By VS Ramamurthy, Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. He believes that India does not have too much time at her disposal to refurbish its educational system in all aspects considering that the youngsters who will join the workforce in 2020 are already in schools

We are on the threshold of a new era in the history of human civilization, the knowledge era. The acquisition and use of knowledge for  personal and societal benefits is central to this era. Knowledge is also human-centric. The generation of new knowledge, acquisition of existing knowledge, and its use for development, is dependent on trained human resources.

India sees a window of opportunity in its development not only because it is one of the few countries in the world with a working age (15-59 years) population that exceeds its number of retirees, but also because its share of population in this age group is set to rise much faster than its overall population over the next few decades. Can India take advantage of this opportunity and garner its benefits considering that the window is fairly narrow? One cannot be too optimistic about this. After all, it is not enough to have a lot of young people, what is important is that these people need to be properly educated/trained to fully contribute to the knowledge economy.

There are serious problems with the Indian educational system, both at the primary and at the higher education levels. More than six decades after the country came out of the colonial rule and becameindependent, we are far from achieving 100 percent literacy. A  substantial fraction of our young children in the school-going age residing in the rural areas do not even have access to schools. The shortage of teachers is known to be chronic in the existing schools. Teaching material in regional languages is scarce. There are additional problems related to health and nutrition that impact the effectiveness of education and the capacity for learning at young age.

The secondary education sector also suffers from very similar lacunae as the primary education sector: shortage of teachers and teaching materials, and poor infrastructure such as libraries or laboratories. Another major problem in our secondary education system reaching up to the undergraduate level is the absence of skill development. It is not surprising that many of the potential employers feel that a good fraction of the students coming out of our schools and colleges are, indeed, unemployable.

The situation in higher education is even more appalling. India now educates only about 10 percent of the youngsters in the higher education age group. Among these 10 percent too, the dropout rates are very high. The opportunities for research are scarce. We have been treating research positions as yet another “job” and applying all economy measures applicable to other routine jobs. The number of researchers per million population in India is much lower than that for many other developed countries. While there are a few institutions of higher learning and research that are globally competitive, the majority of them are also below global standards. Overall, India invests less on research and development as compared to other countries having ambitions of technological leadership.

We do not have too much time at our disposal to refurbish our educational system in all its aspects considering that the youngsters who will join the workforce in 2020 are already in our schools. Change from within will come not only too slowly, but will also be sub-critical for India. A disruptive, radical solution is clearly needed.

A clue to where to look at comes from the experience of many countries, includingIndia, showing that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can very effectively be used in education. First and foremost, India today is a “connected” country. Our communication infrastructure is, indeed, globally competitive. It is being increasingly demonstrated that it is not necessary to  deploy fully-loaded, expensive computers to impart basic education. Specialised devices that can do the job as effectively can be designed at very affordable prices. Today, India hosts a fairly large talent pool of designers and application programmers who can deliver such devices.

The development of teaching materials including those in regional languages has shown significant progress in the recent years. One does not have to wait for massive institutional reforms. Of course ICT is not a substitute for teachers. It is an affordable additional tool in the hands of the teachers and the students that can very easily be targeted and individualised, and has a quick and clear feedback loop. Once a start is made, more sophisticated tools can be developed for older children and higher learning, and even for the teachers. With the right training and skills, our workforce can find productive employment not only in India, but also abroad. The role of ICT in research needs no special introduction.

“With the right training and skills, our workforce can find productive employment not only in India, but also abroad”

India was the first developing country that experimented with Satellite Communication Technology for rural education in as early as the seventies. The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was an Indo-US programme to study the effectiveness of satellite communication on rural education well before India entered the satellite communication age.

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) offers courses in the distance education mode to more than a few hundred thousand students not only across India, but also outside.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, jointly with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, offers a programme on technology-enhanced learning in engineering, science and humanities streams for students outside their own campuses. The National Knowledge Network (NKN) provides a state-of-the-art multi-gigabit pan-India network for delivering a unified high-speed network backbone for all knowledge-related institutions in the country. The purpose of such a network goes to the very core of the country’s quest for building quality institutions with requisite research facilities and creating a pool of highly trained professionals. The NKN will enable scientists, researchers and students from different backgrounds and diverse geographies to work closely for advancing human development in critical and emerging areas. The network is also a platform to deliver effective distance education and help teachers and students interact in real time. This is especially significant in a country like India where access to education is limited by factors such as geography, and lack of infrastructure facilities etc. The network enables co-sharing of information such as classroom lectures, presentations and handouts among different institutions. An early experiment, “The Hole-inthe- wall”, by Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at the Newcastle University, UK, clearly demonstrated that the acquisition of basic computing skills by any set of children can be achieved through incidental learning, provided the learners are given access to a suitable computing facility, with entertaining and motivating content and some minimal (human) guidance.

One could go on with several other initiatives demonstrating the effectiveness of ICT in education at all levels. The question is not whether ICT can deliver in education, but whether India can afford not to have ICT in education if we want to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend.

