Imagining India

In Cry for Freedom, former Wuhan University President Liu Daoyu is talking about the Chinese education system, but much of what he says about the early education crisis in China could have been said verbatim, for the present challenges in India’s higher education system. 

Particularly, this: 

“we must lift the screws on people’s minds and tap into their initiative and enthusiasm.”

Most of us have noticed the gradual politicisation of India’s colleges over the last few decades, but we rarely debate how insidious the effects of this are on innovation in higher education. The lack of independence for our vice-chancellors and deans, the politicisation of student unions, the dependence on the government for budget and spending approvals - all these make our universities risk-averse, dogmatic, and finally unable to fulfil their main function: equipping their students to function effectively, and productively, in the economy.

Consider how rigid our colleges are: in India, we have still not embraced the concept of cross-disciplines. An Indian student from year one in college, can either do an engineering or a commerce degree. In fact, he does not attend a university in the true sense; he has to function within the narrow confines of a specific department. Universities in Europe, US and increasingly in China on the other hand, allow students the flexibility to choose their subjects, even switch between majors if they find that their interests have shifted to say, marine biology rather than medicine by the second year. 

The rigid system that our colleges now use do students a disservice. How for example, can a student be certain that she wants to become a software engineer unless she first takes a few courses? Perhaps, the student might discover a bent for research, or for computer graphics. Its unreasonable to lock someone in at the age of eighteen, right out of school, onto a particular career path. 

(This is the first of some higher education posts. I’ll follow up with more thoughts.)