60 years of Educational (in)dependence

We are entering into the 60th year of Independence, happy, pretty happy. There is many a change in our country, most of which is recent, which we can boast about and be proud of. But, this is no reason to be complacent and if you ask me, I am more worried about the way we are changing to an IT/Outsourcing dependent economy. Worried because, the changing socio-economic situations, and market mechanisms are sucking the students from basic sciences to professional courses, with the lure of high salaries, like information commerce, management, information technology, and biotechnology.

Indian education system started off in a modest way after independence, with 25 universities chiefly imparting the Science education through the affiliated colleges at the time of Independence and in the last six decades, the number of institutions for higher science education has grown enormously. Today, there are 20 Central universities, 215 State universities, 100 deemed universities, 13 institutions of national importance, and more than 17,000 colleges. Under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the government established the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1956 and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in 1987 through Acts of Parliament to administer, regulate, and supervise the functioning of higher science and technology (S&T) education in the country.
The good news end here, the proportion of India’s population that enters higher education is around 7%, which is 1/2 the average for Asia. There is about 1 university for nearly 4 million people. This figure is too small for any significant impact of higher education, science education in particular, on the country. The number of universities has not grown in relation to the population, thus greatly restricting the opportunities for higher education. The system needs a massive expansion to establish about 1,500 universities countrywide so that the country can achieve a gross enrolment ratio of about 15 per cent by 2015. China, for example, has authorized the creation of 1,250 new universities in the last three years. Unfortunately, the expansion that is evident in India is only in the form of dubious deemed universities and unregulated private engineering colleges that have mushroomed mainly as commercial ventures.
Compared to an enrolment of 5.7 million (1995 data) at the tertiary level in India, it is 14.20 million in the United States, which works out respectively to 613 and 5,399 tertiary students per 100,000 populations. Even though enrolment at the tertiary level has been low, the absolute numbers have been increasing. In particular, enrolment in the science stream has increased from 127,200 in 1950-51 to about 1.5 million at the turn of the millennium. However, there are disquieting features in these numbers.
The number of students opting for science after the secondary school stage has dropped from 32 per cent in the early 1950s to 19.7 per cent in recent years. More significantly, in the 1950s the brightest entered science but today’s 19.7 per cent is from the lower middle level. This shows that young students, particularly the brighter ones, are drifting away from science. The choice of the National Talent Search awardees also reflects this trend in recent years. Of the 750 awardees, hardly 100 opt for science and only 15-20% pursue science to the post-graduation level. Peer pressure, the changing socio-economic situation, and market mechanisms have further added to the process of the drift away from basic sciences to professional courses, with the lure of high salaries as you step out, like information commerce, management, information technology, and biotechnology.

The dwindling number of students joining the Sciences after the secondary education is not a good sign; in fact it is not at all good. A recent study based on 10-year enrolment data (1992-2002) both at Plus-Two and college levels in Delhi, showed that priority for science disciplines as a whole is on the decline even at the Plus-Two level. Data of college enrolment in the sciences between 1990-91 and 1997-98 revealed that, on an average, about 48 per cent of the students drifted out of B.Sc courses to join professional courses. These students are those who got admission after securing 80-90 per cent marks at the Plus-Two level. Data from a few colleges outside Delhi too showed a similar trend, which indicates that this disturbing phenomenon is countrywide.
The above also indicates that students who remain in science do so as a last resort thus leading to a situation where most students in higher science education are unmotivated and uninterested. To compound matters is the fact that 88 per cent of the students who opt for science after school are taught in affiliated colleges, which are ill-equipped, have woefully inadequate library and laboratory facilities, are overcrowded and poorly staffed.
Even those highly motivated few who choose to remain in science and move into universities for post-graduation and research are only confronted with outdated curricula, uninspiring teaching and disinterested teachers, entrenched bureaucracy and improper administration, poor infrastructure, obsolete laboratory equipment, lack of an academic environment, and, to top it all, lack of opportunities for the youngsters to do even reasonable research, let alone be creative and engage in front-end work. Data since the 1980s bear this out this as well. While the absolute numbers of student enrolment and universities have increased, the number of research degrees awarded in natural sciences has almost stagnated, whereas in engineering sciences the numbers have actually declined. This led to an all-round lack of qualified people for specialized jobs, in particular teaching in institutions and this is vicious cycle. The latter is bound to have a serious cascading effect in the years to come.
This lack of qualified people for specialized people for teaching is manly attributed to the lack of monetary benefits for this Profession. It will be no surprise if you hear a complaint or two from a motivated science student, that his" quantum mechanics lecturer is a joker and all he does is vomits the text book in the class". The reason being that the salaries for these professions are so less that a call centre employee would be earning more than a research professor. All this is a consequence of what happened back in 1951, when the then government has decided to have standalone research institutions. The idea is to move research out of the universities, but the important point was missed upon. The point is that teaching and research go hand in hand, one enriches the other. So, it is high time we reverse what happened in the past. Let us make the Universities the hub of research. Let the system learn a lesson or two from the Outsourcing industry.
I believe there is an ample case in favor of private research based universities in India. What generally happens is that, when a multinational company wants some academic researches to be done on say electronic cooling techniques. It collaborates with a university in US. It gives a professor a grant of $2 Million to do it. And the professor has to buy experimental equipment, pay his electricity bill, give the university its hefty cut, and hire some graduate students (and pay their tuition, fee and monthly stipend).Another company, say its competitor which is cost conscious, also wants similar work done, but somebody in their ranks has heard of a university in India that can do the same thing for $0.6 million - and that's including the airfare. After all, paying a graduate student Rs 20000 per month ($500) instead of $1500 would do in India; expert technicians would work for a fraction of what they would for in the US. Sending experimental apparatus to India shouldn't be too tough either.So, the idea is that there is a massive case for research based universities in India. And once, these "universities" mature, they will attract excellent faculty from all around the world and this might change the horrendous numbers put forth before. But it is easier said than done.
Expansion of the university system to about 1,500 universities will call for large investment. But before that, the severe resource crunch that afflicts all universities, in fact the entire higher education system should be addressed to correct the years of neglect. As the Indian National Science Academy noted as a matter of serious concern a few years ago, the investment per student has nosedived from Rs.850 a year in the 1960s to Rs.350 a year at the turn of the century (at 1990 prices). The allocation to education has already declined in recent years to about three per cent of the GDP instead of attaining the figure of six per cent recommended by the National Education Policy. The share of higher education and science education in particular has dropped to 0.7 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively. Compare the latter with those of the U.S. (1.6 per cent), the U.K. (1.4 per cent), and Japan (1.04 per cent). Considering the rate at which India is growing we shall have this rate at around 2%.
So what is required is a severe overhaul of our education system. While I agree that there are lots of underprivileged people who require higher education in premiere institutes and reservation is one means to do that, on the other hand one shall never forget the necessity to foster the talent and pave way for better education; this means a change in outlook towards education among the bureaucracy and the executive.

Reference: http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/11/stories/2007081150071000.htm