Binoj vasu, GEVP and Chief Learning Officer, Human Capital Management, YES Bank Ltd

I am sure most people in the industry as well as academia are aware of this reality, but unfortunately, there is still a majority of institutions that are trying to produce the skill sets of a horse and then trying to place them in industries that are looking for squirrels.
In other words, there still exists a wide gap between what the industry needs and what the academia produces, and while both the industry and academia suffer because of this gap, unfortunately the ones that are most affected are the students themselves.
After spending the best part of their lives trying to secure seats in the best academic institutions, students would be rightfully hoping that the academic guidance from their institution would help them land their dream jobs, and give them the skills to build a brilliant career. Reality, unfortunately, is far from this ideal scenario for most campus job aspirants.
However, good the educational qualification and highly reputed the institute is, these factors will only help students get their first entry level job. What matters even more is what happens after you get the job. Do institutions help students get the necessary awareness, skill sets and the aptitude to embrace success in the corporate world? Educational institutes are incubation centres where the leaders of tomorrow’s corporate world are being nurtured. But the big question that academia needs to ask themselves is: are we delivering what our customers (the corporate world) need? Academia needs to work extremely closely with industries to ensure that not only students get the right amount of knowledge, but they  also get the other critical aspects that will complement their knowledge and help them succeed in their roles.

“We want our executives to nurture an innovative spirit, take calculated risks, assess and forecast strategic business actions”

Corporates on their part (especially new age Corporates) are more than willing to invest time and energy to help bridge this gap. For example, as an aggressively growing young organisation we at YES Bank have strategically identified right at the onset that the real game changer for us will be our ‘People’. The executives that we are looking for in our campus recruitment programme are not just the ones who have the ability to read, write and compute but people who can develop new skills quickly, communicate effectively and interact cooperatively with others.
In keeping with the organisational ethos, we want our executives to nurture an innovative spirit, take calculated risks, assess and forecast strategic business actions, adapt to the ever dynamic business environment, take ownership of their roles and responsibilities and walk the extra mile when it matters. These are the skills that can spring out only from an entrepreneurial mindset.
At YES Bank, we consciously decided to take the bull by its horns by instilling this essence through our initiatives directly on the campuses that we partner with, namely YES-USRM (YES University and School Relations Management) programme.
Bottom line, there is enough opportunity for both academia and industry to help bridge this gap if they work in unison. The fact is that there is indeed a critical and wide bridge that lies between the skills learnt on campus and the realities of the corporate world. This bridge needs to be crossed smoothly and effectively and the crossing has to start when the student is on campus itself.

SY Siddiqui, National President, The National Human Resources Development Network (NHRDN) and COO-Administration (HR, Finance, IT & COSL), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

Despite the mushrooming B-schools offering management education in India, the standard of professional education in the country is not consistent across in terms of quality. From our interactions with various B-schools and corporates, the concept of a professional and comprehensive rating of B-schools has emerged as a specific need in India for the benefit of prospective students, their parents and also the employers. With this background, it seemed quite appropriate that rather than leaving B-school ratings only to the magazines and quasi academic set- ups, it was better if a professional body like NHRDN, representing industry professionals, took the initiative of rating these schools.
Business schools rankings will not only facilitate a student to find the right institute to join, but will also enable prospective employers to choose the right talent for sustainable competitive advantage in a world where there is a war for the right talent. Therefore, the NHRDN, in association with a media company, has started the rating these B-schools.
This initiative would be driven by an advisory committee of eminent professionals from the industry and academia. The validation process will be carried out by our expert panel of professionals coming from various streams of management across the country. I am confident that the rating of B-schools will be an important step towards identifying the gap be- tween the industry and academia. The NHRDN will not only rate and rank the top 50 B-schools in India, but also go beyond and work towards bridging the gap with the next step of accreditation of these B-schools. This would be done by providing consulting and mentoring to business schools that are emerging to be among the top 50 to help them grow and become better.

Initiatives to bridge industry and academia gap
There are various other initiatives being taken up NHRD to bridge the industry and academia gap.

Strengthening professional HR education: After the success of the MDINHRDN PGHRM Programme, where the NHRD is supporting Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, with designing of course curriculum, mentoring students, providing them with industry interface like summer internships, live projects, etc during their stay in campus, we have started a similar initiative with IIM Ranchi.

National Professor: India has more than 3,000 B-schools where students study, hoping to find their dream career after completing their programme. But due to the mismatch between the available skills and industry expectations, all the students are not placed in corporate and other sectors. This is really an issue of concern. Management education in India has not changed as per the industry needs and before this gap widens enough. The NHRDN board has launched a new initiative, concept of National Professor, which is an honorary position instituted by the NHRDN where we will invite senior academicians and practitioners to voluntarily contribute 12 man days in a year to build the capability of HR students at not so established business schools. This will help us bridge the gap between industry and academia and provide inputs to budding managers aligning with industry requirements.

Udai Pareekh’s Student Scholarship: The NHRDN has started a scholarship for HR students. The objective of the scholarship is to encourage and recognise promising HR students.

Capability building: The capability building workshops, conferences, seminars, webinars organised by the network offer HR professionals and students a unique opportunity to sharpen and build their HR competencies.