How to improve India's higher education and research quality?
jayanta chatterjee
Tuesday, 04 November 2008 16:46 UTC
It’s a well established fact that India is going downhill in science education and research, despite of relative huge increase in funding and being the major technical manpower supplier for IT and global research community, successfully undertaking Moon mission and so on. I am wondering how we can regain our lost glory and improve on that so far our science education and research is concerned. I am mentioning some remedies below that came to my mind.
1. Reduce spending of public money on higher education and research for non-performing institutes and universities. Only teaching (without any productive research in form of quality publications or usable patents) does not justify huge spending by some so-called “elite” institutes/universities. All institutes/universities should be graded and judged as per their performance and public monetary support should depend on that. (UGC has started this but not with much cooperation from universities and so-called elite institutes and with very limited success so far).
2. Introduce strict accountability of public money for any research in any institute or university. And any research finding (mainly related to novel service or product) using public money must be mentioned in an open source (e.g unrestricted web site(s) for public access). If hundreds of corers of rupees are spent on “developing Bt- crop for insect resistance”, then public have the right to know what is the outcome from that huge spending of tax payers’ money. And if needed, a farmer or other researcher(s) should be able to access that information and more importantly the materials developed in such projects, as claimed by the researcher/institute.
3. Private institutes and universities must follow a minimum standard to give degrees.
4. Start “tenure track” system in Indian institutes/universities.
5. Increase spending substantially on primary and high school education (Both qualitative and quantitative). Increase the salaries of teachers at least at per with university lecturers and put stringent quality control while recruiting the teachers and introduce accountability among them. We must increase substantially the number of primary schools and quality of those and improve on physical infrastructures like school buildings, a minimum standard of school laboratory and library, a decent play ground, some internet connected computers in libraries etc.
6. Change the education system from the primary level (reduce work load, put more importance on physical activities, encourage original thinking etc). There should not be any form of evaluation (exam or so) till age 10 years (i.e till class 4 level). Subsequently the exam patterns should change and put more emphasis on original thinking and problem solving rather than emphasizing database-quiz type format. Basic education should be in mother tongue but English also should be compulsory from class 1.
7. Provide increased opportunities for students in rural and semi-urban India (in form of transparent information dissemination, transparent selection for fellowship/scholarships and recruitments).
For the long run:
Abolish reservation policy altogether. Provide quality primary and high school education free for all.
We have an obligation to give something back to our country which will have a long term impact on the whole society. These are few of my thoughts. Let’s start a vibrant discussion and let us know your opinion in this matter.
Updated 04 November 2008 16:54 UTC
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Anonymous
It will be equally important to publish the names of selection committee members and the chairman and their affiliations. Indian govt and/or the granting agencies should implement the rule that all selection committee members and the chairman must sign a declaration of “no conflict of interest” document(s) before selecting any candidate for any scholarship and fellowship. This also should be strictly followed for staff and faculty selection.
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Exclusive report in Times Higher Education tomorrow reveals how India is opening up its higher education sector to international providers as it aims to join the superpower elite: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
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Harvard Med School has a Dubai centre for sometime now. Many Middle Eastern Countries have allowed US and European educational corporate houses set up shops in those countries, employed many famous universities/research policy makers of US-EU as higher education consultants. But the quality of basic and higher education is not improving much in those countries. None of those countries have joined “superpower elites” so far and no sane person expect that to happen in near forseeable future.
Many US and other foreign universities have set up shops/campus in India. But I am sure that will not do much good for Indian research and higher education as a whole. Quality of education in those establishments are not much better than many Indian establishments, as a whole. After all they are manned and managed by Indians for its day to day operations.
In reality, those are only to encash the huge gap of supply and demand for “education” (read degrees) and also to tap the high craving for “foreign” degrees by Indian parents and students. Even a third grade US universities like DeVry is getting huge response in Indian cities and smaller towns for opening schools (primary and high school) as franchise with some local businessmen. -
Anonymous
It is my challenge to anyone, even Brahmbha, Visnu or Maheswar if they can do anything to improve Indian higher education and research. Read how deep the root of corruption has spread among Indian education establishments.
