries already implemented these.

1. Extra-Curricular Activities
2. Curriculum and Career Guidance
3. Admission to Universities and Colleges.

Extra-Curricular Activities

Like always 2012 Olympics also didn't bring many medals to India. Ever wondered whats the basic problem with our sports? The most significant argument is that it has never been encouraged at the school level, with the rare exception of some expensive private schools. Of course there are national sports meets conducted for every sport. But over the years it has become just a custom. In this highly competitive system of ours, every parent wants their child to score more than their peers. A number of tuition and coaching centers have flourished in the cities and small towns of our country, where most students would attend coaching classes after the school.

In contrast most of the Japanese high school students would be spending a couple of hours after the school in their assigned 'club'. High school clubs, are student based school organisations,functioning with myriads of tasks, varying on specific purpose of each respective club. Each club focuses on an activity like Music, Dance, Football, Tennis, Badminton, Athletics etc and practice it everyday. Since the child gets an opportunity to develop a particular talent from a very young age he may excel in it when he reaches his adulthood. The school also allocates a substantial amount of its expenditure in providing good facilities for these clubs to function.

I think India should do the same. Because of the competition no one cares about these extra-curricular activities. And it also requires huge investments. So the government should provide the incentives and the capital to set up 'clubs' in every school.

Curriculum and Career Guidance

Currently India produces over 700,000 engineers a year, nearly 10 times that of US. And not surprisingly only 30% are employable. Even graduates from A graded college are finding it difficult to find job. The Average salary of a B.tech graduate in my state(Kerala) is equal to that of a manual laborer(at the initial stage) because of too much supply of B.tech graduates. So what really lead to this inundation of engineers.

20 years ago before the NEP reforms, when India was still growing in the so called 'Hindu rate of growth', the upper class families consisted of mostly engineers and doctors. people often looked up on engineers and doctors and IAS or IPS officers with veneration. So most middle class parents aspired their children becoming an engineer or doctor or a civil servant, hoping that all their difficulty will end. and in the early 90s the IT revolution started in India. IT Companies started hiring in large numbers and everyone wanted to be an engineer, if not a software engineer. The demand for engineering seats kept on rising even as the demand for engineers in the economy consolidated. Hundreds of engineering colleges,mostly private, sprang up across the country. Most of them with poor quality, producing unemployable graduates.

If you look into the situation more carefully, the underlying cause of this phenomenon was the lack of information or guidance about various job opportunities for the students. Things have changed a lot in the last two decades in India. There are a lot of highly paid employment opportunities in the horizon. In fact as there was an over supply of engineers, presently India has a shortage of quality graduates in many other fields. 

I think schools should educate its students about the different career options available for them. Moreover curriculum should be more flexible at high school. At the moment a student can choose only a set of science, commerce or humanities subjects. They should have the freedom to choose subjects from any of these streams, and construct their own set of subjects. 

Admission to Universities and Colleges

IIT Bombay Campus

Last year more than half a million students took the highly competitive IIT-JEE(Joint Entrance Exam) pursuing their dreams of studying in an IIT(Indian Institute of Technology). Only less than 2% could make it. Where as MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) accepted around 10% of the 18,000 applications it received. Indian Institute of Technology was a vision conceived by Jawaharlal Nehru after his visit of MIT. He wanted world class engineers and scientists to build a strong nation. Over the years many of its alumni have turned out to be reputed personalities in various spheres. 

IIT currently conducts an entrance exam(IIT-JEE) with maths, chemistry and physics questions. Due to the magnitude of competition most IIT aspirants spend their time going to tuition classes, after and before school and even on holidays. The only relevant criteria for admission to country's premier technological institution is your IIT-JEE score. So students aspiring 'big' would not have any incentives to develop skills other than academics, like communication skills, sports and cultural talents, language development and general knowledge. This would result in students turning 'machines' who can solve complex scientific and mathematics question but lack practical and professional skills.

This distortion is not confined to just IITs. Colleges of Delhi University are the premier centers for Science, Arts and Commerce courses. Every year these colleges announce a cut-off list. For example St. Stephen's college, one of the prestigious colleges in the country announced a cut off of 96.75% for its Economics (Hons.) course and 95.66 for Physics(Hons.) course, meaning only students who obtained the respective score or above in their 12th grade public exam would be considered for admission. Here also, the college lays emphasis only on the marks. They do not consider any other talent or achievement of the applicant. So naturally students will dedicate their entire time in scoring high in exams and neglect other things.

I think its a need of the hour to change this outdated system of admission. The universities should consider all the attributes of the applicant and not just his scores. Only this way the high school students of our nation will have the incentives for all round development.  

Higher Education in Modern World

                              Education is enlightenment. Because only through education can an individual realize her true potential.  Martin Luther King Jr once famously quoted ‘Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education.’  The Education of the people determines the fate of the nation. Thus it also forms  an important part of Human Resource Development. But educational system and its ideals have evolved with history as the civilizations evolved. It always reflects the ideologies of the society.  The society teaches through schools and colleges those knowledge and ideologies which they want to pass on to the next generation. The societies differed from one part of the world to another because long they have been isolated. So the educational systems were also different. But now the world is becoming more global and these societies are becoming more connected which results in the flow of ideas. So in the contemporary world the ideals and goals of education are almost same. But as a matter of fact not all the Nations and regions of the world succeeded in implementing them, partly because of the lack of good governance and investments. However the education system and its goals must evolve as the world is evolving. Given the condition of the world now there is a major need to rethink the goals of higher education, its ideologies and implementation, both in developed and developing nations to tackle its own problems, and for the collective good of the globe. Let’s see how can we empower an individual with intelligence and character what other wider goals should we pursue with the higher education in the contemporary world.

