UN’s 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Today, 11 February is UN’s 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The 2021 Theme is ‘Women Scientists at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19’. Over the past 15 years, the global community has made a lot of effort in inspiring and engaging women and girls in science. Yet women and girls continue to be excluded from participating fully in science.

However, there is a positive turn of events in higher education globally as universities are welcoming more and more female students – many of them in STEM courses, building them for careers in science, engineering, technology, mathematics, medicine, research, etc.

The industry is also working to change perspectives. For instance, job advertisements are being redesigned to mitigate gender bias in order to welcome women into STEM job roles.

EngineeringUK chief executive Dr Hilary Leevers writes in The Engineer blog that “Despite four in five (80%) women admitting they wouldn’t consider working in engineering, more than half (56%) were interested in the engineering job role once it had been reimagined.”

Children’s professional success a higher priority for Indian parents

In our previous post, we quoted from a report released earlier this month by HSBC, titled The Value of Education Learning for life, and talked about the role parents play in helping their children decide on a university education and a career. Our point of view was generic and skewed towards the behaviour of parents in developing and Third World economies, including India.

Our contention in that post was that parents, by habit, relied on tried and tested career options and university courses which led their children there. Hence, these parents were less open to suggesting new career options such as graphic design, marine biology and neuroscience to their children. But careers as doctors, engineers and lawyers were easily acceptable to them. You could say, these parents behaved in old-fashioned ways.

Image courtesy http://www.hsbc.ca/

Interestingly, the HSBC report The Value of Education Learning for life revealed much more information about the behaviour and mind-sets of these parents in the context of helping in their children’s decision-making when it came to choosing university education and careers. Some of this information is documented country-wise and the report is worth reading.

For instance, on aspects of health, wealth and happiness for their children, the report suggested that Indian parents are more concerned about their children’s professional and career success than in their children’s happiness in future. This finding, of course, is not the complete story. For Indian parents, happiness for their children came next in importance to career success.

In comparison, Chinese parents ranked health for their children as their top priority, whilst US parents wished for happiness. In terms of conviction for making a specific choice, the report indicated that close to 70% of Chinese parents ranked health and close to 70% of US parents ranked happiness as their top priorities, respectively, for their children. Only 50% of Indian parents chose success and happiness.

[Citation: The Value of Education Learning for life, HSBC Holdings plc, London 2015 (PDF)]

The value of education

Mr Charlie Nunn, Group Head of Wealth Management, HSBC, begins the Foreword of HSBC’s latest Global Report, titled The Value of Education Learning for life, with these wonderful words:

“University education is the gateway to a successful and happy future. Equipping young people with the core and softer skills they need to enter their careers and achieve their goals, it also benefits the wider society, as highly educated graduates will help improve medical care, foster innovation or run successful businesses.”

Most parents know – or are expected to know – the value of education. They have built their life and careers upon good education or, perhaps, suffered from the lack of it. Either way, they are usually eager to support their children in obtaining a good education and embarking on a stable career. They know a good education increases the chances of a better life for their children, and they are willing to leave no stones unturned to put their children through college and university.

Image courtesy http://www.businessbeacononline.com

Through, perhaps, a sense of cognitive bias, parents urge their children to follow paths which the parents already know such as that of an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a government servant, a teacher… or, for the men particularly, join the defence services which brings in honour for the family. Not only are these careers tried and tested as far as the parents are concerned, but these career choices are often reflections of the career ambitions of the parents themselves.

Even if the career preferences for their children aren’t a reflection of their career ambitions, when parents consider higher or university education for their children, they usually have a career or a small set of careers in mind for their children. This is mostly true for developing or Third World economies as not only are these economies tradition-based socio-culturally, but also, not being at par with the developed economies, they cannot offer their students the education or the opportunities of the plethora of careers available to students in developed economies.

This last point of a lack of opportunities for their children after university education is a key criterion for parents in developing or Third World economies. The assessment of a lack of opportunities is an evaluation of immediate jobs, income, social status and respect, future income-earning potential, and an overall fit into society. Parents from most tradition-based economies believe that the careers their children choose should also add value to society at large. Hence, typically, a doctor with an MBBS is valued higher than a designer with a diploma from an Arts college working for an advertising agency.

Of course, this worldview is only partially true for developed economies. The plethora of courses available in higher education, the quality of education, the research facilities, the multitude of career options, the greater number of jobs available, and the higher income-earning potential for students rule the decision-making for parents. Parents in developed economies tend to sit on this bedrock of an education ecosystem and focus on their children’s strengths and on their children’s ambitions. Hence, students in developed economies have the opportunity to not only become an engineer, a doctor or a government servant, but also pursue careers in areas such as graphic design, marine biology and neuroscience.

