Getting a grip on the education scenario

Updated on: Monday, December 07, 2009

If Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal is to be believed, major modifications are due in the Indian higher education system. Said Sibal, “Today 220 million children are able to go to school and out of them only 26 million reach college, which is just 12 per cent. Our aim in the near future (by 2020) is to bring this figure to 30 per cent. We also need to focus on the 150 million children who do not even go to school. The task is daunting. Therefore the government alone can’t achieve the goal of education for all.” Emphasising the need for collaboration in education, Sibal said, “It is appropriate that we bring in our efforts but these have to be made by everybody - stakeholders from society, entrepreneurs,
foreign players, NGOs and members of the academia.

Every one of them must be part of this higher education delivery system.”
Speaking at the FICCI Higher Education Summit 2009, Sibal stressed the need to develop home-grown models in order to achieve the relevant objectives in higher education. Stating that India’s endeavour to set up 14 innovation universities of world-class standards during the 11th Plan is a huge task, Sibal informed that “these universities will not just produce knowledge, but also contribute to the development of critical thinking in students. We are crying out for solutions to our problems, these universities will bring solutions by critical thinking.” Though, he did accept that it takes years for an institute to attain world status, Sibal also said that a beginning has to be made now.

Referring to the foreign education provider’s Bill, which is expected to be tabled shortly and his recent visit to the US where he met with the functionaries of leading universities, Sibal said, “American institutions have shown great interest in the opening of the education sector in India.”

The Bill, once passed, will permit foreign education providers to operate in India. This will make it possible for universities to set up campuses either in partnership with Indian institutes or on their own.

The positive aspect is that the government is aware and keen to look at the problem areas in the Indian education sector. How-ever, experts believe that there seems to be no definite road map to tackle issues in a systematic manner at both the state and centre levels. As a speaker at the summit put it, “The average global expenditure on education for developed countries is 4.5 per cent of the gross domestic product. For developing countries it is around 4.4 per cent. But, in India it is only 3.6 per cent out of which only 0.7 per cent is spent on higher education.”

Getting a grip on the education scenario

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