In my last column, I made a reference to the declining global ranks of India’s top universities. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect to see major improvements in our institutions in just a year or two, the fact that not a single top Indian institution had in 2011 a better rank than in 2010, could be a cause for concern. But I will argue that there are bigger challenges we should take on.
Our Priority: World Class, Indian Ethos or Scale?
How important is it for us to have top-ranked or ‘world class’ universities anyway? Would they just give us bragging rights, another data point to support the argument that India has arrived? Or should we have other priorities?
India’s challenges in higher education are well known. We have a low gross enrollment ratio. The quality of instruction in our existing institutions is
highly variable. Faculty shortages abound. Employability of our graduates is poor. Syllabi are often outdated. Learning is by rote rather than practical or
application-oriented. This last problem is summed up well by engineering education veteran, Professor Vijay Gupta, who told EDU’s VC conclave recently that India should award BAs rather than BEs in engineering because most engineering exams are descriptive in nature!
Another stream of criticism is that Indian higher education lacks an Indian ethos, a mooring to India’s rich culture and civilization. It fails to address issues of values and ethics, or to develop more integrated and rounded young graduates. A small number of institutions like Viswabharati, Banasthali and Dayalbagh, all set up in more idealistic times, have been successful in providing alternatives addressing this criticism, but few institutions seek to emulate them.
Perhaps the culture issue is not critical at this point. Students have developed a strong social sensitivity, thanks to the recent emphasis on inclusive growth, social entrepreneurship and bottom-of-the pyramid business models. I recently attended student-organised technical festivals at two of our leading engineering institutions — IIT Madras and NIT Surathkal — and the message that the students have embraced this ideal rang out loud and clear.
Scaling up is another challenge. It is well known that existing models of higher education are capital intensive. Scaling up to the level we desire is not feasible because of resource constraints. But the more important question is whether scaling up the existing model is the right way to go.
Bridging Trade-offs
A little over a decade ago, the way we live changed forever with the advent of the internet. While much of today’s internet excitement is focussed
on the power of social media, the internet was heralded because it promised to overcome an important trade-off between richness and reach. This potential has been realised in some domains like financial services and consumer retail, but not in a sector like education where it could have the greatest impact.
Why is this important? Because the main conflict we see in Indian higher education today is between quality and scale, i.e., richness and reach. After independence, we started off by focussing on quality (the IITs, IIMs, RECs, etc.), and then attention shifted to scale as manifested in the breathtaking expansion of privately-provided technical education in the last two decades. Today, the pendulum has swung back to quality as we set up new central universities, IITs and IISERs.
For a country that accounts for one-sixth of the world’s population, is heralded as one of the emerging poles of the new economic order, and has global geopolitical ambitions, we have to find a way of bridging the quality vs scale trade-off.
In management, there is often a debate about whether you should adopt established ‘best practices’ or try to innovate. The consensus is that if you are below the current productivity frontier, adoption of best practices helps you reach that frontier quickly. That’s what most firms in manufacturing have done by adopting world class quality and manufacturing practices. But, it’s also clear that disruptive models offer the option to leapfrog ahead (create new productivity frontiers) even though they may start by being inferior to existing ways of doing things.
New technology seems to offer India the potential to leapfrog. But, are we leveraging such technology? What we have done so far — like putting up the videos of IIT professors’ classes on the net, or making IGNOU study material freely downloadable — are good steps but they fail to use the potential of the internet and communications technologies for interactive and collaborative learning. After some false starts, the government’s efforts to make a low-cost computing device available to students have finally worked out with the launch of Akash tablet. That’s a good development. But where is the content that can seamlessly integrate with curricula to give students a high quality, integrated learning experience? How do we harness social media to enhance
the quality of higher education?
In my last column, I made a reference to the declining global ranks of India’s top universities. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect to see major improvements in our institutions in just a year or two, the fact that not a single top Indian institution had in 2011 a better rank than in 2010, could be a cause for concern. But I will argue that there are bigger challenges we should take on.
Our Priority: World Class, Indian Ethos or Scale?
How important is it for us to have top-ranked or ‘world class’ universities anyway? Would they just give us bragging rights, another data point to support the argument that India has arrived? Or should we have other priorities?
India’s challenges in higher education are well known. We have a low gross enrollment ratio. The quality of instruction in our existing institutions is highly variable. Faculty shortages abound. Employability of our graduates is poor. Syllabi are often outdated. Learning is by rote rather than practical or application-oriented. This last problem is summed up well by engineering education veteran, Professor Vijay Gupta, who told EDU’s VC conclave recently that India should award BAs rather than BEs in engineering because most engineering exams are descriptive in nature!
Another stream of criticism is that Indian higher education lacks an Indian ethos, a mooring to India’s rich culture and civilization. It fails to address issues of values and ethics, or to develop more integrated and rounded young graduates. A small number of institutions like Viswabharati, Banasthali and Dayalbagh, all set up in more idealistic times, have been successful in providing alternatives addressing this criticism, but few institutions seek to emulate them.