[Citation: The Value of Education Learning for life, HSBC Holdings plc, London 2015 (PDF)]

Why do Indians want to study abroad?

The raison d’etre for foreign education consultants like us rests on the answer(s) to this question. So, we not only introspect upon this question every now and then, but we also find our answers in direct as well as meandering ways. Although this is second nature to us, once in a while, it feels good to find someone else who can place the answers before us in a clear and logical manner. One such occasion came up in September last year when The Hindu newspaper published an article with the title Why do Indians want to study abroad?, which we’ve used as the title of this blog post as it resonated with our sentiments. You could say they took the words straight out of our mouths.

Seriously, this question and its answers are paramount to understanding our industry as more and more Indian students declare their desire for pursuing a foreign education and knock on our doors seeking admissions to colleges and universities abroad. Recent estimates from media reports suggest close to 200,000 Indian students apply to foreign universities every year, second only to China overall. Their most popular destinations for study are countries like USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and others like France, Germany, Russia and Japan. Most students seek a better quality of education than what’s available in their countries, but there are other reasons too.

We have discussed this topic on our blog previously (e.g. Brain drain or Indian students more rational in choosing foreign education or Indian student mobility) as it is not only of interest to the foreign education consultant fraternity in India, but it is actually driving a growing trend in global higher education. Although the article in The Hindu titled Why do Indians want to study abroad? focuses on post-graduation admissions, the answers to the question remain the same. Written by Philip G. Altbach, who is research professor and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in USA, the article states,

Image courtesy http://www.littleindia.com

“Post-graduate students from India are increasingly choosing to study abroad. The U.S. Council of Graduate Schools’ new statistics show that offers of admission to Indian post-graduate students are up 25 per cent for 2013-14 from the previous year, compared to a 9 per cent increase for all countries. Numbers from China showed no increase compared to last year. While these statistics are only for the U.S., India’s most popular destination, it is likely that other countries such as Germany, Canada and the U.K. are also seeing significant increases from India.”

Professor Altbach explains this phenomenon logically, stating reasons which (we believe) are applicable to students in all developing countries as they suffer from a lack of quality higher education in their own countries and adequate job opportunities thereafter which developed nations like USA or the UK can promise their students. In fact, Professor Altbach sees this situation as a problem for countries like India. His concluding thoughts state,

“There is no short-term solution to this problem for India. The only remedy is to build up high-quality capacity in key disciplines at national institutions so that a greater number of Indian students can obtain excellent training at home. This means significant investment over time, and careful choices about where to invest since all universities cannot be top research universities.

It also means significant changes in India’s academic culture to ensure that meritocracy operates at all levels. China’s top universities are beginning to show up in the mid-levels of the global rankings, an indication that they are having some success. India, so far, is nowhere to be seen.”

[Citation: Why do Indians want to study abroad? by Philip G. Altbach, The Hindu, September 4, 2014.]

Brain drain

The Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) of the Government of India states on its website that, “The quantum growth in the Higher Education sector is spear-headed by Universities, which are the highest seats of learning.”

The content on the website, which was last updated on 19 May 2015 at the time of writing this post, provides facts and figures on the state of higher education in India, with a special mention on the growth of Indian universities since 1950. It goes something like this:

“Higher Education sector has witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of Universities / University level Institutions & Colleges since Independence. The number of Universities has increased 34 times from 20 in 1950 to 677 in 2014. The sector boasts of 45 Central Universities of which 40 are under the purview of Ministry of Human Resource Development, 318 State Universities, 185 State Private universities, 129 Deemed to be Universities, 51 Institutions of National Importance (established under Acts of Parliament) under MHRD (IITs – 16, NITs – 30 and IISERs – 5) and four Institutions (established under various State legislations). The number of colleges has also registered manifold increase of 74 times with just 500 in 1950 growing to 37,204, as on 31st March, 2013.”

Image courtesy http://www.y-axis.com

This should be very good news for our Indian students who are graduating from high schools this year to seek admissions in colleges and universities as a prelude to their career plans. Yet, a couple of days ago, the Indian media released some disconcerting news while quoting a recent ASSOCHAM study on Skilling India: Empowering Indian Youth through World Class Education which, apparently, presented facts and figures supporting a ‘brain drain’ from the country as far as college or university education is concerned.

One such news report from Business Standard ran the headline Lack of quality higher education, limited seats forcing 6.8 lakh students to study abroad: ASSOCHAM study and went on to state that, “In search of quality of higher education and growing competition for limited seats available in the existing institutions compel nearly 6.8 lakh Indian students to study abroad, reveals ASSOCHAM recent study.”

