‘Private universities are the way forward to universalise higher education in India’
About 35 million students are enrolled in higher education institutes in India today, which translates into a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 26 per cent for the country as a whole. GER is defined as the number of children of college going age who actually attend college. About a decade ago, this figure stood at a meagre 6-7 per cent. The major driver for this change has been the increased participation of private institutes in the education sector.
The new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 envisages a target GER of 50 per cent for the country by 2035. This is only possible with the participation of private universities and by offering a fillip to online education in a post pandemic world.
Speaking at Education Founder Series, Empowering People through Knowledge, an initiative by Hindustan Times to seek the major trends in the education sector, Dr Aditya Shastri, Vice-chancellor, Banasthali Vidyapith spoke about the status of higher education in the country, the role of private universities and a roadmap of new trends that we will witness in the near future. Edited excerpts: ties is immense. I had started by saying that soon after independence, we had just a handful of institutions and the GER was just 5-7 per cent just 10-15 years back. That means that in a population out of 100, we are offering just a small minority a chance to enrol into higher education. This will have an impact on development in the country, be it economic or social. In the last 15 years, we have moved from 6-7 per cent to close to 30 per cent and all that expansion has happened in the private sphere. The government doesn’t have the means or inclination to set up so many universities. So private education is the way forward to universalise higher education. young age of 26, Pandit Shastri, who hailed from a modest family of farmers, became the home and finance secretary in what was the Rajputana State of Rajasthan before independence. A freedom fighter, he wanted to do something for society. So, he left his job and came to this village in Banasthali.
His daughter Shanta Bai could read vedas at 6 years even though she never got a formal education. When she was 11, she told Shastriji and said she wants to start a school in the village as there is no means of education for girls. He asked her to make mud bricks to build a room for the school. She gathered her friends and created tens of thousands of bricks. But, she unexpectedly died of high fever.
Meanwhile, Shastriji wrote to his friends asking who would send their daughters to school. One day, five girls landed up at their home. His wife Rattan Shastri ji was very versatile and onboarded a music teacher and a sadhu to teach them martial arts. That sowed the seed for the fivefold education that we have today.
Today, Banasthali enrols more than 18,000 students. We are the largest residential university in the world and the second highest ranked women’s university in the world. We have the highest possible accreditation of A++.
Last March, lockdown came far too suddenly. But fortunately, the organisation and my colleagues showed a lot of agility and resilience. Within a couple of weeks, we decided not to let even one day in the academic calendar get wasted. Last year, we completed our exams as per the schedule in May 2020. We initiated our next academic calendar in July, online, and of excellent quality. The feedback we get from students and faculty is superlative.
I think to ensure placements, you have to ensure development of a holistic personality with the right kind of values. Some of our recruiters say that they take our students for their values and just mere technical competence. Most of our students find placements with leading companies. After the pandemic, we could easily move this to online interviews. None of our placements for 2020 were put on hold and all the ompanies honoured their offers to our students.
What are the immediate goals that you have set for the institution?
One immediate by-product which is coming out of the pandemic is Banasthali Online. Earlier, universities were not allowed to offer online degrees. The Government of India has also shown a lot of agility and have allowed, suo-moto, some quality institutions to impart online degrees. Fortunately, we are one of them and some undergraduate and post-graduate degrees will be conducted online. In a few years, we are also coming up with an allwomen School of Aviation, which will be only one of its kind in the country.
Can you share a few words for students who are starting higher education today. What is your message for them?
Those who are joining higher education now are joining at the right place. We only wish and pray that we move past the pandemic phase. Then, the quality of education would be much better than what you would have encountered otherwise.