                                 Certainly the goals of higher education may vary with the socio-economic conditions of the region. But there are also certain objectives which are universal.  An individual should be empowered not just for his own good but also for the collective good of the nation and the world. Let me reaffirm the words of King Jr. that education should aim for intelligence or skill which makes the person productive, and also for the morals so that she may use her ability in a right manner.  A university or institute qualifies a student to get job by making her equipped with the appropriate knowledge or skill. But they should equally focus on shaping good character, so that later in her life she can make right decisions and actions as a global citizen. Character is important so do the intelligence. Let’s see how higher education could adapt with this century. The world is more globalized than ever. Nations are signing comprehensive partnerships in various fields and the world economy is dominated by Multi-National Corporations. More and more people will have to work with people from different cultures. So there is an immense necessity for the new generation to cope with the changing world. They should be more exposed to the international community and should understand their counterparts and learn to work with them. Universities and other forms of tertiary education should encourage students to acquire this skill. This can be easily achieved through promotion of comprehensive partnerships among universities from different parts of the world.

                                   

                              The quality, character and availability of higher education vary greatly from rich to poor countries. So do the roles of higher education and reforms needed. Though Africa has no tale to tell about economic prosperity it has rich resources and great potential. The ‘time’ for Africa is not today or tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. So African nations should start investing, and create good Universities to prepare their youth for the good days. If it is inadequate facilities for most of developing countries, developed countries like United States, U K and Germany have very few highly skilled post graduate degree holders, compared to the size of their economy.  This causes huge income disparities between the highly educated and those who have only an undergraduate degree or a high school diploma. There are also nations using higher education as means of propaganda.  The universities themselves should play a major role in promoting active political participation by the young generation by inculcating political habits and aptitude in its students.

                           

                        Let me discuss some of the problems of higher education faced by developing countries through India. The tangled Higher education in my mother country, India has many problems; some are unique problems of its own. This needs to be reformed urgently, lest it will have catastrophic consequences. India has witnessed very high growth since the economic liberalization of 1991. All statistics shows that she is going to dominate the World Economy along with China and United States. It’s a vibrant and well balanced economy. But most importantly it has the youngest population in the world with almost 600 million people under the age of 25. By 2025 70% of its population will be under working age. But this asset can easily be its greatest liability unless we convert it into human capital. The current Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for Higher education is just 13%.  Moreover there is a wide gap between the GERs of low income families and the financially well offs. The government has set its goal for attaining a GER of 30% by 2020. Unless this happens ‘the India story’ is likely to end soon. In India, companies and government agencies are struggling to find employees while many other graduates can’t find jobs. One of the reasons is that many of the graduates are unemployable, because they are not trained enough to work in the real world. Our Universities should be a little more employment centric rather than just loading the student with academic knowledge. Indian undergraduate students learn a lot more than students elsewhere, but they lack skills to work in the real world. Many of the giant Corporations like the Infosys have started their own Academies to train their fresh recruitments to prepare for the real job. Yet another problem is that social and academic environment is oriented toward three professional careers; Engineering, medicine and Management.  In fact the country is flooded with engineers that lot of them cannot even find jobs. On the other hand employers cannot find graduates in many areas such as statistics, research, sports, defense and teaching.  The source of the problem lies with the high school system which deals only with marks and provides little ideas about the choices they have in life. For correcting this, government should overhaul the high school system and identify unique skills, talents and aspirations of students and develop it. The country currently has only a handful of top rated universities and that too mostly of engineering, medicine and management. So it is indispensable that we need world class universities for all fields of studies. Universities should encourage students to pursue new knowledge, rather than just concentrating on knowledge of the past. Researches should be promoted  and funded for a society of thinkers.

                                  

                            

                                   The need of the hour is reforms, from the very basics. Huge investments are required for building quality universities for all fields of studies throughout the country. We have very little time in our hand; the nation will face an inescapable situation with high rate of unemployment and slow growth within the next 2 decades unless we act today. The higher education in India is highly regulated. It is very difficult for individuals to start new universities or foreign universities to start campus. Though the government increased allotment for higher education in 2011 budget by 40% to 4.5 billion dollars, it is inadequate. So obviously government should encourage more universities to be established by private bodies with government aid and supervision.  Moreover within the universities new approach should be adopted to make the curriculum compatible with employment. A special commission should be set up to monitor and suggest policies. Though there is no sign of any major initiatives from the government’s side there is every possibility of a people’s movement to bring these changes. So this demonstrates how crucial higher education is in India, especially for this decade. The 1.2 billion Indians have a big dream that one day their nation will prosper, so will their lives.  This hope gives them the strength to overcome difficult times. For making this dream a reality, higher education has a decisive role to play.

                                           So in a nutshell, every nation needs to identify the flaws in their higher education and rectify it. Only by having an arrangement which is capable of delivering efficiently we could expect the higher education to deliver its goals; that is to enhance the student’s intelligence, shape his character and aptitude, to make him productive by equipping him with skills for employment, and making him a global citizen for the tomorrow’s world. But most importantly by doing so, create a world of peace, prosperity and brotherhood.