Increasing enrolment, declining employment
SUSTAINABLE EMPLOYMENT Despite an increase in graduates, employability continues to be low; can socially responsible, community engaged higher education resolve this conundrum while also achieving holistic, longterm development of our societies?
An increasing number of college and university graduates, yet poor employability of India’s graduates. Can socially responsible, community engaged higher education resolve this conundrum and also help achieve sustainable rural development?
Nearly 4 crore young Indians are enrolled in some course of education after completion of 12 years of schooling. Universities now number nearly 900, and their affiliated colleges a whopping 42,000.
Additionally, professional educational institutions number more than a thousand—engineering, computers, management, medicine, nursing, architecture, law, etc. This massive expansion in post-secondary education has paralleled India’s economic growth trajectory since 2000. However, a large number of ‘graduates’ are still found unsuitable for employment.
In the past two years, many private professional colleges in engineering and management are closing down due to lack of students. While the larger economic outlook shapes the macro context for employment, quality of higher education is being seen as a major underlying reason for this challenge. So, what is this quality?
At the heart of quality in higher education is quality of teaching. Teaching depends clearly on the transaction between the student and the teacher.
Historically, this transaction happened only in a physical classroom. Today, digital and mobile technology has made curriculum easily accessible to each student without going to class. How can learning then occur?
The biggest malaise of India’s higher education system is continuation of rote learning, a system followed in schools. In many cases, the curriculum is outdated. In others, curriculum remains fixed across all contexts.
Hence, the sociology curriculum in Delhi is repeated as the curriculum for students of sociology in Jharkhand. Modification of curriculum to include aspects of Jharkhand’s tribal society would make it more socially relevant for students from Jharkhand.
Likewise, teaching of engineering
THE BIGGEST MALAISE OF INDIA’S HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM IS ROTE LEARNING, A SIGN OF A STAGNATING CURRICULUM
is largely confined to labs.
Industry internships are mostly in manufacturing. How does a civil engineering student in Assam learn about existing hydrology technologies being practiced in the villages of her region?
Take the case of medical students studying in Bihar; do they learn about patterns of ill-health in the villages of north Bihar? Does their classroom teaching help them relate to sources of water-borne illnesses during annual floods?
The essential problem is that teaching in higher education remains disconnected with larger society today. Not only is the curriculum disconnected, but the pedagogy of teaching too needs an overhaul. The purpose of teaching is learning—not just learning theoretical principles but also their practical manifestations. Such practical learning can happen only in the real world outside the formal classroom.
In the Indian context, the ‘real world’ outside the classroom is rural and peri-urban. Statistics suggest that two-thirds of India’s population and 70% of its workforce continue to reside in rural areas.
Further, increasing peri-urban interface across many Indian cities and villages creates a very interesting landscape, which offers both challenges and opportunities. While challenges lie with respect to sustainable development; opportunities exist with colleges and universities in these areas blessed with human and knowledge resources.
How can this human resource, in the form of scholars and trained professionals, learn to work with rural or peri-urban communities? How can our graduates undertake practical research that generates sustainable solutions to everyday problems of rural or peri-urban India?
Several innovations have been practiced, in India and abroad. Such innovations have attempted to link theoretical knowledge of students with practical realities in community settings. These include, to name a few, graded internships, service-learning, co-op education, Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and field projects with local clients.
In India, service-learning and CBPR are commonly practiced models.
The Centre for Social Action at Christ University in Bangalore encourages its students (irrespective of discipline) to use their theoretical knowledge for community development. Others like Kurukshetra University in Haryana have engaged in CBPR projects in collaboration with local actors.
As more and more young students enter post-secondary education, it is critical that they undergo a learning experience that prepares them for real India.
Not every one of them will go to Silicon Valley. If students of Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla University (PRSU) are going to be working in and around Chhattisgarh, they need to understand their rural and tribal society, economy and technology first, before they can contribute to its transformation.
As a former chairman of an IIT Board told me recently, ‘only 10% of IIT graduates do research; rest have to work in and with society. IITs do not prepare them to do so.’
Growing unemployment of youth who are completing postsecondary education will cause more anger and frustration as they realise that years of higher education has not prepared them to be productive and efficient in Indian society.
Rich and valuable knowledge resides in India’s villages. Our higher education institutions must find ways for their students to engage with such knowledge in a meaningful, mutually beneficial manner.