The news report explained:

“An important reason for many Indians choosing to study abroad is the lack of good institutions in India and growing competition for limited seats amongst the existing institutes. Very few universities in India provide good quality education and thus the challenge of securing admission in them becomes more daunting each year said ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D. S. Rawat.”

The ASSOCHAM study, titled Skilling India: Empowering Indian Youth through World Class Education, is available for purchase from ASSOCHAM. You can access the Business Standard news report here.

[Citation: Department of Higher Education. MHRD, Government of India website; Lack of quality higher education, limited seats forcing 6.8 lakh students to study abroad: ASSOCHAM study, Business Standard, 26 June 2015.]

How do we prepare the students of today to be tomorrow’s digital leaders?

That’s the title of an excellent article (dated 28 May 2015) by Victoria Tuomisto, editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The article is based on a study conducted by EIU on behalf of Google for Education, and its key findings were discussed during Google’s Education On Air online conference earlier in May 2015.

Essentially, says Ms Tuomisto in her article, “With rapidly evolving business needs, technological advances and new work structures, the skills that will be needed in the future are shifting. In response to these changes, policymakers, educators and experts around the world are rethinking their education systems.

But it seems that education systems have not yet responded to this demand; only a third of executives say they’re satisfied with the level of attainment of young people entering the workplace. Even more striking is that 51% of executives say a skills gap is hampering their organisation’s performance. Students and educators paint a similar picture. ”

That’s Google for Education’s focus and contention as well.

The full report of the EIU research, titled Driving the skills agenda, can be accessed here.

Read our blog post on Education On Air here. Read our blog post on education-skills disconnect here.

[Citation: How do we prepare the students of today to be tomorrow’s digital leaders?, Victoria Tuomisto, EIU.]

What Indian students today should know about their parents’ education

Most students today have little knowledge of their parents’ education. For the parents, growing up in the eighties in India, selecting subjects of study in high school and later in college/university were a done deal. There was not much to go on with. It was Science, Arts or Commerce in high school as broad streams of study – which opened up a few more opportunities in college/university. Science students could choose from physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics as the vanilla options. Or, branch out to more career-oriented studies like engineering and medicine – which opened up further options either based on the stream of engineering students chose (mechanical, electrical, electronics, etc.) or later during post-graduate studies with specialisations which was mainly true for medicine.

Arts students, which comprised mostly of women, could choose from vanilla options such as literature/language (e.g. English, Hindi, etc.), economics (which was sometimes classified as a science subject), history, political science, geography, education, philosophy, comparative literature and international relations. Commerce students were limited to commerce subjects like accountancy and economics, which helped them to branch out to chartered accountancy and cost accountancy later on. There were special subjects too, like agriculture, architecture, anthropology, geology, instrumentation, law, marine engineering, mining engineering, paper technology, pharmacy, psychology, statistics, textile engineering… among quite a few others.

Image courtesy classroom.synonym.com

Computer Science was introduced in many colleges around this time (earlier it was a part of Electronics Engineering); which means, parents of college-going students today learnt to use computers on their own. Of course, the great levellers were management studies (or business administration) and the Indian Administrative Services which produced millions of civil servants for our country. Both options were offered at post-graduate levels and coveted by many students from the time they undertook undergraduate courses. Management studies were for the elite – usually hand-picked students from wealthy and upper middle-class families who went on to lead large private (typically multinational) companies. They talked of business goals, strategies and profits while they collected handsome pay-packages and built lifestyles envied by many.

The Indian Administrative Services offered job security and immense power as civil servants in the government – be it administrative services, foreign services, revenue services, the police… among a plethora of choices… and welcomed graduates from the lower middle-class to wealthy families. From an economic dividend point of view, the Indian Administrative Services were far more democratic as a job and lifestyle leveller. There was also the perk of making additional money collected for/from favours – a topic that was known universally but talked in hushed tones. Apart from money, what was – and still is – most attractive about doing a post-graduate management programme or joining the Indian Administrative Services is the status and prestige they promise.

However, very few students in eighties’ India accomplished the feat of getting into a management programme or the Indian Administrative Services. Most high school and college/university students were clueless about their careers. There were no career guidance or student counselling services available to them either. Their teachers were academicians, and knew nothing about careers, except what they taught in class. Yet, their parents (i.e. grandparents to today’s students) had fixed notions about what their children should study and which careers they should choose from the limited options available at the time. They were under parental control, unable to take decisions on what they wanted to do with their lives and which careers to pursue.

Which was not too different from how many high school and college/university students feel now… in spite of thousands of options before them.

