It’s time to look beyond prestigious institutions
The Indian education landscape has been under a tremendous flux since the last two years. The pandemic was the catalyst that accelerated the digitisation process of our education system.
Our ed-tech sector led the transition from offline to online. Furthermore, it played a crucial role in ensuring that education remained an uninterrupted, accessible service in such times.
Thereby, our ed-tech players displayed that they have the wherewithal to play a crucial role in shaping our education sector.
This adaptation also led to an online shift of our assessment systems and procedures. Therefore, virtual proctoring became a mainstay.
Additionally, a few realisations have also sunk in. Change will be the only constant in the digital economies of the future. The focus should be on building an agile and digitally ready workforce for the new world.
Thus, technology provided a new axiom: learn, unlearn, re-learn and be ready for the eternal need for certification to acquire new skills.
Having said that, in the present context, there is still a sense of missed opportunities despite the above changes.
As per the data released by Bureau of Immigration (BoI) recently, over 1.3 lakh students departed for higher education this year in 2022.
In last two years, over 4.4 lakh students in 2021 and 2.6 lakh students in 2020 left India to study abroad, with US, Canada and UK being the preferred destinations.
A 2021 report by consulting firm RedSeer suggested that this number would go up to 18 lakh by 2024.
Furthermore, data issued by the Pew Research Centre on “International Students Toll by Origin,” suggested that 18% of all international students in US schools in 2020-21 hailed from India.
The “Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange (2020) also validated that nearly 20 % of the total number of international students in the US for the 2020-2021 academic year were Indians.
The first four months of 2021 (January to April 2021) saw more than 67,000 Indians getting the approval to study in Canada, which was 83% more than all of 2020.
From an investment perspective, RedSeer 2021 report estimated that Indian students’ overseas spending will increase from $28 Billion in 2021 to $80 billion by 2024.
This indicates that regardless of tremendous improvements in our education landscape, many of our students still prefer to study abroad if given an opportunity.
Hence, the statement that this is a case of missed opportunity as there is a demand by our youth, our students, for an international-level university experience that is left untapped or uncatered.
Now, the question that arises is whether there are enough education institutes in the country? How many can be ranked as quality?
Moreover, can we argue that students, their parents, and even the employers may not trust our education institutes? For them, there is a gap between the skills that are taught and the skills that are needed to be employed. A point also underscored by McKinsey Global Survey in 2020, which reported 92% of Indians agree that there’s a skill gap regarding employability. Thus, our universities, colleges and schools may not be relevant to them anymore.
This is not to say there is a lack of awareness regarding this conundrum. Our ed-tech players have responded with two approaches. First, provide courses and content based on clearing only assessments.
However, this again highlights the main problem of prioritising percentages and ranks, rather than conceptual and meaningful learning, original and critical thinking. Second, to cover the employment skill gap created by our institutes, it offers bridge courses. It is taking ‘a band-aid on a gunshot wound’ approach; a temporary, reactive, unsustainable response to a longterm problem.
The situation is further complicated by prestigious educational institutions that are still caught in the past, where they keep their acceptance rate low to protect their brand value. The government’s recent decision to conduct a Common University Entrance Test is a step in the right direction as it will lead to “equalisation of education.”
However, on a macro level, what we need is ‘first principle thinking’ in our education sector. We need to realise that in the Google age, everyone has access to information; the knowledge gap between people with formal education and less education has narrowed.
The view that expertise is only available in prestigious institutions has changed. Now, you are only relevant if you provide value. With this awareness, authentic and meaningful assessments should be the basis for our education policy, vision, digital infrastructure development and curriculum planning.
The private sector and the government must come together to implement this to reverse the brain drain; to make our educational institutions worthwhile. This would eventually lead to India-first approach for our students.