Providing Higher Education is a Challenge in India
Due to the failure of the state as well as the central government in providing higher education, private institutions have come up and most of them are offering poor quality education, says the recent report on higher education authored by Dr. Abusaleh Shariff of the Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy, New Delhi and Amit Sharma, research analyst with the National Council for Applied Economic Research.
As per the report, Inter-Generational and Regional Differentials in Higher Level Education in India that the mean year of schooling of adults is as high as 13.3 years in the USA and just 4.4 years in India.
Talking about the Gross Enrollment Ration the report says Higher Levels of Education (HLE) in India is about 10 percent of University age, while China enrolls about 22 percent.
The report also highlights the regional differences in India related to access to higher education as it shows that higher education is easily accessible to people in Southern India and Northern India while the situation is worst in North Central (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) and North-Eastern India.
It emphasizes that the Indian economy is showing vibrancy and double-digit growth mainly through the support of two important inputs, i.e., higher levels of educated resources and better adaption and assimilation of technology. It is critical therefore that higher education becomes accessible to all citizens across India, irrespective of economic, social, linguistic, and regional differentiation.
Technical Education
The higher education report states that the share of persons attending technical education is more than 33 percent of the total enrolled in any higher education in both rural and urban areas of Southern India, which is quite high when compared with other regions.
In contrast to Southern India, only 3 percent of those enrolled in higher education in rural parts of North-Eastern India are enrolled in technical courses and the share of its urban counterpart is also low at 10 percent as compared with other regions of urban India.
It states that, unlike other regions, there is no gap in the proportions of rural (33.2%) and urban (33.9%) sectors of Southern India which strongly points toward an equal proportion of awareness, of and participation in, technical education in rural and urban parts of southern India.
The report says, Even regions such as the North and West (unexpectedly) and North Central (expectedly) have shown low penetration of technical education.
Cost of Technical Education
The report states that the cost of technical education is considerably high compared with non-technical degrees. The per annum cost for technical education ranges from around Rs. 30,000-35,000.
Comparing Southern India with Northern India, the cost of technical education is relatively low in low in North-Central and North-Eastern regions. This may again reflect the qualitative differentials in education suggesting poor quality technical education in these regions compared to other regions of India.
Private Players in Higher Education
As per the report, the educational provision in India is based on a kind of loose pyramid structure that links elementary-level schooling to successively higher levels such as matric, pre-university, university, and technical education.
The report states that providing higher education is a challenge in India. Since India is a growing population the infrastructure needs is growing by the day. People’s aspirations are changing fast, which is also boosting the demand for education at levels including the HLE and technical education, says the report.
It further comments that while during the early period after independence the state governments established the HLE infrastructure, the facilities could not sustain and failed to ensure access to eligible citizens due to demand pressure caused both by an increase in the youth population and also increasing higher-level educational aspirations.
But, while being costly they seem to often impart low-quality education compared with the standard government-run institutions, the report commented.
Talking about to need to provide opportunities to the private sector, the report states that private institutions have filled the demand-supply gap in the higher education industry. One advantage of private higher education institutions has been that they offer a variety of skill-promoting courses, which are not usually included in the curriculum offered by government-run institutions.
The private higher education institutions need to be supported by creating enabling and promotional roles by the government with a strong regulatory mechanism to set the standards of education.
Huge north-south divide
The Higher education report highlights that it states that southern India’s urban population has improved at the fastest pace leading the region to showcase the most promising growth in higher education in comparison with urban parts of all other regions.
Talking about northern India, it says that the urban population in northern India was at the top in both generations while in the past generation it had the second-highest prevalence for its rural counterpart, which in the current generation has also made it to the top.
However, the report states that North-Eastern India on the other hand has the least share in higher education as a percent of its population for both generations and according to gender.
The report also states that now English has become a mechanism to overcome serious socially motivated differentials, and also the contemporary globalizing economic system is anchored in the English language.
As per the report, the difference between southern India and the rest of the regions in terms of English medium educational accessibility is very huge for both genders.
Higher education’s role in employment
The report highlights the share of the illiterate workforce is 30.7 percent in the year 2009-10, which is twice their share of 15.2 percent contribution to the GDP. While only about nine percent of the HLE (graduates and above) contribute about 29 percent of the GDP.
Additionally, this adequately demonstrates the power of education which enhances productivity and economic value both at the individual level and when aggregated at the level of a nation. It suggests the impact of education on GDP is prominent and they are highly correlated.
The report points out that the younger generation has evolved to be more aware of the value of higher education and the shares of respective populations in higher education in each socio-religious group as well as in urban, rural, male, and female groups have significantly increased over the past generation.