Why India needs to learn how to teach

This paradox was highlighted by two recent statements. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in India last month that, to be employable worldwide, Indian graduates need more “hands-on” practical training. NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik was more blunt. Shake up the university system, he said at a vice-chancellors’ conference in Mumbai last week.

Of the 30 lakh graduates added to the workforce annually, the IT and ITES sectors can absorb only 20-25 per cent of our engineering graduates. “We can’t employ the 26th candidate because he or she is just not employable,” Karnik observed. The employability of non-engineering graduates is even lower —only 10-15 per cent, for they lack “technical and soft skills which employers look for.”

Since the university system is not making graduates employment-compatible, many IT companies have to spend substantial resources to re-train fresh recruits. Infosys has established a mega-size campus in Mysore to re-train, at a time, as many as 10,000 new recruits. Similarly, TCS has launched a Talent Transformation Initiative to train thousands of science graduates into software professionals. However, only big IT companies can make this additional investment. Small ones have to make do with graduates who are mostly, for no fault of their own, not up-to-the-mark.

And except for a small percentage of well-managed and well-endowed arts, science, and commerce colleges —which account for 70 per cent of our 1.1 crore students —the rest can be stacked at various levels of mediocrity.

Many factors contribute to the malaise: outdated curriculum; obsolete equipment; teachers who don’t update their knowledge base; managements that lack commitment to academic excellence; rote learning; exam-oriented teaching; lack of activity-based learning through team effort.

The biggest failure of our university system is that students are not taught “soft skills” — the competence to discuss, analyse, innovate and communicate.

Clearly, India’s failing university system needs urgent reforms to remove the mismatch between education and employment. Let me mention five measures here:

• Allow, and create opportunities for students to do short-term diploma or certificate courses along with their degree courses. These courses should be linked to areas in which employment opportunities are opening up. The UGC has already recommended this innovation.

• Only 20 per cent of our colleges and 50 per cent of our 317 universities have been assessed for minimum quality by NA&AC. Since the task is too large for as single body to perform, a state-level mechanism for assessment and accreditation should be evolved, rewarding institutions that perform well.

• Liberate India’s higher education from three foes: bureaucratic clutches of the HRD ministry and state education departments; corruption in regulatory bodies like the AICTE and MCI; and unscrupulous private players.

• Raise college fees for the basic BA, BCom and BSc courses. They totally disproportionate to the cost of running these degree courses. Since fees are low, neither students nor managements take the courses seriously. Poor students may be helped with scholarships and loans.

• Establish a ‘National Human Resource Development Fund’, as recommended by UGC, with at least one per cent of the GDP, to tackle the problems of quality and equity. Let us not forget that college enrollment in India, in the age group of 18-23 years, is only six per cent against the 47 per cent average in developed countries. China, whose college enrollment is already double that of India, aims to take it to 20 per cent by 2010.

Just goes to show that India has a long way to go, both in terms of quantity and quality, in higher education. Since our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh himself has once served as the chairman of UGC, will he push some of these reforms?