More & more taking up higher education

Across the country, a recent survey on higher education by Union HRD ministry – AISHE survey on higher education- has come up with heartening figures.

It reveals that more youngsters in the age group of 18-23 years are acquiring higher education and the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in India has risen to 23.6 per cent, out of which 46 per cent students are girls.

Statistically speaking, the survey report highlighted the following: India has 757 universities, 38056 colleges and 11922 stand-alone institutions. UP has the highest number of colleges followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka while among districts, Bangalore and Jaipur are ahead of others. In terms of number of colleges per lakh population, the all-India average stood at 26.

The NDA government has also initiated a process of evaluating the quality parameters of its educational institutions, independent of global rankings as it feels our colleges need to have different measurement standards. Debates have been too many on how even elitist institutions of our country, namely the IITs and IIMs, which are now likely to be increased in numbers exponentially, fail to get into the top 100 institutions of the world.

In this regard, the Centre’s recent decision to select ten higher education institutes having a potential and provide them with substantial funding over the next four years, ranging from Rs.100-500 crore to enable them create world class research infrastructure in laboratories is a welcome step.

The National Knowledge Commission, among its many recommendations had even argued for the entry of foreign institutions into India and simultaneously the promotion of Indian institutions abroad.

Coming to the local scenario, in the sectors of education and employment, the Telugu speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have had a mixed performance record. For long, the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh had been known to dominate IIT entrance examinations from the southern peninsula, having a sizeable number of its students in IITs all across the country, including Madras and New Delhi

However, in the professional education front, things have been see-sawing between extreme brilliance and brazen commercialism. It is not uncommon to read about more than half of the 700-odd engineering colleges in the region struggling to get enough admissions, year after year, to keep them viable.

Politically-laden incentive schemes like fee reimbursement for certain categories of students, with a delayed disbursement schedule, had also made the entire process a racket of sorts, which has obviously met its nemesis in recent times. Hence, there have been colleges which have sought permission to close down or drastically prune its student intake to keep themselves afloat.

The over emphasis on engineering degree qualification has assumed gigantic proportions in our middle class homes, which of late has been seeing a diminishing return as far as educational attainments and campus placements go. The average salaries have remained static, barring the very top colleges.

Also, the fact that more than two-thirds of the graduates who pass out are not industry-ready is a sad, rankling fact. 2016, hopefully should see us moving towards addressing such critical concerns which can directly impact our youth, who are more than 65 per cent of our country’s population.

By:K Naresh Kumar