What is the issue?
There are growing demands that research should be made part of UG curriculum in India.
What is the background?
- India has made considerable strides in achieving a near-perfect enrolment rate in primary education.
- But it has failed to give higher education as much attention.
- As a consequence, Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education is 25.8%, against China’s 48.44% and the U.S.’s 88.84%.
What is the importance of research in higher education?
- In India, about 80% of the students enrolled in higher education are concentrated in undergraduate (UG) programmes.
- Research and application-oriented education can substantially enhance the quality of UG education.
- Several studies on such programmes have shown a positive impact on students such as –
- Enhanced learning through mentorship
- Increased retention
- Increased enrolment in graduate education
- More prowess in critical thinking
- Creativity and problem solving
- Intellectual independence
- Understanding of research methodologies
- Research at the UG level increases the aptitude for research-oriented career options as well as the employability of students.
- The faculty can also gain by sharing their research ideas with students, receive valuable feedback as well as help in the form of assistantship and apprenticeship.
- Additionally, research also helps the faculty enhance their teaching abilities and content by upgrading knowledge.
- It can also help solve the problem of shortage of faculty, as more students will likely opt for doctoral and post-doctoral studies and teach in their home country.
- Thus, research and teaching should ideally go together in any sound higher education system.
What are the measures taken by the government?
- The government has also floated two ambitious projects towards internationalising higher education in India - ‘Study in India’ and ‘Institutes of Eminence’.
- The "Study in India’ is an innovative initiative to attract students from our partner countries in South Asia, South-East Asia, Middle East and Africa to come and experience the very best of academic learning from the top institutions in India.
- This will be achieved through systematic brand-building, identifying quality institutions for receiving the students, creating suitable infrastructure and facilitation structures.
- Under the Institute of Eminence, 10 private and 10 public universities are to be selected.
- The selected institutes shall be regulated differently from other deemed to be universities so as to evolve into institutions of world class in a reasonable time period.
- Both these measures will need institutes to become world class and carry out high-quality research on campuses.
- Only then will competent faculty as well as doctoral students from across the world come to India.
- Internationalisation of campuses is important if India wants to be in the global university ranking lists.
- But this will not happen without encouraging an ecosystem that promotes high-quality research.
What should be done?
- Research remains a significant weakness in India’s higher education system.
- It has been traditionally restricted to specialised institutes such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) etc.,
- Also, there is hardly any interaction between these institutes and teaching universities.
- Thus, Investment in education should be at least 6% of GDP to upgrade infrastructure, labs and resources, which are essential to carry out high-quality research.
- The University Grants Commission and other regulatory bodies will have to come out with a priority list of reputable journals.
- This will reduce the problem of bogus journals and publications.
- Research institutes such as TIFR and IISc should mentor some of the well-performing universities and colleges till they become aware of the nuances of conducting fair and high-quality research.
- Once capable, these trained institutes can then help the second rung of colleges and so on.
- Also, there should be planned ways to embed research in UG curriculum.
- The UGC should make it compulsory for students to submit at least a 5,000-word research paper that should be assessed in the same way as serious research journals.
- Also, students need to bemade aware of the value of research from an early stage to recognise the true value of higher education.
- The status quo in education has resulted in education that is not only substandard but also fails to open inquiring minds to the world of research.
- Thus, India must be innovative in its approach if its wants to reap the benefits of its demographic dividend.
Source: The Hindu
