Introduction
The Indian education system needs to be looked at to form an integrated and organic whole. At present it is vast but fragmented in which different sectors have little or no conversation with each other. For example, there is no awareness bridge between the school system, institutions of higher education, vocational training and skill development and professional education. This lack of dialogue is also very evident in the various sectors in which education institutions function—private, public and public private partnerships. In fact, there often seems to be hostility between them. Each works in isolation and often at cross purposes and so is neither able to capitalize on its individual strengths nor can it collaborate with others. The sufferers are the students and the quality of education they receive. The results are for all to see in every sphere.
Higher Education
In India, access to higher education is said to be anywhere between 13-29 per cent, which is very low. Statistics vary and that is a real challenge in policy making. In any case, the target is to double the GER by 2020 so as to reach a figure of 30%. There will be increasing demand for higher education as primary and secondary education becomes more widespread and the drop-out rates fall. This can be seen from the trends. The student enrolment increased from 8.4 million in 2001-01 to 14.6 million in 2009-10. The estimated increase up to 2022 is at a compounded rate of 11-12% per annum. This means that about 26 million seats will be required in the next decade. Vast expansion of institutions would have to take place but for them to be meaningful they would have to be of global standards to produce competent and employable graduates.[1]
However, enrolment is only a fraction of the story. According to the Narayana Murthy Committee Report, although India has one of the largest higher education institutional network in the world, the majority of them are understaffed and ill equipped. There is an acute faculty shortage. Forty five percent of positions for professors, 51% for readers and 53% for lecturers were vacant in Indian universities in 2007-2008. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Human Resources Development, this is when the student-teacher ratio is 26:1 when it should be 15:1. This compares adversely to national and international benchmarks. The ratio is 11:1 for the Indian institutes of management and, according to The Princeton Review, is 7:1 for Harvard University and 5:1 for Stanford University.2[2]
There is deficit infrastructure as a study by UGC reveals with 73% of colleges and 68% of universities falling under medium or low quality. The curricula are outdated and libraries are ill equipped.3 There are only 9 books per student in an average higher education institution in India, compared with 53 at IIT Bombay and 810 at Harvard University. The number of accredited institutions is few, there being only 161 universities and 4,371 colleges having gone through the process up to March 2011.4
Role of School
What aggravates the situation is the attrition rate at every level of education which is very high leading to a lot of wastage. And even those who remain in the system have deficient learning outcomes. The number of students who drop out at the school level itself is very high, being over 65%. This shows that only a very small percentage manage to have access to higher education. The drop out, and the failure rate even at the tertiary stage for those who do manage to enter collage indicates that for any meaningful access, the school education system must deliver. It is the real base for human resource. No changes in higher education will provide a satisfactory outcome unless the schooling improves. According to the latest survey done by Pratham a leading NGO in education about 25% of adult Indians are illiterate and 50% are semi educated. Of the remaining 25%, roughly 2-4% has received a top class ‘elite’ education and 10% a good education. The latter belong to the upper middle class. The other 12% who belong to the middle class have some college education.5
The Indian education system faces basically two problems at three different levels. The first is one of quantity and the second is of quality. The three levels are: primary education up to the age of 14years; secondary education from 14-18years and higher education in colleges and universities. The issues of quantity and quality are found at all the three levels. Pratham found that a little less than 50% students of class 5 could read only a class 2 level text. Only 40% could solve math problems. Therefore, about 50% of the children at the primary level are at the risk of not entering secondary education or not completing it. At the secondary level and in vocational training too, the Indian infrastructure is woefully inadequate and there is a huge paucity of trained teachers.6
The Pratham results are not at odds with the results of OECDs Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).7 Of the 74 countries tested n the 2009 cycle, two states of India—Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh—participated. They were 72nd and 73rd. out of 74 countries in both reading and math. In science they were 73rd and 74th. While some biases may have been possible, the fact is that India has very poor learning outcomes and the drop-out rate is still high. Only the top 15% of those who complete school reach the higher education level. The high dropout rates at each level of the education system, has resulted in a majority of the work force lacking in education. The others have to contend with an outdated system that involves rote learning rather than learning skills, understanding information and solving practical problems. Hence the relevance of education at the tertiary level has also to be looked at.
