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| Monday, Aug 07, 2006
Is our education system outdated?
Complete and drastic reconstruction.
This is the prescription that eminent academician and long-time watcher of the Indian and global educational trends V.C. Kulandhaiswamy has to offer as panacea for the ills that dog Indian higher education.
"... taking into account the prevailing international practices and the emerging world trend, we are convinced that the Indian system that has long remained without any minor change in structure and governance requires, not reshaping, nor reinforcing, but recasting in a new mould. We also realise that we undertake the reconstruction of Indian higher education system in order to construct a knowledge society. We do realise the dimension of the task. It is somewhat extensive and immense, but by no means insurmountable. It has to be a national mission... "
This is what Prof. Kulandhaiswamy has stated in his latest book Reconstruction of Higher Education in India.
In his recent book published by the ICFAI University Press, the former vice-chancellor of Anna University, Madurai Kamaraj University and the Indira Gandhi National Open University, pleads for transferring higher education to the universities and simultaneously dispensing with the affiliating system, which he calls "outdated and anachronistic... "
In a conversation and later in an e-mail interview, Prof. Kulandhaiswamy shared his concerns and his views on the future of funding methods in higher education.
Funding
"Higher education is expanding rapidly in most developing countries and so funding it is a problem worldwide. Even in advanced countries, governments are not finding funds to meet the full demand," he says.
Higher education scene has also changed radically: We now have distance learning, online instruction, open universities and dual mode universities. Cross border supply, transcending national boundaries is a promising area of development.
Two million students worldwide study outside their country. The U.S. itself has 0.6 million international learners.
In another trend, beneficiaries of higher education are willing to pay for the services.
Under these circumstances, "we must take a new look at sources of funding for higher education.
The conventional sources of income for the educational intuitions are government grants, consulting and testing services and a meagre amount by way of tuition fees. Now the sources of income have significantly diversified and increased. Some of them are as listed below:
Students willing to pay tuition fees to match the cost of services. Increased tuition fees along with a well defined loan and scholarship programme is a meaningful source of income.
Income from international students provided the admission procedure is flexible, visa regulations eased and institutions can attract them. The U.S. got $13 billion in 2003 from international students, Singapore earned US$ 3. 0 billion in 2000 amounting to 1.9 per cent of its GDP from nearly 50,000 students. It is endeavouring to become an educational hub in Asia. Australia had 0.16 million international students in 2004 contributing US $4.5 billion, being the nation's ninth largest export. In India itself the huge academic campus in Manipal was built with substantial funds from foreign students; mostly NRIs. This example can be replicated.
Fees raised through part-time courses, funding from alumni, philanthropists and support from international agencies are other means.
Private players
Private entrepreneurs in higher education have blossomed all over the world as major providers of tertiary education.
All over the world, the governments are in a mood to encourage private participation. Even in India there are 86.3 per cent of the engineering colleges in the private sector today; so are 45.0 per cent of medical colleges, and over 80 per cent of dental and nursing colleges are in the private sector.
Sadly, Prof. Kulandhaiswamy notes, development of higher education in India is not being guided by any policy but has been evolving on its own, guided by market forces and often overcoming the obstruction of the bureaucracy. "It is well within our genius to oversee and limit malpractices provided the monitoring agency is free from corruption."
For private participation, banks and government financial institutions should lend money on reasonably easy terms for developing educational institutions.
"If India is to become a developed country by 2020, we have to increase number of persons in the relevant age group entering higher education. Now eight per cent of them enter colleges and it has to go up to 20 per cent or 25 per cent." Government must then invite, encourage, guide and support the private sector.
There is no legal bar against charging higher fees for the foreign students; or prescribing differential fee rates in private institutions.
An important requirement to promote higher tuition fees and also attraction of private providers is the introduction of scholarships and loan schemes. In India only two to three per cent of the students avail themselves of student loans in comparison to 85 per cent in the U.K, 50 per cent in Sweden and 77 per cent in the U.S. and Canada.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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