The education-skills disconnect

There’s a skills shortage. Not just in India, but the world over. Corporate organisations, large and small businesses, startup firms, governments, NGOs, healthcare and utility services, industries far and wide, and even education and training institutions which have the onus of producing skilled manpower for the industry and the world’s economy, are all complaining that there aren’t enough skilled people, nor enough people with the right skills, to meet the demand in the marketplace. In short, there’s a disconnect between the supply of skilled manpower from the education institutions and what’s in demand by the industry.

Image courtesy http://www.knowledgedirectweb.com

In Asia, where the demand for skilled people is far higher in sheer numbers than anywhere else in the world, governments in specific countries are investing heavily in education and training. India is a case in point, where the college-going population and, in turn, the working-age population (estimated to be growing at 12 million every year) thereafter are growing in leaps and bounds. To manage the growing college-going population, the Indian government plans to introduce another 800 universities and 35,000 colleges by 2020, mainly through public-private partnerships (PPPs).

Despite this focus and growth in higher education in India, employers, be they public or private organisations or the government, complain that the large majority of university graduates who enter the working population are unfit for the jobs in the marketplace. Not only do these graduates not possess the ‘technical’ skills required for the jobs, they lack soft skills as well. They even lack skills and attitudes necessary to adapt to new technologies at work and the discipline to fit into the work culture. These drawbacks mean further investments by the employers to prepare the newly-hired employees into the workforce.

For one thing, the university education curriculum is slow to change with the times. Thus, falling behind in providing state-of-the art education and training needed in jobs in the marketplace. Most of the education is theoretical, with very little focus on practical teaching which is expected to provide actual skills. Moreover, many universities, colleges and training institutes – particularly the new privately-owned ones – lack qualified and experienced faculty members to impart the education and training needed by the industry. There seems to be a skills shortage here too.

Education on Air

‘Education on Air’ was the free online conference organised by Google for Education earlier this month (8-9 May 2015). The idea was to find out how to help students become digital leaders and, according to a blog post (dated 18 May 2015) by Tia Lendo, Head of North America Marketing, Google for Education, something like 53,000 people registered for the online conference.

The blog post states: “Educators, parents, students, business people and citizens from 201 countries showed their passion for improving education. The posts on Google+ and the comments on Twitter showed that the messages of the speakers really hit home.”

Image courtesy http://googleforeducation.blogspot.in/

Click on the video image above to see the highlight reel of Education on Air.

The blog post also states that all sessions of the online conference are available on demand on the Education on Air website. You may find the focus of ‘Education on Air’ is on children, there’s a lot to learn for adults as well. So, make sure you log on and spend lots of time on it.

[Citation: Education on Air blog post by Tia Lendo, Google for Education blog; the Education on Air website.]

Divergent educational paths

These days, because students have options of new fields of study, the choices they make on their careers today are very different from the career choices their parents had made 30-35 years ago. Although we speak from our experience in India, we believe the situation was – and is – similar across the world… as you’ll find from this blog post on LinkedIn which talks about similar experiences and principles.

The LinkedIn post (dated June 3, 2014) by Sohan Murthy titled The 10 College Majors Millennials are More Likely to Have Compared to Boomers showcases an interesting infographic that clearly demonstrates how things have changed in the last 40 years when we compare fields of study, education paths and career choices between Boomers and Millennials.

In its introduction, the LinkedIn post says: “As part of our Economic Graph research, we mined the information in over 300 million LinkedIn member profiles, and identified where millennials and boomers have the most divergent educational paths.”

Image courtesy http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/

The post goes on to showcase “the top 10 bachelor’s degree fields that are most specific to either generation” and points out major differences in education between then and now. To quote from the post:“1. Undergraduate degrees have transitioned from broad fields of study to very specialized ones.

2. Studying Education has lost some of its luster. While it was a hot major in the 60s, it doesn’t make the top 10 for millennials.
3. Liberal arts have given way to Technology and Business majors.”

The LinkedIn post also offers suggestions on a few areas of concern:

“Aside from the tensions mentioned in the introduction, the trends highlighted here signal a disconnect between youth, their prospective hiring managers, and their representatives in government (who are – lets face it – much more likely to be boomers).

If you’re a boomer and you’re looking to hire a recent graduate, it might be a good idea to check out the latest curricula offered at your target universities for your field of interest. The classes you took in college probably aren’t being offered anymore! Adapt to the latest trends and don’t judge millennials based on how different you are from them.

If you’re a millennial that has (or is in the process of getting) a degree in a newer, more specialized field, think about how your educational background reflects on your personal/professional brand and be willing to explain that to your hiring manager.”

Do read the entire LinkedIn post here.

[Citation: The 10 College Majors Millennials are More Likely to Have Compared to Boomers by Sohan Murthy, LinkedIn Talent, 3 June 2014.]