Similar findings were seen in the Report on Condition of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganized Sector (2007).8 It states that the average number of years of schooling of workers in the rural, unorganized non-agricultural sector was found to be 4.6 as compared to 9 years in the organized sector, and for the unorganized agricultural sector it was 2.8. Mean years of schooling among casual workers in the unorganized non-agricultural sector was 3.5, thus denying workers access to jobs in the organized sector and confining them to casual labour.
Moreover, with the commercialization of agriculture, crop diversification and introduction of new technologies, education has become a key input even for development and modernization of agriculture and the welfare of the people dependent on it. Levels of illiteracy are such that it is almost impossible for them to assimilate new information on better agricultural practices.
What happens to the large number of students who are left out of the system? A study by Dr. Sudhanshu Bhushan in 2004 divides the left out students into three categories: school, pre-college and college.9 In all these areas combined, there are about 30 million students with little or no alternatives. They need to have a well developed tier of vocational education that links with school education on the one hand and higher education on the other. Vocational education is available in the form of Polytechnics, Industrial Training Institutes and, more recently, Community Colleges. However, all of them suffer from lack of resources and poor implementation.
However, the NSSO 66th Round shows that there is a large increase in the number of people in the age groups of 15-19 years and 20-24 years who reported attending educational institutions as their preference is to get better jobs.10 At the same time there has been very little increase in the number of jobs created in spite of economic growth. While there has been a marginal increase in the employment of urban males, the number of women in the workforce seems to have gone down. This may be because the pressure on most women to enter the workforce as early as possible is not as intense as on males. It also shows that the way economy is developing, economic growth does not necessarily mean an increase in employment. It may be a welcome development that more young people are opting to better their qualification and skills before entering the workforce, but when combined with poor quality educational outcomes and meager increase in the number of jobs available, the situation can be worrisome.
Why Access
Now, why should there be focus on access to higher education when the school system obviously needs so much strengthening and the higher education system is in such poor shape? This is because one of the aims of higher education is seen to be empowerment through opening doors to economically productive employment. However, the existing system of higher education in India is not conducive to providing the skills necessary for employment and a majority of Indian graduates are actually unemployable. The vocational sector of education is woefully lacking and the academic sector is not delivering the way it should. The problems have assumed serious proportions and there is an extreme urgency to strengthen the providing of relevant skills and career orientation in tertiary education which must be made available together with the academic stream and between which points of convergence can be created.
The Indian Labour Report 2012, by TeamLease Services points out that the current Indian higher education system is a bottleneck as 1 million people join the labour force every month for the next twenty years without adequate training.11 Eighty percent of India’s higher education system of 2030 is yet to be built. It has to break the logjam cost, quality and scale. To do so, it needs massive innovation and deregulation. Majority of Indian youth suffer from skill deprivation. Corporate India cannot find skilled employees and much of the labour force consists of the `working poor.’ Despite the large human resource available in the country, employability remains a key challenge. Pressures on employment arise from several factors including shift in the demographics of the population, the inability of an ailing agricultural sector to support labour and an educational system that is not in sync with the requirements of business and industry. The inadequate interaction between the academics on the one hand and the business and industry on the other, results in a lack of focus on the skill development of students. The decision of most individuals to continue with education depends on their receiving adequate returns for the efforts made, and the current system does not enable them to do so, resulting in dropouts, under-trained and under-skilled labour. Globally, two approaches are followed to achieve better employability– one is educational reforms and the second is a focus on lifelong learning opportunities. Both are of vital importance and need to bw shored up in India.
Although the number of colleges and universities has mushroomed in the country, they lack the ability to impart career-oriented knowledge and training; curricula are out-dated; there is little interaction between industry and educational institutes, and only about 10 per cent of the colleges show good academic achievement. The poor quality of colleges means that students passing out of them would earn low incomes or would be unable to find jobs relevant to the courses pursued by them. This is also one of the causes for the high levels of dropouts in higher education. When future prospects are not attractive, the better option appears to be to drop out, particularly for the deprived sections of society.