“*Several senior people from the (All India Council for Technical Education) AICTE, have been arrested and a case has also been registered against the Chairman*. If the Member-Secretary and Chairman are involved in bribery , the rot runs deep… Bribery within the AICTE may have become common knowledge today, but within the technical education (management/engineering) circuit, whispers have been doing the rounds for several years.”
(AICTE bribery and arrests: Indian Express, Friday July 17th 2009.It will be naive to think that such acts of mismanagement are limited to AICTE and not present among other organizations of higher education and research.
I do not understand why foreign countries send spies and spend huge money to spy on India. They can very well give money and other benefits to our leaders and head of different institutions to get that information without much problem. Particularly developed countries can even manage easily by offering permanent residency or visa and few university degrees to the kids of such people, which is not uncommon in form of direct admission and selection of foreign fellowships/scholarships. -
Anonymous
Shocking, sad and discouraging
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Very sorry to hear this!
We need to shun this -
Anonymous
It is not so uncommon in Indian science. What is uncommon is that such incidents are coming into daylight more frequently now. Government and colleagues of such tainted people (who are also in higher positions) are forced to take at least token action against such corrupt people. That’s a good sign.
In not so distant past a very famous Indian scientist, former President of Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and former director of India’s largest scientific organization CSIR, RA Mashelkar was practically removed (officially “retired”) from CSIR on charges of plagiarism.
In a major embarrassment to Indian science, one of India’s best known scientists Raghunath Mashelkar, who recently retired as head of the prestigious Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has acknowledged that parts of a government committee report authored by him were plagiarized
Concerned report was scrutinized by UK-based think tank and that’s why it took a bit serious turn. Had it been raised by any honest Indian scientist or smaller companies, that person or that company would have been ruined.After “retiring” from CSIR, Dr Mashelkar immediately joined allegedly one of the most corrupt industrial houses in India, Reliance Industries Limited as a member of board of directors. He is also in the boards of many other private companies. Such high profile ex-government employees are great assets in helping private companies with patent laws, getting different approval from Govt agencies and so on.
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I just came across a nice article: Promoting creativity and innovation in biotechnology
Trends in Biotechnology: Volume 27, Issue 8, August 2009, Pages 445-447.Some highlights of that article (mainly for those who do not have access to the article):
Recently, we sought to establish the extent of creativity training for bioscientists in the higher education system and industry in the UK. In academia, out of 25 bioscience faculties consulted, only four indicated that they provide some form of training in creativity methods, and this training generally involved only a minority of students. This no doubt reflects the continuing, massive expansion of the biosciences: students are expected to absorb more and more information, and this leaves little opportunity for the development of generative skills. As a result, they might feel ill-equipped to undertake, for example, demanding final year projects during which they are expected to demonstrate and adopt creative approaches to problem solving. Similarly, students might discover that they are ill-prepared to generate and test novel ideas as they progress from undergraduate programmes to postgraduate research degree studies.
A similar situation exists in industry. When five large UK bioscience companies were consulted about their approach to promotion of creativity in employees, most proved reluctant to divulge information about training programmes, although some indicated that employees receive instruction on creativity methods during management and leadership courses. However, it would appear that none of these organizations provides training programmes designed to promote creativity in the context of bioscience, and out of the 20 small- or medium-sized enterprises included in our survey, none was able to confirm provision of any form of training in creativity techniques. It therefore seems inevitable that industrial bioscientists will continue with a preference to develop ideas that are based only on existing or similar products, and this clearly limits the generative power of the individuals involved and the business activity that might arise as a result of this potential. -
Interesting article published in Science 31st July 2009.
“Nobelist Roald Hoffmann believes that taking graduate students off grants and giving them fellowships would be good for U.S. science. But others say such a radical change isn’t in the cards”.
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