Perhaps the culture issue is not critical at this point. Students have developed a strong social sensitivity, thanks to the recent emphasis on inclusive growth, social entrepreneurship and bottom-of-the pyramid business models. I recently attended student-organised technical festivals at two of our leading engineering institutions — IIT Madras and NIT Surathkal — and the message that the students have embraced this ideal rang out loud and clear.
Scaling up is another challenge. It is well known that existing models of higher education are capital intensive. Scaling up to the level we desire is not feasible because of resource constraints. But the more important question is whether scaling up the existing model is the right way to go.
Bridging Trade-offs
A little over a decade ago, the way we live changed forever with the advent of the internet. While much of today’s internet excitement is focussed on the power of social media, the internet was heralded because it promised to overcome an important trade-off between richness and reach. This potential has been realised in some domains like financial services and consumer retail, but not in a sector like education where it could have the greatest impact.
Why is this important? Because the main conflict we see in Indian higher education today is between quality and scale, i.e., richness and reach. After independence, we started off by focussing on quality (the IITs, IIMs, RECs, etc.), and then attention shifted to scale as manifested in the breathtaking expansion of privately-provided technical education in the last two decades. Today, the pendulum has swung back to quality as we set up new central universities, IITs and IISERs.
For a country that accounts for one-sixth of the world’s population, is heralded as one of the emerging poles of the new economic order, and has global geopolitical ambitions, we have to find a way of bridging the quality vs scale trade-off.
In management, there is often a debate about whether you should adopt established ‘best practices’ or try to innovate. The consensus is that if you are below the current productivity frontier, adoption of best practices helps you reach that frontier quickly. That’s what most firms in manufacturing have done by adopting world class quality and manufacturing practices. But, it’s also clear that disruptive models offer the option to leapfrog ahead (create new productivity frontiers) even though they may start by being inferior to existing ways of doing things.
New technology seems to offer India the potential to leapfrog. But, are we leveraging such technology? What we have done so far — like putting up the videos of IIT professors’ classes on the net, or making IGNOU study material freely downloadable — are good steps but they fail to use the potential of the internet and communications technologies for interactive and collaborative learning. After some false starts, the government’s efforts to make a low-cost computing device available to students have finally worked out with the launch of Akash tablet. That’s a good development. But where is the content that can seamlessly integrate with curricula to give students a high quality, integrated learning experience? How do we harness social media to enhance the quality of higher education?
Our Challenge
Today, technologies like telepresence offer high resolution video transmission but use considerable amounts of bandwidth. Innovation that cuts down the bandwidth requirements and blends video with internet-based learning is what is needed. Entrepreneurial efforts like the Khan Academy have shown us the potential of new technology. With broadband penetration increasing, there is a possibility of driving a new model of higher education that transcends existing boundaries and limitations.
The use of new technology has to be accompanied by two other investigations. One pertains to how children learn. Kids who have grown up in the internet era have a different way of learning compared to people who grew up learning from books and people. We need to understand these new learning processes better if we want to harness contemporary technologies effectively, rather than just replicating current teaching practices over the internet or video. The second pertains to the role of the teacher. Some earlier attempts to beam lectures of highly regarded professors into the classrooms of small engineering colleges floundered because teachers in these colleges felt threatened. The role of the teacher has to be recrafted for a technology-driven new higher education model to work.
We should create a distinctive Indian model of higher education, but not by harking back to Nalanda or Takshashila. We shouldn’t be content with enhancing research output and thereby competing for world rankings. Instead, in addition, we should take on the challenge of bridging the quality-scale trade-off in higher education. This is what the Indian model of higher education should come to be known for and become our most enduring contribution.
Our Challenge
Today, technologies like telepresence offer high resolution video transmission but use considerable amounts of bandwidth. Innovation that cuts down the bandwidth requirements and blends video with internet-based learning is what is needed. Entrepreneurial efforts like the Khan Academy have shown us the potential of new technology. With broadband penetration increasing, there is a possibility of driving a new model of higher education that transcends existing boundaries and limitations.
The use of new technology has to be accompanied by two other investigations. One pertains to how children learn. Kids who have grown up in the internet era have a different way of learning compared to people who grew up learning from books and people. We need to understand these new learning processes better if we want to harness contemporary technologies effectively, rather than just replicating current teaching practices over the internet or video. The second pertains to the role of the teacher. Some earlier attempts to beam lectures of highly regarded professors into the classrooms of small engineering colleges floundered because teachers in these colleges felt threatened. The role of the teacher has to be recrafted for a technology-driven new higher education model to work.
We should create a distinctive Indian model of higher education, but not by harking back to Nalanda or Takshashila. We shouldn’t be content with enhancing research output and thereby competing for world rankings. Instead, in addition, we should take on the challenge of bridging the quality-scale trade-off in higher education. This is what the Indian model of higher education should come to be known for and become our most enduring contribution.
Dr Krishnan is a Professor of Corporate Strategy at IIM Bangalore. He has an MSc in Physics from IIT Kanpur, MS in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University, and a PhD from IIM Ahmedabad. He can be reached at rishikesha.krishnan@eduleaders.com 
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