Further, there is a wide range of income divergence within the same stream depending on the quality of skills. Though higher education levels can help an individual reach the desired employment, sustainability depends on how well the skills are adapted and improved over time. It is thus the quality of the institute that imparts the education or training which is the most important determinant of the income earning potential. According to the Narayana Murthy Report, currently around 500,000 students graduate from Indian engineering colleges and the figure is likely to cross 1 million in three or four years from now. The quality leaves a lot to be desired as the Indian industry finds that most of them are unemployable and further heavy investment has to be made for their training. According to NASSCOM, only 25% of the post graduates available for IT/ITES industry are readily employable. Similar challenges are faced across other disciplines and industries, including public institutions.12
Resistance to Vocational Education
There has been resistance amongst students to vocational education in India, as there is a perception that it is meant for those who are not good at academics. But with the opening up of the economy the demand for skills has gone up manifold. To meet it, provision has to be made from the school level. It can be argued that vocationalisation of education has been attempted before and it has failed. It is necessary to analyze why this has happened. One reason and which continues till today is that if a student opts for a vocational subject in the school, he/she has no opportunity to pursue it or an allied field at the tertiary level. In the existing colleges and universities no credit is given for the vocational subject studied at the school level and so it actually becomes a disadvantage to do so. Also, at the time vocationalization was attempted in India, the economy did not have the capacity to absorb skilled human resource at different levels that it has now and the demand can only grow. Another detriment which still persists is that a person in the vocational stream has little or no opportunity to join the academic stream at any point in his/ her life without starting totally afresh. In other words, no credit is given for either the vocational knowledge or the work experience acquired.
While universities may prepare engineers, scientists, industrialists and social leaders of a country, a second-tier educational level is essential to produce the middle-level technologists who can manage and maintain the industrial infrastructure. Without such an educated and technical workforce, there can be no progress. Steps were taken during the early 1980s to introduce Application Oriented Courses (AOCs) within the framework of the graduate courses and in the 1990s several self-financing institutions sprang up, with the approval of universities and state government, to run job-oriented programmes in fields such as electronic, computer science, accountancy, food science, hospital, and hotel management and others, which have been popular with students. The University Grants Commission also introduced vocational courses as part of the three-year bachelor’s degree courses. The curriculum was restructured to integrate the vocational angle. Add on courses oriented towards skill development were also allowed outside the time table.
This appears to be confused thinking as academic colleges are not oriented towards vocational education and do not have the wherewithal to do so. Heads of academic educational institutions have difficulty in identifying industries for practical application work and funding agencies to finance the training. There is still a considerable gap in what the industry wants and the colleges are able to provide. The country needs different levels at the tertiary education system so that a bouquet of options is available. This will bridge the gap between what the students are taught and the demands of the work force and also provide opportunities for training to the large work force available in India outside the formal structures of training and higher education. There is also a backlog of school dropouts who are over the school age of sixteen and work as unskilled workers. This vast need for productive skills cannot be achieved only through the formal sector especially if it is as rigid as it tends to be in India. A parallel informal, flexible system is also required to identify and develop local talent for local needs.
Industrial Training Institutes
Vocational and technical training as a means of empowerment is not a new idea. It has been recommended and tried but there has been only limited success. The Secondary Education Commission, in 1953, had recommended the setting up of technical schools, as separate institutes or as part of existing institutes, in industrial areas which would work in collaboration with industries.13 When the Education Commission reviewed the situation in 1964-66, it found a shortfall of middle level technical personnel and recommended an increase of part-time and full-time vocational and professional courses at the lower secondary level and after Class 12.14 It also reported that semi-skilled and skilled workers were primarily trained in the ITIs, while technicians were trained in polytechnic. A doubling of ITIs was recommended. Even then it was stated that the courses should allow for students to move to the academic stream. This, however, has never happened and there are no enabling structures or systems to date.
Further, the Working Group on Technical and Vocational Education recommended in 1978 that the ratio between graduates and technicians should be 1:2, but the output ratio dropped to 1:1.15 The main reason for this was that students belonging to different backgrounds found it difficult to adjust, facilities were not fully utilized, and there was shortage of operating funds and lack of motivation in both teachers and students. The Working Group emphasized that it was necessary to consolidate diversify and improve quality in existing institutions before attempting further expansion. The Sixth Five Year Plan, 1980-85 made similar recommendations, and also stressed that ITIs had to be revamped to orient them towards self-employment. The thinking has been persistent but the implementation has floundered.
