EDUCATION today is not only the most complex and challenging issue nationally but also a matter of concern worldwide. The sole consensus that has emerged in the last decade or so is that a sound education system is the foundation of sustained growth for any economy. Society today is rightly convinced that it is not just ‘mere education’ but ‘quality education’ that is the best social leveller, especially in terms of mutual respect and affluence.

Even as the world moves towards globalization to become a closely-knitted community, driven and empowered by technology, education in India remains mired in redundant and outmoded objectives, somewhat like an expired medicine with ambiguous outcomes! The education system that was fashioned over a century ago by Lord Macaulay has been coupled with and crippled by independent India’s regulatory system. What began as a reformist endeavour has over a period of time assumed a redundancy that needs to be rejected.

 

Though India has only around 17 per cent of the world’s population, it unfortunately accounts for 50 per cent of the world’s illiteracy. The Indian education system is one of most tightly controlled sectors, both at the state and central levels. The Centre assumes that it is the only agency that can assess what the people need and the only one who can fulfil their needs! Based on this assumption, education is one sector where the government dictates even the smallest detail – who should run the educational institutions (only not-for-profit trusts), who should teach (only those who are products of the drill system created by the government and those who have B.Ed. degrees that have no practical value), what should be taught (redundant syllabi) and to what extent (volume of information without skill expertise). Why, it even dictates what the salaries for teachers should be.

Alongside, it has set up huge regulatory bottlenecks all along the way: schools need a ‘no objection’ certificate from the state government before the CBSE will even consider them for approval (now why would anybody want to object to schools coming up) and in many states in India the issuance of NOC goes right up to the education minister, if not the chief minister. Universities can be set up only via a most cumbersome process of state legislation and there are capacity caps on how many students one can enrol, what the fees and salaries should be, and so on. In addition to regulatory bottlenecks and entry barriers, there is the existence of cumbersome approval procedures for starting new courses, slow syllabi revision, and weak and arbitrary accreditation systems.

This might have been understandable, possibly acceptable, were this a formula for ensuring a high quality and fair education system that provided education to all. Unfortunately, decades of over-regulation has resulted in an abysmal low quality system (not even the IITs and IIMs, India’s premier institutions, find a mention in the top 200 worldwide) with extremely poor access. (Do remember that India is woefully short of capacity.) Little surprise that those who can afford to escape the system do so. India has become the largest exporter of students in the world, sending over 200,000 students and over $ 4 billion a year to universities across the world, all because we continue to exist in a time warp with fossilized ideas and limited imagination. Evidently our dysfunctional system works only for those who control the system.

 

Fortunately, there seems to be a rising irreversible tide. Indians are increasingly exercising their choice by voting with their wallets. They are choosing to send their children to private schools and in many parts of India enrolment in free government schools has dwindled while enrolment in private schools has increased. Like a cacti that thrives in the most inhospitable environment in a desert, private education in India is not just surviving, but thriving. It must be doing something right if despite the lack of any kind of incentives and in the face of a hostile regulatory environment, it is still able to offer services that resonate with middle class India.

To think that legitimizing private for profit education will necessarily exploit customers is laughable. The government has a duty to protect the consumer’s interest for everything – from telecom, insurance, infrastructure, food and so on. There is no basis to the claim that the for profit private sector exploits customers; on the contrary, an absence of choice is the biggest exploitation. We all know what happened to the automobile, telecom, insurance, aviation sectors among others, once competition was introduced. Few today doubt that competition and choice are good and increasingly, few argue against for profit participation in any other item of daily critical consumption such as hospitals, roads, communication etc. The argument that education is a social good and must, therefore, be kept away from profit seeking capital does not hold good in today’s India where even a basic item like water can be sold for a profit.

We must realize that given the education crisis that we face in India, it is not an either or situation. All stakeholders – private, public, state owned, philanthropic, charitable and so on – must put in all their energies. Already a decade behind in provision of capacity and quality, we must now begin to leapfrog.

 

Innovation and development are among the key contributions of the for profit sector to the world. Whether it is in the field of medical technology that saves lives, newer advances in aviation that make flying safer and cheaper, new drug discovery to fight diseases – all of these can in substantial measure be traced to the R&D effort by the for profit private sector. Can one imagine a world today without the contribution made by Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Airtel, Infosys, Oberoi Hotels, Jet Airways, Siemens, and Phillips? If every significant innovation in the past hundred years has been led by the for profit private sector, then why are we depriving education in India of the power of private sector innovation?

The irony is that the government, despite being the largest educational player in the market, has a persistently dwindling queue outside its institutions, while the lines outside the doors of other non-state players, who are involved in bridging the gap and supplying perceived better quality education despite all odds, are growing longer. The dropout rates in the government schools/institutions remain high, in part because of low efficiency in the system, poor skill relevance in real life and dismally low learning and earning outcomes. A nation aspiring to become a global giant cannot afford an education system that fails to retain close to half of its children in school. Even those who are streaming out of this obsolete education system are unemployable, not because of lack of sufficient jobs, but because they are not an adequately skilled workforce.

The government must wake up to the fact that education is a service, not a commodity. This service is not only about providing plenty and cheap educational institutions, but also about how well education is delivered. The service must be based on democratic principles – the idea that every child matters. Therefore, the service requires not only mass production but individualized attention and education. It is not only about declaring ‘Education for All’ as a fundamental right, but also about educating all according to individual needs.

