The need of the hour for our country is to develop a workforce that is globally competitive
By Dr Ajoy Kumar Ray, Vice Chancellor, Bengal Engineering and Science University | www.becs.ac.in
In a growing global population that continually falls short of skilled workforce, we have to adopt best practices to promote skills training to the youth. There must be effective policy reforms to bring the aspect of quality in skills training. There have to be strategies for aligning education with employability skills. It is high time that the scholastic education system, the 10+2+3 model undergoes the necessary modifications to accommodate skill-based training programmes.
The need of the hour is to develop globally competitive workforce that can be absorbed in leading public or private organisations. Learning should be a collaborative and based on community approach. The content must be pedagogically effective and competent. Students should be able to mix and match what he or she wants to learn. The entire education system should be focussed on making the students turn into productive citizens.
It is surprising that a country like India, which recorded commendable GDP in the last years, has a jobless growth. There is thus an urgent need to evolve a model of development that ensures employment growth, along with GDP growth. We must encourage setting up of new vocational centres for the people in rural areas, so that migration of people to bigger cities can be checked.
The current trend in education has seen a leaning towards upgrading and updating knowledge and ideas to face increasingly demanding job requirements. Technology enabled centres have contributed their mite in helping to take forward the university level education to working professionals. Though many institutes provide quality education comparable to the best in the world, our institutes are short of facilities at all levels, be it in infrastructural or faculty, both in required numbers and quality. These problems needs to be resolved.
India’s Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education is very low. We need to expand everything from state universities to central and private universities. An all out effort to raise the GER is required. More universities should be allowed to come in and also act as competition to the local players, thereby upgrading quality of higher education. If we administer it properly and if we make sure that the right kind of universities come in, it will have a huge positive impact.