Polytechnics
Polytechnics were set up to build up the technical education system and there are about three hundred institutes which had an annual intake of around 30,000 students. About 70 per cent of the polytechnics were run by state governments and the rest by private agencies or autonomous bodies. The institutes have three and two year full-time courses and sandwich courses. However, there is inadequate machinery for the systematic evaluation of their work and progress and hence there was little feedback on performance.
A National Expert Committee Chaired by S. S. Kalbag was set up in 1987 to appraise the status of community polytechnics in the country.16 It stated that for a balanced development of the country, human resource for all sectors, organized as well as unorganized, had to be prepared by the technical education system. The All India Council for Technical Education had recommended as early as 1978 that a few select polytechnics that had shown initiative in promoting interaction with the rural community at large and had the necessary capacity to undertake rural development work, could be used as focal points to promote transfer of technology to the rural sector and make contributions to rural development. These polytechnics were designated as Community Polytechnics.
Community Polytechnics were to make a socio-economic technical survey of adjoining villages to determine the needs of the people. They were then to develop human resource and training through a wide variety of trade courses, non-formal training programmes, and entrepreneurial development programmes. Further, they were to facilitate technology transfer to rural areas and provide technical support service to ensure the sustenance of rural technologies. They were to also assist local entrepreneurs in various aspects of enterprise building by disseminating information, creating awareness about various developmental schemes and by applying science and technology to find solutions for specific problems.
However, these met with limited success because of the shortfalls in implementation. There was little attempt to integrate the curricular activities of regular and community polytechnics. Scant attention was paid to costing in most of the projects undertaken by them. In some cases the training courses organized for rural youth did not reflect the skill and potential of the polytechnic either in content or in methodology. This was aggravated by a weak information system that limited technology transfer. Besides, since the entire institution was not involved in this activity, the efforts did not have the expected multiplier effect. It was, therefore, felt that the whole scheme needed to be reoriented. The main objective of the polytechnics should be to develop the human resource in the rural areas through the development of technical skills. A scientific methodology needed to be used to identify the opportunities in the economic environment of the region and exploit them. This required that the polytechnics as a whole had to raise the science and technology level of their own staff and students by solving live rural problems. This meant that Community Polytechnics, needed to be strengthened and guided in the selection of projects so that they could perform more effectively as agents of change in the rural areas.
Since the level of technology in village society was low, polytechnics could be very useful in rural transformation. They could select a village institution, preferably a secondary school, to act as its village extension arm, where they could build training facilities for multi-skill programmes relevant to the village environment or of educational significance. Trainers could be developed from amongst the village youth including school teachers within the village centre and all training had to be multi-skilled, oriented towards self-employment. In addition the students had to be given the ability to read, write, and communicate and also some computational skills.
However, little progress was made as is evident from the experience of a team from the Community Colleges for International Development (CCID) that visited India in the late 1980s to explore the possibilities of collaboration between the community colleges in USA and the polytechnics of India.17 It found a severe mismatch between the industry’s requirements and the skills learnt at polytechnics because of lacuna in planning and implementation. There was limited specialization and very little interaction between the polytechnics and the industry. The equipment was obsolete, faculty development was poor and teachers had no incentive to make use of the Technical Teacher Training Institutes (TTTI) established in the country. Hence the faculty did not keep abreast with the latest changing technologies within the local industries.
The team recommended that the present and future employment skills, knowledge and abilities required by industry had to be identified for curricula development and purchase of relevant equipment. Further, faculty had to be constantly upgraded and needed to maintain close contacts with industry so that obsolescence could be continuously taken care of in all areas like curriculum, equipment and pedagogy.