 

It is a mammoth task to provide availability, affordability and quality for all stakeholders in the country. Today the education system demands reform. The gaps are too large and ever-widening. Reforms need to be introduced at all levels and failure to do so will make it impossible for a significant section of mankind to face a globalized hyper-competitive and progressive world. To allow for social justice and good to prevail, and to create a buoyant economy that can somewhat even out and balance social and economic differences, and have the ability to resurrect itself in the face of challenges, the government must liberalize the system and allow non-state partners to legally enter the fray to enhance supply and serve the sector robustly. This will automatically ensure quantity and quality and bring down the cost of education, allowing the buyers a wider choice.

Hence, the government must assume the role of a facilitator and not become a monopolistic producer/controller of educational institutions, policies and practices. Education does not need government intervention any different from other vital sector of our economy, such as insurance or telecom. The proposition is very simple – the government must not discriminate against education as a sector, because in doing so it is only discriminating directly against the aspirations of all those for whom education is a passport to economic freedom and the ultimate tool for upward mobility.

 

The government must overcome its fear of losing ground and instead accept that there is legitimate space for every partner in education – private, public, foreign or domestic. The objective of all partners in the education sector must be to improve performance, enhance efficiency and ensure accountability. It is not clear why this should involve preventing a section of society from making a healthy profit. The focus needs to shift from profitability to prevention of bad quality institutions. The way to protect the consumer’s interest is not through price control, but by ensuring that the student gets the highest quality product. Thus, affirmative action must tilt in favour of choice and quality. Of course, good education should not be denied to anyone who cannot afford it; the way forward is to ensure the right financial support. Every developed society in the world has enhanced education access by providing loans to students at affordable rates. The government already has a robust student loan programme which is working well, and needs to be further strengthened.

 

For most arguments against privatization, the counter lies in an independent regulatory body that would ensure a level playing field for all entrants. Its role should be to encourage competition; rate all the providers and help consumers make informed decisions while simultaneously providing feedback to the market. Once this independent regulatory body is in place, a collective reform in the primary (kindergarten to Grade VI), secondary (Grade VII to XII) and tertiary (college and above) segments is required. It is essential, especially at the primary and secondary levels, to stop funding schools and, instead, to start funding students. This will bring in the element of competition among all players to compete for students. The choice will then rest with the consumers, that is, the students.

The consumers need to be given a choice to select the education system that can best meet their future needs and create avenues for livelihood. Therefore, there is a need to decentralize syllabus and design curriculum that can cater to the individualistic requirements of different consumers. Each player, in a free emerging market, should be able to create curriculum/syllabus, of course keeping a universal design in mind (for which the NCERT has already created the national curriculum frame-work) which is not only need-based but also creative – one that allows for intellectual freedom, freedom from rote learning, skill nurturing, and encourages holistic character building.

To ensure that students are given such an environment, a pool of talented faculty is required. India today faces an acute shortage of teachers and to handle this shortfall there is an urgent need to harness emerging technologies. Distance learning can be an optimal method of addressing faculty shortage and enhancing capacity building. Efforts must be made to create centres of excellence on the lines of the IIMs and the IITs to improve teacher training. This will attract good and talented teachers, make the jobs more lucrative and respectable and lead to effective learning outcomes for all stakeholders in the field of education. Lastly, to ensure and maintain quality at the primary and secondary levels, there is a need for a tighter accreditation system.

 

The immediate and greater concern, however, is at the tertiary level. India’s burgeoning economy needs a large number of people who are skilled. There is an urgent need to set up a number of wide-ranging vocational, professional and liberal education institutions, which are accessible to the large number of unskilled youth in the country. To ensure that no one is denied a chance to enter due to inability to pay, these institutions should be funded by loans instead of mere grants. (It would help if privately funded self-financing institutions for vocational education are also delicensed.)

India has a large pool of students who readily become net consumers of foreign education, especially in the professional and liberal education segment. Ironically, India’s premier institutions are good feeder schools for foreign institutions of higher education though they are as yet neither globally accredited nor recognized. The market for talent has today become global and a failure to retain this pool of talent in India will only contribute to the flight of intellectual and financial capital to other countries in search of better opportunities. Hence, the urgency for all players in education to provide flexibility by adjusting to the constantly changing demands of a globalized society. In simple terms this means that college education must link to industry requirements, update syllabi and technology, and offer courses that cut across narrow disciplines and offer broad-based education.

 

Access and improvement in the quality of education for many is possible through correspondence or long distance education through net education/e-learning systems. To ensure that students are participants in this global pool of talent, educational loans can be made more attractive and less burdensome. The government can subsidize interest rates and encourage loans on a need basis in addition to offering scholarships. Once this is accomplished, our colleges and universities can position themselves at par with foreign institutions and India can be a global education hub.

These concerns can be addressed and needs met if only the government chooses to educate itself and realizes that our problems have a better chance of being addressed by working in conjunction with non-state players in the field of education. As Swami Vivekananda said, ‘Education is a light that shows mankind the right direction to surge. The purpose of education is not just making a child literate… the quality of one’s life stems from the quality of education one gets in childhood.’