The Financial Express
September 19, 2006

The tap of higher education is stuck

There has been, expectedly, little evidence of movement from the government on the Nasscom chief’s urgent plea, two months ago, to remove the various state clamps on educational entry and innovation. We had then, in these columns, called for vigorous action in this regard and we reiterate the urgency. Nasscom is the apex body of the IT and ITeS industries, for whom people/skills are crucial, which is why their head was making the plea; he’s urged it for quite some time. But this isn’t about just industry. According to recent reports from TeamLease and Indicus Analytics, there has been a jump of 25% in the number of people ready for higher education in the past five years alone. The statistics are already abysmal, in that, of every 66 students entering primary education, just one goes on to graduate (see FE, Sept 17). Not one state in India has a system where government, academics and industry together frame and monitor a system where someone who’s cleared class X has a real option of apprenticing directly in a workplace or enrolling in a course of the kind which addresses market needs.

One result every family is familiar with is the trauma of post-school education entry, which makes high school such a joyless anthill of tuitions and marks-fever for all. With no deliverance at the conclusion either, given the huge shortage in seats, especially in professional courses. TeamLease’s report on the labour market 10-odd years down the line insists there will be over 210 million jobless in India in 2020, with nine in 10 of these in the 15-29 age group. Even if the report is substantially off the mark— unlikely, if there is no reform of the system— it would still be a sociological nightmare.

It should be clear from a look at the telecom and automobile sectors in the past 20 years that if you transform supply, you also revolutionise demand. And set in train tremendous spinoffs. Governments in India, Union and states, must invest far more in higher education infrastructure, not least in pay. Far more important, however, is to open the door to non-state entry and innovation.