A Special Committee for Reorganization and Development of Polytechnic Education was set up in 1991. It agreed with most of these comments and recommendations of the CCID accepting that even earlier there had been serious criticism of polytechnic education in the country by educationists, industrialists, professional bodies and employers. It had been pointed out that the diploma courses in polytechnics were mostly theoretical. Being a poor imitation of degree courses, they did not serve the purpose of training middle level technical personnel. There was little attempt at specialization and the industry linkages were weak. Also, faculty development and better academic infrastructure was required.18
A survey of industries made it clear that while diploma holders remained unemployed, a significant proportion of technicians’ positions went to persons without formal qualifications but with job experience at the craftsman level. Further, students of polytechnics did not and could not fit directly into job situations in industry, because there was insufficient application orientation to the education and training imparted by polytechnics. The Committee found that the academic organization and control did not permit flexibility and freedom to experiment and innovate in collaboration with the industry. Therefore autonomy for polytechnics was essential to allow for innovations in curricula and pedagogy and for establishing meaningful industry linkages where this had been allowed, the quality of the institutions had improved.
Skills for Progress
Lacking effective skill development institutions, several private initiatives were being taken to meet the ever expanding job requirements of the country. For example, Skills for Progress, (SKIP) an all India association of private technical and vocational training institutions describes in its annual report of 2005-6, its collaboration with the Community Colleges for International Development (CCID),19 USA. CCID and SKIP are working on programmes focusing on curriculum and workforce development, communications and electronic education resources. The programmes aim at capacity building of institutions to stay relevant to the changing needs of vocational and technical training so as to enhance employability of the students.
Skills Development Initiative of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII)
The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) took the Skills Development Initiative in 2004,20 to provide social inclusiveness and bring the marginalized sections of society into the mainstream economy through empowerment by skill development. The main features of the initiative are its localized and need-based approach, practical hands on experience, training and testing, accessibility, quality, cost-effectiveness, and centralized certification. Most training facilities as well as trainers function for 8-10 hours per weekday and they can be used for the remaining periods of time, to save costs.
Geographical areas and target groups are identified, following which the relevant skills – localized and marketable – that need to be developed are identified. The curricula are worked out in collaboration with the local industries. Panchayats and other local bodies are also consulted. Trainees are selected on the basis of their motivation and abilities and the programmes are flexible in scheduling. Constant monitoring and assessments of trainees are undertaken and unsuccessful candidates can reappear for assessments and can even join another batch for additional training. Certification is important as it indicates a certain minimum standard acceptable to industry throughout the country to allow for mobility of workers.
Recent studies have reiterated the urgent need for skill development and how if India can rise to the challenge, it can truly reap its demographic dividend. Studies have been done by FICCI in 2010 and 2011.21 These show that by 2040, the global population, aged 65 years and above, is expected to reach 1.3 billion, more than double of 530 million in 2010. This trend is likely to result in severe labour shortages across the world, especially in some of the world’s largest economies including the US, France and Germany.
India has one of the youngest populations in the world. There is also a large pool of English speaking population. But this population lacks productivity because of the huge mismatch between the skills required and skills acquired through the educational institutions in India. The studies point out that more than 40 million people are registered in employment exchanges, out of which only 0.2 million get jobs. This is because the current education system does not train young people in employable skills that will open up employment opportunities for them. With economic growth, this challenge can only increase further since 75% of new job opportunities will necessarily be skill based.
The government has strongly emphasized skill development and formulated a National Policy for it setting a target of providing skills to 500 million people by 2022. Currently, the Ministry of Labour and Employment has various schemes and deals with it across the country. Other ministries like those of Human Resource Development, Rural Development, and Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation have also launched skill up-gradation programmes and self-employment schemes. As part of the National Skill Development Mission, the government has established the National Skill Development Corporation in the public private partnership mode. The aim is to set up 1,500 ITIs and 5000 skill development centers across the country as well as a national vocational qualifications framework for affiliation and accreditation in vocation, educational and training systems.22 The private sector, too, which feels the lack of quality human resource acutely, is not only doing in-house training to upgrade the skills of its workforce but also taking steps to make its potential employees job ready before they join their organizations.
The Eleventh Five Year Plan had fore-grounded the issue of skill development in India while accepting that there were several systemic challenges posed by tertiary education in India. It recognized that there was an abundance of talent in the country, but it was mostly un-nurtured. There was a lack of flexibility in the system. Knowledge resources were not easily available and there were inadequate opportunities to use even what was there. The quality of teaching was questionable and there was a gap between the demand and supply of knowledge and skills together with little collaborative learning. There was almost no personalized monitoring and long-term tracking of learning, skill up gradation and performance. And finally the situation was being aggravated by the growing digital divide. Most of these issues were not new but continuing ones from the previous years and decades. An attempt was made to rectify both access to education and to strengthen vocational education in the Eleventh Five Year Plan through measures like Open and Distance Learning and Community Colleges.
