Cautiously but inexorably, historic ideological barriers and hurdles impeding close educa-tion — particularly higher education — collaboration between the world’s oldest and most populous democracies are being dismantled. The Indo-US Educa-tion Council is looming increasingly large on the agendas of the two coun-tries, and there’s a distinct possibility of prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to the US having firmed up several initiatives for enabling the soft entry of some front-rank American univer-sities into the tertiary education space in India.
Several PPP (public-private partner-ship) models have reportedly been readied by the Planning Commission and four-to-five models have been shortlisted. Simultaneously dithering on the issue of tabling Bills for appointment of an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE) and the long-pending Foreign Education Providers Bill 2007 is likely to end soon, although it’s not yet clear if these Bills will be introduced in Parliament before end of the current fiscal year.
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“We need to be very bold and resolute about reforms in education. Although there’s a lot of resistance from people, the bottomline is that we should move in ten directions, willing to experiment. The demographic numbers are frightening. We need to create 20 million jobs every year for this country’s youth population. We can do it as we have shown by building an entirely new IT industry with revenues of over $60 billion (Rs.288,000 crore) which has won global recognition and infused confidence in the whole country,” says Sam Pitroda, advisor to prime minister Manmohan Singh on infrastructure, innovation and information. “But education and health have not benefited from the new technologies. Therefore we need collaboration with US institutions for that reason.”
The urgency of addressing higher education challenges is also highlighted by an Ernst & Young study on higher education commissioned by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry). It calls for upgrading the Indian tertiary education system to train the growing youth population to enable the country to realise the prophesied demographic dividend. “We have identified five areas of critical importance to get the higher education system future ready. They include financial innovation, use of ICT to enable rapid scaling, improved infrastructure and reinvigorating research, liberalisation of rules and regulations for foreign investors, vocational education and training by mainstreaming,” says Amitabh Jhingan, partner (education sector) of Ernst & Young.
For the first time too, the Union government — particularly the HRD ministry — seems willing to push the education debate and agenda further. “The challenge before our education system is huge. By 2020 we’ll have 66 million students in colleges and yet close to 180 million will still be out of the system. There is no standard model in any part of the world that can rescue us. All stakeholders in higher education have to close ranks and develop a homegrown model based on public-private partnerships and collaborations. I am sure it will also do global good,” Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal told a FICCI higher education summit on November 6.
Reputed offshore educationists also advise that institutions of higher education need to be upgraded to meet challenges of the morrow. “More than brick and mortar expansion, India needs to develop critical thinkers and leaders to transfer knowledge to the next generation. For this you need to have institutional citizens who will work for the betterment of society, inspire, create curiosity and arouse hope,” says Prof. Richard Levin, president of Yale University, who was in Delhi last month.
Quite clearly an Indo-American consensus on natural academic collaboration between the world’s largest democracies has emerged. The missing factor is a sense of urgency.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)