Since, 1999, I am working in business of academics, importunately or opportunistically I served in private institutions only. In India, the first choice of a PhD scholar is getting recruited in any Govt University, followed by UG/PG colleges. When I was about to submit my PhD thesis I was very much happ
y that within year or two, I will also be able to join some suitable post (of course in Govt Institutions). And I use to say “I will also give an opportunity to Govt of India to appoint me” I will not be among those who left the country for the Money’. This I was saying on the bases of my two important grounds first was my performance in research and second one was my interest in teaching. One evidence can be produced against former i.e. I established the Aetiology and Definition of Epizootic Ulcerative Syndrome, awaited since last 3 decades world-wide and later one is my passion as I love spent time with my students. But, even today, despite of providing many such opportunities by Govt of India, I fail to explain my candidature as a faculty. This is the background story why I was in Private sector only.
There is great need to reappraise the existing education system of the country. This can be simply advocated merely on the bases of the fact that existing education fail to fulfil its goal. In India, a huge number of differences can be listed between private and Government sectors academics. Few of them seriously deserve to be mentioned.
1- Financial Insecurity
To explain this I would like to ask a question, for how many hours you appoint a faculty. Of course your answer will around the clock. I am also from the same school. So, when will a faculty have time to think about their liabilities and other responsibilities? Thus a faculty should be privileged to assure all such problems (as a person fully indulged in education all these things seem like a problem). Now all such benefits (if not fully than most of them) are provided in Govt institutions but still a question arises, is the education imparted by these organizations is flawless? Is it able to give the desired result? And if not, how the statement given above is correct? I will answer this question in later part of this blog.
Now, let’s see the condition of private institutions. I am not saying that private institutions are not giving handsome salary, they are but this ultimately depends upon bargainers’ efficiency. One IIMCian told me “if a shopkeeper is selling you a toothbrush in Rs 10, you will say no, no, it deserves to be for Rs 15 or so?” likewise if you will not cry for your salary you will not going get anymore increment. Now, my question is, should a faculty also learn the art of bargain? Thus to conclude this paragraph, I would like to quote a question my director asked me once “If you ought to be a director what reform would you like to bring to upgrade the faculties’ performance? And my answer was a Faculty is faculty by birth and cannot be transformed virtually in to a faculty. I will say selection procedure must be up to the mark whether it is in Govt or Private Sectors.
2- Un-Stabilized Environment
Countless arguments’ can be given in favourer and against on the stability of the environment of education system. So I am not in favour of discussing all these issues now. In my opinion too, those who are unable to do justice to their chair, have no right to be there. Since, there is no expulsion kind of phenomenon perpetuate in Govt Institutions, so it irrelevant to discuss with reference to it. Contrary to this, expulsion should also be discussed in these Institutions. As it is much frequent occurrence in Private organizations. My argument is that’ what should be criteria of expulsion of faculty, whether the private organizations have any proper evaluation system for selection or expulsion of faculty? My experience in this regards is not very pleasant. In most of the cases satisfaction of management is the prime criteria to sustain in any private organization. Thus your working in private organization must be in accordance with the interest of management. Now as a faculty you have to assure the interest of management prior than securing the interest of students.
3- Students are Valued Costumers
How can a doctor be able to treat a patient without giving any pain, how can a patient be happy in taking that pain? If this is not the case, than how will a teacher be able to teach the student without giving any pain? Of course this may be true for the certain (very small fractions of percentage) but for a class how it is possible? Moreover, when these major percentages of student have to elect/ evaluate the teacher, one can easily expect the consequences of the same.
Here, I would like refer one incidence, when I was HOD and asked the PG student of life science to do their 6 months project in such a way so that it would be worth to getting published in some journals or an industry would be interested to take them up, depending upon the interest of job they have submitted to me. Thus they were expected to work hard and start surfing for literature immediately and after that they had to put it into a project kind of thing on which they will have work in coming time. I received communication from most of the students that they are not able to understand exactly what they have to do? But when I tried to explain the things and solved their problems, they went to management and ultimately management asked me stop it. Till date I failed to understand what was my fault? Why students were ignored their welfare? Why I failed to explain them?
4- Blindly and Incompletely following the Western Education Pattern and Negligence towards Our Most Prestigious Education System
Some facts to consider
India has 421 Universities and 20,918 Colleges
GRE in India – 11.3%, average of 25% in developed countries.
