Our socio-economic context demands a comprehensive overhaul of the education landscape for ensuring sustained progress.
Enhancing the autonomy for higher education institutions is a positive sign, but a lot more is needed.
What is the socio-demographic context?
The competitive landscape of advanced manufacturing and services places India in direct competition with advanced countries of the world.
To sustain this challenging stature, India needs to benchmark its education and skills systems with the best in the world.
This is even more significant for our country as it has envisioned being the ‘Skill Capital’ of the world driven by its favourable demographics.
Also, the vision of ‘Make in India’ can be achieved only if there is alignment of skill development, education and research with the overall economic agenda.
In this context, the developments in the education space in the last two years have been very encouraging, particularly regarding enhancing autonomy.
How are the significant changes in the Ed-sector?
Autonomy - The UGC has provided almost complete academic autonomy to universities and colleges through gazette notifications recently.
Top rated universities are freed of UGC inspections and can start new programmes and skill courses without prior approvals.
They can also set up open research parks, incubation centres and engage in foreign collaboration with leading global universities by their own terms.
Regulations for permitting universities to opening constituent autonomous off-campus colleges have also been liberalised.
Financing - Higher education institutes can now avail concessional loans from ‘Higher Education finance Agency’ (HEFA) for infrastructure expansion.
Notably, the government would pay back the loan and institutions would only be liable to pay back the interests for the loan taken.
This is expected to bring a lot of accountability in the public higher education system and could open up a credit market for higher education.
Skilling - Basic skills for low-end manufacturing also has to be developed with an appropriate approach by establishing a relevant skilling setup.
Several skilling initiatives have been initiated through stand-alone schemes and also along with private collaborations (like NSDC).
How does the future look?
Mutual recognition of Indian higher and vocational education qualifications abroad which shall go a long way in global benchmarking of Indian learning.
The recent agreement with France, Australia, Malaysia, Qatar and Mauritius among others for cooperation is significant in this regard.
We also need a continued stream of structural reforms (through financial and administrative autonomy) to catch up with the world.
Government needs to enhance budgetary allocation for education to 6% of GDP and aid quality enhancement of research.
The process for ‘Institutes of Eminence’ and complete freedom to elite institutions like IIMs is a good start.
Also, Ed-tech companies are already transforming learning, which needs to be promoted in a big way.
