Indian higher education misses its mark

Every year, a few hundred thousand Indian students enrol into foreign universities and colleges to pursue programmes in higher education – and step into a lucrative career thereafter. Many of these students don’t return to India – either staying back in the country of their choice for higher education or moving elsewhere around the globe – unless it’s on a holiday or to fulfil obligations such as a family wedding or a death in the family.

What lures them there is better quality higher education and prospects of a better life that that education offers beyond obtaining an education and a degree. Tragically, India has been struggling with a strategy, a system and content on these contexts for the past 40 years. And, now, the gap is widening further fairly rapidly. The trends confidently show an ever-increasing number of Indian students seeking a foreign education.

US universities are by far the biggest attraction for Indian students, followed by universities in Australia, the UK and Canada. An article in University World News states 97,000 students from India enrolled for universities in the US last year, while an ICEF article mentions 49,265 Indian student enrolments in Australian universities in 2013. A January 2015 article in Zee News quotes a figure of over 50,000 Indian student enrolments in Australian universities in 2014.

Image courtesy hillpost.in

A BBC news story mentions 10,235 students from India had enrolled into UK universities in 2012-13, a lamentable drop from previous periods; and an article in Top Universities website suggests enrolments of over 12,000 Indian students in Canadian universities (though no accurate figure is quoted). If this is true, then Canadian universities have become a bigger draw for Indian students than universities in the UK.

Even universities in New Zealand, China and Germany have become attractive destinations for Indian students. Not to forget Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. No matter which way we look, the trend for Indian students to go abroad to study is definitely a progressive one.

Although 200,000 or so Indian students going abroad to study in a year is a fraction of the 20-odd million students in Indian universities and colleges today, the figure is still significant if we consider the amount of money this universe of students is collectively spending on higher education. If Indian higher education provided education of quality and substance, this money would have remained in India and helped grow the Indian education sector.

So, here’s the question: Has Indian higher education missed its mark in capitalising an opportunity that now benefits other economies?

Indian college students should be jubilant

There’s happy news for Indian university and college students – and, in fact, for all of India. According to the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2014, published in June last year, 10 Indian institutes feature in the top 100. This is remarkable news as, no matter how good we think Indian higher education is, Indian universities and colleges have never been able to get into the top 225 ranks as world universities (i.e. globally) – be it the Times Higher Education rankings or the Quacquarelli Symonds rankings. And, they still don’t. These are the Asia University Rankings.

From India, the top three institutes to be ranked in such illustrious positions in the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2014 are Panjab University in 32nd position (tied with Renmin University of China), followed by IIT Kharagpur in 45th position and IIT Kanpur in 55th position. These institutes precede IIT Delhi and IIT Roorkee (tied in 59th position), IIT Guwahati (74th position), IIT Madras and Jadavpur University (tied in 76th position), Aligarh Muslin University (80th position), and Jawaharlal Nehru University (90th position).

Take a look at the full Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2014 report on their website. You may need to fill in and submit a web-form to access the entire list.

Image courtesy qz.com

Here’s what the Times Higher Education website says (quote):

The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings, in their second annual edition, cover the entire continent of Asia (including Turkey and the Middle East but excluding North Africa and Australasia) and are based on the same methodology as the overall THE World University Rankings. They use 13 separate performance indicators covering all the core missions of the modern globally focussed university – research, teaching, knowledge transfer and international activity.

The top 100 list includes a total of 13 nations/regions and make public new data on dozens of institutions not previously featured in the THE World University Rankings.

Phil Baty, editor of THE’s global portfolio of rankings, said: “The scale and speed of Asia’s development in higher education and research is staggering and this prestigious ranking provides an invaluable and rich insight into the exciting, and rapidly changing dynamics of Asia’s top universities”.

Although this is cause for jubilation for Indian college students, the truth still remains that Indian universities and colleges are nowhere near the top when it comes to World University Rankings. A Reuters news story, Late for class – India woos foreign colleges as population clock ticks by Shyamantha Asokan, published in October last year, reports that (quote),

Despite a surplus of workers, employers across sectors say local universities do a poor job of preparing graduates for working life. None of India’s universities feature in the world’s top 200, the 2013/14 rankings by the London-based education group Quacquarelli Symonds show, versus seven from China.

Many homegrown universities rely on rote-learning and fail to teach the “soft skills” that are increasingly important in India, where the services sector has driven the economic growth of the last two decades, recruiters and students say.

“We don’t learn here – we are just taught to mug up, so it’s hard for us when we go out to find jobs,” said Singh, an undergraduate at one of the country’s largest private colleges, Amity University, referring to the teaching style across India.

“I’m worried that when I get to my first internship, I won’t know how to do anything.”

This, no doubt, is a serious concern for India’s 20-odd million university and college students. Fortunately, studying abroad in higher-ranked universities is still an option for them.