Total enrolment in Higher Education is 1.86 crore
Expected to reach 2.2 crore by 2012 if India achieves 15 % GER
NKC – Creation of 1,500 colleges & Univ. to reach 15% GER by 2015
Growth of Higher education needed as per five year plan – 37%
Growth of Higher education increase/year – 11%*
Demand for Higher education increase/year – 20%*
Human resource demand is increasing/year – 18%*
Shortfall in no. of seats required and available – 45 %*
Thus there is a Gap between the Aspiration and the Availability
Urgent need to meet the rising demand for higher education hence India surely needs more Higher Edu. Institutions
*Source: Derived from Planning commission Documents & MHRD Educational Statistics
Current status of our higher education
Expansion in Higher education Institutional Capacity Since the early 1950’s higher education has been diversified and extended its reach and coverage quite significantly. At the time of independence, 1947, the size of higher education system in terms of number of educational institutions, and teachers was meagre but since that time there has been an exponential increase in three indicators of higher education, namely the number of educational institutions, teachers and students. The number of universities has increased from 20 in 1947 to about 357 in 2005 indicating a thirteen-fold increase. There are now 20 Central Universities, 217 State Universities, 106 Deemed to be Universities, and 13 Institutes of National Importance established through Central legislation and .5 Institutions established through State legislation, the number of colleges increased from 500 in 1947 to 17,625 in 2005, indicating twenty-six-fold increase.
In the spheres of technical education by 2004 we had about 1265 engineering and technology collages, 320 pharmacies, 107 Architecture, 40 hotel management, making a total about 1749 institutions. In respect of post graduate educational institutions there are 958 MBA/PGDM and 1034 MCA in 2004.
Similarly the number of teachers has increased from 700 in 1950 to 4.72 Lakhs in 2005. Thus there has been several fold increase in the educational institutions and number of teachers. With this progress in the educational infrastructure in terms of institutions and faculty, we except improvement in the level of higher education in terms of aggregate access, access to disadvantage groups and the quality of higher education. Here it noteworthy to mention that the graph of increase in population is not given. Let us discuss the progress with respect to these indicators of higher education development.
“Our university system is, in many parts, in a state of disrepair…In almost half the districts in the country, higher education enrolments are abysmally low, almost two-third of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters… I am concerned that in many states university appointments, including that of vice-chancellors, have been politicised and have become subject to caste and communal considerations, there are complaints of favouritism and corruption.”
— Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007[40]
Everyone who understands this blog is having good information about traditional education system of India which is established many horizons to the current world education. Even if anyone criticise the disadvantage of traditional education system, though it was not a wise step to put it into the dustbin. If every coin has both faces then it was only traditional education system which was quite unfit up to that extent so it had not been even touched? There were must be some relevant point, which could be applied to design a perfect setup for education system which certain have a better result than what we have today.
A foreign building on Indian Soil
The present system of education was introduced and founded by the British in the 20th century, by the recommendations of Macaulay. It has western style and content. The British government did not recognize the traditional structures and so they have declined. It is said that even Gandhi described the traditional educational system as a beautiful tree which was destroyed during the British rule.
There is great need to reappraise the existing education system of the country. This can be simply advocated merely on the bases of the fact that existing education fail to fulfil its goal. In India, a huge number of differences can be listed between private and Government sectors academics. Few of them seriously deserve to be mentioned.
1- Financial Insecurity
To explain this I would like to ask a question, for how many hours you appoint a faculty. Of course your answer will around the clock. I am also from the same school. So, when will a faculty have time to think about their liabilities and other responsibilities? Thus a faculty should be privileged to assure all such problems (as a person fully indulged in education all these things seem like a problem). Now all such benefits (if not fully than most of them) are provided in Govt institutions but still a question arises, is the education imparted by these organizations is flawless? Is it able to give the desired result? And if not, how the statement given above is correct? I will answer this question in later part of this blog.
Now, let’s see the condition of private institutions. I am not saying that private institutions are not giving handsome salary, they are but this ultimately depends upon bargainers’ efficiency. One IIMCian told me “if a shopkeeper is selling you a toothbrush in Rs 10, you will say no, no, it deserves to be for Rs 15 or so?” likewise if you will not cry for your salary you will not going get anymore increment. Now, my question is, should a faculty also learn the art of bargain? Thus to conclude this paragraph, I would like to quote a question my director asked me once “If you ought to be a director what reform would you like to bring to upgrade the faculties’ performance? And my answer was a Faculty is faculty by birth and cannot be transformed virtually in to a faculty. I will say selection procedure must be up to the mark whether it is in Govt or Private Sectors.
2- Un-Stabilized Environment
Countless arguments’ can be given in favourer and against on the stability of the environment of education system. So I am not in favour of discussing all these issues now. In my opinion too, those who are unable to do justice to their chair, have no right to be there. Since, there is no expulsion kind of phenomenon perpetuate in Govt Institutions, so it irrelevant to discuss with reference to it. Contrary to this, expulsion should also be discussed in these Institutions. As it is much frequent occurrence in Private organizations. My argument is that’ what should be criteria of expulsion of faculty, whether the private organizations have any proper evaluation system for selection or expulsion of faculty? My experience in this regards is not very pleasant. In most of the cases satisfaction of management is the prime criteria to sustain in any private organization. Thus your working in private organization must be in accordance with the interest of management. Now as a faculty you have to assure the interest of management prior than securing the interest of students.
