Edu-leaders

To boost quality and capacity of the Indian higher education, the Centre has embarked on an ambitious project to launch a number of high-quality centres of learning in a phase-wise manner.

We call it ambitious because plans are on the anvil to build eight Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), fourteen worldclass universities (read: innovation universities), and sixteen central universities. Not a simple task!

Though the plan has generated interest, no one is really sure where the projects stand today or where they are headed. A closer look reveals that while some of these central universities, IITs and IIMs were indeed underway, the concept of innovation universities, though very exciting, is still on paper.

As usual, this ambitious revamp of our education system has stirred up debate among academics and educational administrators. The biggest of them centres on whether we are giving up on the old in favour of the new—why are we not first addressing the neglect of our existing universities and institutions before we launch new ones?

It is a fact that some of our older institutes are struggling to cope with the pressure of maintaining quality. The new plan puts on them the added burden of incubating and mentoring the proposed centres. Will they be able to cope?

Finally, the huge challenge—resource and infrastructure. Admittedly, the Centre has taken care of the financial bit by allocating funds. But the bigger problem is finding enough faculty. Even as established institutions struggle to find good teachers and face a growing faculty shortage, where do we get academics to teach at these forty-five new institutions?

India needs many, more institutions. The Government’s overall plans are bold but need to be followed by more systemic changes that will address issues of faculty shortage, decline of our existing institution, etc., at the next level as well.

Dr Pramath Raj Sinha
pramath@edu-leaders.com