[ad_1]
Background of Higher Education in India:
Education is a process by which a person’s body, mind and character are formed and strengthened.
- It is bringing of head, heart and mind together and thus enabling a person to develop an all-round personality identifying the best in him or her.
- Higher education in India has expanded very rapidly in the last six decades after independence yet it is not equally accessible to all.
- India is today one of the fastest developing countries of the world with the annual growth rate going above 9%.
- Still a large section of the population remains illiterate and a large number of children’s do not get even primary education.
- This is not only excluded a large section of the population from contributing to the development of the country fully but it has also prevented them from utilising the benefits of whatever development have taken place for the benefit of the people.
- The world has realized that the economic success of the states is directly determined by their education systems.
After more than 70 years of independence, India’s higher education system has still not been developed fully.
It is evidenced by its poor performance in institutional rankings (not a single Indian university in top 100 universities of the world), the poor employment status of its students, poor track record in receiving national awards and recognition, poor share in research funding and so on.
Moreover, the status of state public universities that produce over 90% of the graduates in India is more dismal.
Proposed changes in Higher Education:
Flexibility and liberal ethos are enshrined in the vision of various rigid and outdated course structures of degrees in Indian universities.
With the proposed changes in higher education under the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Indian students will finally have access to true education rather than just degree certificates.
However, despite this significant vision, there are various issues at the conceptual level of the higher education machinery such as the credit system that needs to be addressed before implementing the policy.
Implications of the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS):
- The credit structure mentioned in the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) and the Learning Outcomes-Based Curriculum Framework (LOCF) has serious consequences on the teaching workload.
- This credit structure assigns six credits for core subjects and four credits for elective subjects.
- With six credits for a core course, a faculty member would end up teaching about eight hours per week per course and as proposed by the NEP, a faculty should be responsible for course content, assessments, and grading; this would increase the hours of preparation by the faculty by two times.
- The University Grant Commission (UGC)’s draft National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF) document continues to equate one credit to one teaching hour.
- This ambiguity in the UGC’s description of faculty workload will force institutions to burden faculty members.
Credit system comparison between USA and India:
In the United States: On average, in most universities, an undergraduate course is assigned three credits and hence it mandates about three hours of teaching for a faculty per course.
Based on the nature of the university, the faculty members could be allotted two to four courses per year.
Faculty with less classroom teaching load will have higher research productivity, hence ensuring better performance in teaching.
A credit also mandates the minimum skill required for graduating from one level to another.
In India: The common thing between credit systems in the U.S. and the U.K. is that the burden on the faculty member in terms of teaching hours per course is much lesser than in Indian universities.
The regulatory bodies in India must take this issue seriously to increase the prospects of research productivity of faculty while staying true to the liberal ethos of NEP.
National Higher Education Qualification Framework:
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has released a Draft National Higher Educational Qualification Framework (NHEQF) as a part of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 to assess students at different levels.
The NEP 2020 aims at making “India a global knowledge superpower”.
Given the size of the higher education system and the diversity of institutions and programmes of study in India, the country needs to move towards developing a nationally accepted and internationally comparable and acceptable qualifications framework to facilitate transparency and comparability of higher education qualifications at all levels.
Poor Infrastructure and Facilities needs to be corrected:
- Poor infrastructure is another challenge to the higher education system of India, particularly the institutes run by the public sector suffer from poor physical facilities and infrastructure.
- Faculty shortages and the inability of the state educational system to attract and retain well-qualified teachers have been posing challenges to quality education for many years.
- Large numbers of NET/PhD candidates are unemployed even though there are a lot of vacancies in higher education.
Inadequate Research:
- There is inadequate focus on research in higher education institutes.
- There are insufficient resources and facilities, as well as limited numbers of quality faculty to advise students.
- Most of the research scholars are without fellowships or not getting their fellowships on time which directly or indirectly affects their research.
- Moreover, Indian Higher education institutions are poorly connected to research centres and to industries.
Way Ahead suggestions:
- The regulating institutions must undertake measures that provide the faculty with enough time to develop quality teaching content and engage in research.
- Students are to be trained to take up self-learning programmes which reduce a certain degree of burden on the faculty.
- Considering the fact that there are a large number of students in India, creative solutions such as technology-aided classrooms can be established.
- The graduate students can be employed as teaching assistants which can make the course both efficient as well as reduce the burden on the faculty.
Conclusion:
Education is a Nation’s Strength. A developed nation is inevitably an educated nation. Indian higher education system is the third largest in the world, with 51,649 institutions.
Experts concludes that there is a need of plans require to find out the solutions that combined employers, youths needs of expectations from various stake holders i.e., students, Educational Institutions, NGO’s, parents and Government.
[ad_2]