IN PRINT
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), a leading business chamber, wrote to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development, Oscar Fernandes, voicing concern over the steep cut-offs announced in Delhi University and the "dismal" quality of higher education in the country.
FICCI said the high cut-offs were "an indication of the desperate situations that today's children and parents are faced with due to the dearth of quality higher education institutions in the country".
"Dismal show of quality higher education is further substantiated once again by the recent QS rating of universities across Asia, in which only IIT Mumbai features in the top 200," said the letter.
"Immediate steps should be taken by the government to initiate reforms in higher education. Its topmost priority should be to nurture the youth, make them self-reliant and employed by appropriate policies and programmes," it added.
In its first cut-off list, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) affixed the cut-off for its BCom (Honours) course at 100% for non-commerce aspirants. For BA Economics (Honours), the cut-off was 98.25%.
A majority of India's population is between 15-64 years, resulting in a substantial working population. However, in the absence of appropriate education and training, India may lose out due to a lack of skill sets to meet the industry needs, it said.
According to the letter, recent surveys conducted by FICCI have showed that about 60-65% of the employers were somewhat satisfied with the current engineering and general graduate skills in the country.
India's higher education system has seen immense growth since independence. However it suffers from various challenges like access, inclusion, quality, management and resource crunch, it added.
"For higher education system to keep pace with the rapid economic, technological and societal changes, reforms in the pipeline need to be implemented on a fast track," it said.
Source: igovernment
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Anonymous Thu, 2011-06-23 08:12
Since the last 3-4 decades we are crying for so called poor quality of higher education. We never tried to improve the system rather we have been pretending to make radical changes. We talk high using such buzz words access, inclusion, resource crunch, etc. That like other sectors Asian Tigers are far ahead of India in education sector is not a surprize or miracle. We never adopted in teaching profession Problem Based Learning model, research and consultancy emphasis, cost cutting, quality assurance, etc. We don't have political will for diplomatic international education relations, we do not want to stop brain drain (China did it successfully), most of our self financing institutes are money minting plants, quality goes with certain standard of infrastructure including faculty, then why huge difference in fees, what is the contribution of industry and other professional bodies to education, what are the R & D expenses of states, industry and institutes? Unless we do not integrate institute and industry with R & D and consultancy (teaching and research, industry and instiitutes are inseparable), better not to comment on education quality and pass on buck to others, Indian Strategy..
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