What India’s higher education ecosystem needs today?

It can be said that from a normal person’s perspective, imparting subjective knowledge and triggering mental development are the two main objectives of education. But from a scholar’s point of view, education enables and empowers people, and it provides them with diverse knowledge, expertise and skills. Education equips people with basic values and ethics to make them sharp enough to deal with the real world. The objectives of education in today’s world are to transfer social heritage, physical, mental, social, moral, cultural, vocational and character formation, entrepreneurship development, citizenship training, and so on.

As universities and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) move towards academic reforms, an ecosystem that is both flexible and innovative is being created in the current educational systems across the globe. Experts have highlighted the significant emerging trends in the higher education sector and underlined the global best practices in many global platforms.

The education experts feel that the latest NEP 2020 is built on the foundational pillars of access, equity, quality, affordability and accountability and further adds value to the Indian education system. Experts also state that the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and aims to transform India into a vibrant knowledge society and a global knowledge superpower.

In the digital era, the educational ecology also has a decentralised learning ecosystem for online education and professional development that teaches people how to build complete products in future technological fields and to improve their job skills.

Higher Education in India

As per the University Grants Commission (UGC), the total number of universities in India as of now are:

• State Universities: 453
• Deemed to be Universities: 126
• Central Universities: 54
• Private Universities: 410.

In total, there are 1,043 universities in India and the higher education divulges in-depth knowledge and understanding in these universities. All of them are striving hard to assist the students in progressing and advancing them to the new frontiers of knowledge in all respects. Indian higher education also provides opportunities for lifelong learning, allowing people to upgrade their knowledge and skills from time to time based on societal needs and changes. Higher education also offers opportunities for the exchange of research results, experience and insights and provides an opportunity for ongoing discussion between experts.

What India needs today in the Education Ecosystem?

Many experts believe that universalisation of education is the need of the hour in India and education must be associated with national development. Many committees and commissions were set up for educational reforms in the past to achieve this initiative. With the passage of time, the innate abilities of teachers and the process that develops their personality are seen as essential factors for social and national development.

Currently, to become a global power in the field, Indian higher education institutes need two main things; (1) More weightage on citation (2) Weightage on research. In western countries nearly 30% of emphasis is given on citations and 30% on research. The experts urge that India must think and reflect upon the reality of its education system from taking inspiration from western countries.

Efforts are made in this context under the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The recent New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, is based on the foundational principles stress on access, equity, quality, affordability and accountability in the Indian education system. 

The NEP 2020 policy believes that the education system should develop good human beings with rational thinking, compassion, empathy, courage, resilience, scientific temper, creative imagination and ethical values. Also, India needs to increase Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education from the current 26.3 per cent to at least 50 per cent by 2035.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the Internationalisation of higher education, indigenous and empirical research and innovation and movement of students globally needs to be encouraged to make the Indian Education system best among the others. The students need to learn and then return to their own society, and the Institutes need more autonomy and the size and scope of interdisciplinary subjects needs to be increased.