By IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, 07 Dec 2014: Amid the Sanskrit-German language row hogging the media headlines and the HRD minister Smriti Irani at the middle of yet another controversy, the Narendra Modi government has quietly cut down the outlay for education as under the revised budget estimates for allocations for 2014-15 across ministries the expenditure on education is proposed to be cut down by whopping Rs.11000 crores to meet the fiscal deficit targets. Not only this, the health sector plan expenditure revised estimate is proposed to be Rs.7000 crore lower than originally envisaged in the budget.
Why this cut in education sector is uncalled for? It is because there remains a huge demand-supply gap between the availability of educational opportunities and number of students. The government has chosen not to cut down expenditure on physical infrastructure to bridge fiscal deficit gaps but instead purge the social and educational needs of the people despite the globally accepted fact that education will always remain the key driver for achieving a socio-economic transformation. The education sector needs a concerted policy focus for reaping the demographic dividend – rising number of youths in the population – in the global knowledge economy.
For the past few years due to efforts of educationists a sustained increase in budgetary allocation to education sector had been witnessed. The central expenditure on education grew at 25% per year during the 11th plan period (2007-2012). But it continues to remain poorly reflected in terms of public expenditure on education as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) which remains hovering around a meagre 4 per cent.
Maktab Islamia in Muslimpatti village of Azamgarh was established in 1842 and is still operational.
The cut down by the government will also further lead to increase in demand-supply gap as huge gaps also exist between the availability of educational opportunities and number of students. If we look at some figures we could conclude that the government policy may not be moving in the right direction.
India already has a very low rate of enrolment in higher education. It is only18 per cent compared to 26% in China and 36% in Brazil. The figures reflect an enormous unmet demand for higher education, even as by 2020, the Indian government aims to achieve 30% gross enrolment. This level of gross enrolment will mean providing 40 million seats in university which is an increase of 14 million in six years. These are whopping and ambitious targets and with this kind of attitude it would be difficult to achieve this goal of competing with China and Brazil who are BRICS nations. Indian universities are also beset with low quality of teaching and learning. The higher education system is beset with various issues which include lack of quality learning in many the state and private run institutions. Every now and then we hear issues of recognition from MCI (Medical Council of India) for medical colleges both government run and private run. The general education varsities, engineering colleges and medical colleges suffer from chronic shortage of faculty and poor quality of teaching. The curriculum remains outdated and rigid with no updates.
The end result of this sad state of affairs in education system is that not even one out of 37,000 colleges and 723 universities in our country is in the world ranking.
“We have made rapid strides in boosting our higher educational infrastructure. There are 723 universities and over 37,000 colleges in our country. Yet, many of our institutes lack quality that denies students world-class education… There is not a single Indian institution amongst the top 200 universities in the world according to reputed surveys,” said President of India Pranab Mukherjee while addressing the annual convocation of Jamia Millia Islamia in Nov. in Delhi.
Most of the universities face constraints on research capacity and innovation along with a very low level of PhD or doctorate level of enrolment. Another pressing problem is that the country lacks high quality researchers and the varsities do not offer multi-disciplinary research environment to produce clear cut policy initiatives from the Indian varsities.
President Pranab Mukherjee ( in blue gown) at Annual Convocation of Jamia Millia on 17 Nov 2014.
Experts have also pointed out lack of initial stage research experience along with a very weak and fragile environment for innovation along with poor participation pf industry needs and engagement. When the engineer comes out of the varsities that he attempts to learn what the market is expecting from him.
Another weak link in the education system is uneven growth and access to opportunity demographically. The urban-rural divide remains palpable. Access to higher education remains uneven and is marred with inequalities of opportunities.
Instead of cutting down expenditure the government needs to focus on the three central pillars for education that should be expansion, equity and excellence and attempt to bring the investment in the sector to over five per cent of GDP allocation so that physical infrastructure quality automatically gets boosted.
In fact, there is a need to revamp our academic system.
“It is also a fact that an all-out effort to revamp our academic system is the need of the hour. Some of the immediate steps would be to ramp up physical infrastructure including classrooms, fill up vacant faculty positions, attract talent from abroad, review and change curriculum to make it inter-disciplinary and industry-oriented, and promote centres of excellence after identifying core competencies,” said the President.