Open and Distance Learning (ODL)
The Eleventh Five Year plan envisaged increasing the enrolment from the current 11% to 20% by 2012 the last year of the Plan. One of the strategies recommended was to strengthen the Open and Distance Learning system that provides higher education to about 25 per cent of learners.23 The Eleventh Plan expected this figure to increase to 40 per cent primarily with the use of ICT, an effective tool to create access and opportunities through the length and breadth of the country. The learner profile in this mode includes the employed and the unemployed, those seeking to upgrade skills and knowledge while working, and the disadvantaged and the marginalized rural youth. The system already has developed a wide delivery network.
The focus of Open Distance Learning during the Eleventh Plan period was on professional, vocational and career oriented programmes at certificate, diploma and degree levels, concentrating on skill development, vocational training and community development programmes. Skill development has so far been underdeveloped, but two-way interactive platforms like EDUSAT have created a vast potential for short-term training and there has been a shift from enrichment programmes to curriculum-based learning programmes. The system however, needs inputs in terms of research, innovations, development of resource material and dedicated networks for efficient delivery and system up-gradation.
The National Open University which is also the nodal institution for Distance Learning Programming in the country is the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), which was established in 1985 to promote Distance Learning. It has widened access to higher education by adopting integrated multimedia instructions increasing its reach considerably through the use of Gyan Darshan, an educational TV channel and Gyan Vani, FM channels. It has a delivery network of regional and study centers with counselors providing learner support. It has an ever expanding network of FM radio stations and TV channels including interactive ones. It has been given the responsibility to develop an additional 15 FM radio stations.
Community Colleges
The Eleventh Five Year Plan also accepted Community Colleges as an alternative system of education that would help its graduates to find gainful employment in collaboration with local industry, business and the community. However, the pioneer if Community College in India is Rev. Dr. Xavier Alphonse, the founder of the Indian Center for Research and Development of Community Education (ICRDCE) who has been involved with the preparation, establishment, monitoring and evaluation of over 300 Community Colleges spread over twenty states of India. The Community College or the people’s college was developed in the US, and could well be adapted to the Indian system of education to offer quality education, with technical and vocational training, in order to create competent career-oriented individuals.24 American Community Colleges are designed as comprehensive institutions combining liberal arts, vocational, technical and adult education. They have two-year duration courses and students accumulate credits that are transferable to colleges of higher education. A majority of students complete the first two years of junior college at such institutions. They have an open-door policy that enables almost anyone seeking higher education or the enhancement of vocational and technical skills to enroll.
Community Colleges are important as they provide education for a livelihood; and eliminate exclusion from the formal system. They also reduce the mismatch between education and employment and can thus be an important means of reducing poverty, unemployment, under-employment, un-employability and dropouts. They have the unique record of empowering those who have social, economic and educational deficit opportunity.
The Working Group on the Eleventh Plan had recommended the national recognition of the Community College system; and the vertical mobility of the Community College student through open and conventional universities with a three-tier system of diploma, associate degree and degree. Community Colleges need to be set up in educationally backward regions to correct regional imbalances in higher education with emphasis on the development of soft skills. Also, central placement cells can be set up in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industries and Chambers of Commerce. The reach of Community Colleges can be further strengthened through distance learning for those students who cannot commute to college or stay in hostels
These are all important aspects in the Indian context, with its vast range of cultural and linguistic diversity, differing educational requirements and economic development. In the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the government itself is planning to establish community colleges as an educational institution located in a particular region, responsive to regional needs and aspirations would mean better, low-cost education, resulting in improved economic development opportunities for the people. The Twelfth Five Year Plan will undoubtedly have to consolidate all the initiatives taken during the Eleventh Five Year Plan and not just concentrate on expansion if it has to bring quality into the system.