3- Students are Valued Costumers
How can a doctor be able to treat a patient without giving any pain, how can a patient be happy in taking that pain? If this is not the case, than how will a teacher be able to teach the student without giving any pain? Of course this may be true for the certain (very small fractions of percentage) but for a class how it is possible? Moreover, when these major percentages of student have to elect/ evaluate the teacher, one can easily expect the consequences of the same.
Here, I would like refer one incidence, when I was HOD and asked the PG student of life science to do their 6 months project in such a way so that it would be worth to getting published in some journals or an industry would be interested to take them up, depending upon the interest of job they have submitted to me. Thus they were expected to work hard and start surfing for literature immediately and after that they had to put it into a project kind of thing on which they will have work in coming time. I received communication from most of the students that they are not able to understand exactly what they have to do? But when I tried to explain the things and solved their problems, they went to management and ultimately management asked me stop it. Till date I failed to understand what was my fault? Why students were ignored their welfare? Why I failed to explain them?
4- Blindly and Incompletely following the Western Education Pattern and Negligence towards Our Most Prestigious Education System
Some facts to consider
India has 421 Universities and 20,918 Colleges
GRE in India – 11.3%, average of 25% in developed countries.
Total enrolment in Higher Education is 1.86 crore
Expected to reach 2.2 crore by 2012 if India achieves 15 % GER
NKC – Creation of 1,500 colleges & Univ. to reach 15% GER by 2015
Growth of Higher education needed as per five year plan – 37%
Growth of Higher education increase/year – 11%*
Demand for Higher education increase/year – 20%*
Human resource demand is increasing/year – 18%*
Shortfall in no. of seats required and available – 45 %*
Thus there is a Gap between the Aspiration and the Availability
Urgent need to meet the rising demand for higher education hence India surely needs more Higher Edu. Institutions
*Source: Derived from Planning commission Documents & MHRD Educational Statistics
Current status of our higher education
Expansion in Higher education Institutional Capacity Since the early 1950’s higher education has been diversified and extended its reach and coverage quite significantly. At the time of independence, 1947, the size of higher education system in terms of number of educational institutions, and teachers was meagre but since that time there has been an exponential increase in three indicators of higher education, namely the number of educational institutions, teachers and students. The number of universities has increased from 20 in 1947 to about 357 in 2005 indicating a thirteen-fold increase. There are now 20 Central Universities, 217 State Universities, 106 Deemed to be Universities, and 13 Institutes of National Importance established through Central legislation and .5 Institutions established through State legislation, the number of colleges increased from 500 in 1947 to 17,625 in 2005, indicating twenty-six-fold increase.
In the spheres of technical education by 2004 we had about 1265 engineering and technology collages, 320 pharmacies, 107 Architecture, 40 hotel management, making a total about 1749 institutions. In respect of post graduate educational institutions there are 958 MBA/PGDM and 1034 MCA in 2004.
Similarly the number of teachers has increased from 700 in 1950 to 4.72 Lakhs in 2005. Thus there has been several fold increase in the educational institutions and number of teachers. With this progress in the educational infrastructure in terms of institutions and faculty, we except improvement in the level of higher education in terms of aggregate access, access to disadvantage groups and the quality of higher education. Here it noteworthy to mention that the graph of increase in population is not given. Let us discuss the progress with respect to these indicators of higher education development.
“Our university system is, in many parts, in a state of disrepair…In almost half the districts in the country, higher education enrolments are abysmally low, almost two-third of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters… I am concerned that in many states university appointments, including that of vice-chancellors, have been politicised and have become subject to caste and communal considerations, there are complaints of favouritism and corruption.”
— Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007[40]
Everyone who understands this blog is having good information about traditional education system of India which is established many horizons to the current world education. Even if anyone criticise the disadvantage of traditional education system, though it was not a wise step to put it into the dustbin. If every coin has both faces then it was only traditional education system which was quite unfit up to that extent so it had not been even touched? There were must be some relevant point, which could be applied to design a perfect setup for education system which certain have a better result than what we have today.
A foreign building on Indian Soil
The present system of education was introduced and founded by the British in the 20th century, by the recommendations of Macaulay. It has western style and content. The British government did not recognize the traditional structures and so they have declined. It is said that even Gandhi described the traditional educational system as a beautiful tree which was destroyed during the British rule.
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