Reinvent Indian education
Not one Indian university figures in the QS Top 200 rankings for 2011-12, not even elite institutions like the IITs and Indian Institute of Science. Chinese institutions are on the list, which shows the problem isn’t funds and infrastructure. Financial limits on hiring top international faculty may exist in India, but the real problem lies elsewhere.
The thrust of our education system is geared to turning out graduates to join the workforce, rather than being knowledge-driven. Our university students lag when it comes to winning citations for creative work in any field, publishing peer-reviewed articles in top journals or pure research. We’ve lost the ability to create knowledge in our universities, though they can provide technically qualified people to run our IT sector or space projects.
Despite well-meaning efforts to restructure school and college systems, education in India suffers from ancient rote-learning methods, and schools still churn out robotic students rather than try instil in them the curiosity to find real knowledge. Capable teachers are getting rarer, but this doesn’t seem to discourage foreign universities from setting up campuses in this country. The progressive rise in the number of Indians going abroad to study exposes the intrinsic failure of our institutions to produce people who can shine in a knowledge economy. The education sector desperately needs to reinvent itself, and the budget increases it needs are well within our national means. It is not rankings that we should really aspire for. The quest to acquire knowledge is what must be encouraged at every level.
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