Conclusion
Therefore, a fluid integrated educational eco-system has to be created. School education needs to be strengthened so that the quality of those entering higher education improves. The vocational stream, already diverse, has to be enabled to laterally feed into the system of higher education. So while expansion takes place, the existing institutions can be transformed to suit the educational requirements of the communities they serve. So whether it is community colleges, or ITI or Polytechnics, unless students who have opted for vocational/technical training at the +2 stage have an opportunity to move to universities at a subsequent stage in their lives, these will not succeed. Therefore, the Indian educational institutions at the lower levels of higher education must become more receptive to local community needs while providing adequate comprehensive education and maintaining links with formal higher education institutions and bodies. The latter have to also develop flexible structures to accommodate those coming from the vocational stream.
Further, all students need to have options shifted that fulfill their needs and so the system must enable them to enter and improve their qualifications at different points of time in their lives. For this the rigidity of education structures at all levels but particularly higher education must be removed to provide opportunities for lifelong learning. For this a bouquet of quality educational institutions has to be created that would give students options to continue their education, exercise options best suited to them and have opportunities to improve levels of academic performance.
Kavita A. Sharma
Endnotes:
- Committee on Corporate Participation in Higher Education: Report of N.R. Narayana Murthy Committee, Planning Commission, 2012, p.2. Henceforth this Report will be referred to as Narayana Murthy Committee Report.
- Ibid., p.1.
- Higher Education, Issues Related to Expension, Inclusiveness, Quality and Finance. New Delhi: University Grants Commission, November 2008.
- Narayana Murthy Committee Report, p.1.
- http://www.pratham.org./News Details, aspre? news ID = 90.
- Ibid.
- PISA 2009, Results: What Students Know and Can do.
Students Performance in Reading, Mathematics and Science, Vol. 1. Htt://www.pisa.oecd.org/datgaoecd/10/61/48852548.pdf.
- Arjun K. Sengupta, Report on Conditions of Works and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganized Sector, presented in 2004, Government of India, 2008.
- Sudhanshu Bhushan and Kausar Wizarat, Alternative and Innovate Forms of Higher Education of Left Out Youth, New Delhi: National Institute of Educational Planning and Development, 2004.
- C.P. Chandrashekhar and Jayati Ghosh, “Latest Employment Trends from the NSSO,” Business Line, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/c-p-chandrashekhar/article 2219107.ece.
- www.teamlease.com/index.php? Module = research and event = India_Labour_Report.
- Narayana Murthy Committee Report, pp.1-2.
- www.kkhsou. in/main/education/secondary_education.html.
- www.kkhsou. in/main/education/edu_commission.html.
- www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/data/pdf/saurav/pec – vocational – presentation
- See Report of the Committee for Review of National Policy on Education 1986, 1990, www.reindia.nic.in/Files/Report/CCR/Ramamurti – committee – report.pdf.
See also Sudhanshu Bbhushan and Kausar Wizarat, Alternative and Innovative Forms of Higher Education of Left Out Youth.
- William J. Struhier and Adrian Almeida, East Meets West: Web Support of U.S. – India Vocational Training Project, http://www.isoc.org/inet97/proceedings/D4/D4_3.HTM.
- For an overview see, Technical Education Scenario: Worldwide and Nationwide http://shodhganga,inflibret.ac.in/bitstream/10603/2015/11_chapter % 203.pdf.
- See CII Skills Development Initiative : Making India the Skills Capital of the World htt:/www.cii-skillsdevelopment.in
- FICCI-ICRA, The Skill Development Landscape in India and Implementing Quality Skills Training. August 2010.
FICCI – Ernst and Young, Strategic and Implementation Framework for Skill Development in India, September 2011.
See also, Vatsala Shrangi /TNN “India’s skill roadmap”, http://educationtimes.com/educationtimes / Print Article.jsp.
- Higher Education in India: Issues Related to Expansion, Inclusiveness, Quality and Finance, New Delhi: University Grants Commission, November 2008.
- Dr. Xavier Alphonse is the pioneer in the community college movement and has written several books on it.
Bennet Emmanuel, “Community Colleges as an alternative system of education. “Christian Manager, August-Septembeer 2008, pp.20-28.
See also, Sudhanshu Bhushan and Kausar Wizarat, Alternative and Innovative Forms of Higher Education of Left Out Youth.