Education in urgent need of overhaul - BUSINESS LINE ARTICLE

AGAIN AND AGAIN IT IS REITERATED THAT ENGLISH PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN CAREER PLANNING.
In yesterday's "Business Line" (16 may 2011), I found the following article.
In our country we are producing 6.5 lakh engineers. Out of this only 25% are suitable for IT and ITES industry. Arts and science college students' plight is still worse. Only 15 % are fit for that industry.
The following is the full article:
The link:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-new-manager/article2021984.ece

Education in urgent need of overhaul

David J. Karl

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India's demographic advantage could well come to nought unless the inadequacies of its education system are addressed at the earliest.

American politicians used the Soviet launch of the Sputnik I satellite on October 4, 1957, to spur massive new investments in technology and education, and some observers say that China and, especially India, are in need of some similar wake-up call.

There is no doubt that both rising powers are enhancing their research-and-development profiles, churning out more scientists and engineers than the US. Yet, the calibre of their graduates is generally poor.

In India's case this reality tends to be obscured by the prominent role of India-born engineering and scientific talent in driving US prosperity and innovation, most prominently in Silicon Valley, as well as the swelling numbers of bright, diligent Indian students enrolled in American universities. For the country to become a true competitive threat, however, it must overcome the stark inadequacies of its educational system. India not only exhibits the lowest educational indicators in the Group of 20, its public-education system scores poorly relative to Brazil, Russia, China and other emerging-market countries.

Half of its children drop out of primary school. Half of the remainder fail to complete high school. Despite recent efforts to improve primary and secondary education, Indian children on average attend school several years fewer than children in many emerging countries. Deep flaws also are evident in the university system. A much smaller proportion of the college-age population is enrolled in some form of tertiary education than is common in other emerging countries. The share is twice as high in China, for example, as it is in India.

Education system in a

state of disrepair

Declaring that the country's “university system is, in many parts, in a state of disrepair,” Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, catalogued the problems in June 2007: “Around 10 per cent of the relevant age group is enrolled in any institute of higher education, as compared to 40 to 50 per cent in most developed economies ... Less than 50 per cent of secondary-school students continue into college education in any form. Almost two-thirds of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters. And, most important, there is a nagging fear that university curricula are not synchronised with employment needs.”

Total outlays on the country's higher-education system are much lower than in many other comparable countries, affecting the capacity for teaching and research. Mr Singh's scientific adviser has warned that research from Indian universities is “hitting an all-time low.” Even the research output from the world-renowned Indian Institutes of Technology is slim.

As a result, the country has few institutions of international standing, making it difficult to attract and retain top scholars and researchers. Indian faculty members publish a comparatively fewer research articles in leading international journals.

Incredibly, given the country's high-tech image, the Infosys Science Foundation in 2009 failed to find a worthy recipient for its inaugural prize honouring an Indian researcher in the field of engineering and computer science.

The Journal of the ACM, a leading journal in the computer-science field, has for a number of years not published Indian submissions, finding them lacking in quality.

The quality of graduate education in critical technology fields lags behind the US and Europe. Concerns about the calibre of India's legions of engineering graduates have mired New Delhi's bid for full membership in the Washington Accord, which governs international recognition of foreign engineering degrees. Despite the world-class reputation of India's technology sector, the country manages to produce few Ph.Ds in computer science. Indeed, Israel graduates approximately the same number as India, despite having only 1/160 of India's population.

A senior government official in New Delhi recently acknowledged that India would never become a great power on the basis of such paltry numbers.

Acute skills shortage

Educational deficiencies have led to an acute skills shortage. Although the country mints about 6.5 lakh new engineers a year, a recent McKinsey study reports that only a quarter of its technical graduates and only about 15 per cent of its general college graduates are suited for employment in offshore IT and business-process outsourcing industries, respectively. The rest are lacking in the requisite technical knowledge, English-language capacity and collaborative skills. The report foresees a potential shortfall of 35 lakh IT workers by 2020.

Another official in the Prime Minister's office acknowledges, “The stark reality is that our education system churns out people, but industry does not find them useful.”

This view is echoed by a recent report by a Parliamentary committee, which observes that the employability of graduates from the country's technical schools “remains a matter of serious concern.”

The skills gap also has acute consequences in other fields. A 2009 World Bank report concludes that an acute deficit of civil-engineering skills severely jeopardises the country's growth prospects. The number of civil-engineering graduates from Indian universities must increase three-fold in order to make good on New Delhi's ambitious plans to improve the nation's decrepit infrastructure. To expand the ramshackle energy sector, India has been forced to rely on tens of thousands of Chinese guest workers.

The chairman of the Central Electricity Authority admitted in a recent interview, “We don't have that amount of skilled manpower in the country.”

India's stunning transformation during the past two decades commands world respect, but that should not blind us to its daunting challenges, perhaps none more formidable than in the area of human-capital development. The country's prodigious demographic resources could one day be the basis for India's emergence as a full-fledged global power. For now, though, it remains an open question whether India has the capacity to distil that potential into actual achievement.

Like the US, India requires its own Sputnik moment to jolt it into a higher educational orbit.

(The writer is president of the Asia Strategy Initiative, a Los Angeles-based consultancy.)

From Yale Global

( The New York Times News Service)

(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated May 16, 2011)