In addition to making them good human beings, a primary goal of education is to enhance students’ social and economic prospects. We can achieve this only when students can access high-quality but affordable education.
It is difficult to imagine another time in the history of India when educational reforms are carried out at such a large scale to have a massive impact on the lives of our students, who, in turn, as the future knowledge force, will strengthen our country’s cultural, economic, technological and social fabric. India is now well-entrenched in the growing knowledge industry, technological innovations, stable economy, and global competitiveness. India is now also the most populous country in the world. As we go through the G20 presidency, the world looks at India with expectations to provide leadership for sustainable development and peaceful co-existence as “One Earth, One Family, One Future.”
India’s National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), announced in July 2021, is equity-driven, focusing on improving the quality of education and increasing equality of opportunities as a source of upward mobility for students. Quality education implies creating an eco-system for the students to acquire the required knowledge and skills and use these proficiently to find pragmatic solutions to their life and career challenges. Providing good education to our young population is a good investment not only because it strengthens India’s economy but also for the social well-being and economic prosperity of individuals. We must maximize returns to students concerning their employability or ability to evolve into job creators and the resources invested in their education.
A relentless drive towards performance, excellence, and quality in school and higher education characterized our efforts to implement NEP 2020. Consequently, education governance in India is in a rapid reformative mode, and preparing our students to be future-ready is one fundamental discursive justification for these reforms. The Central and state governments play a significant role in implementing these reforms.
Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), modelling their goals and strategies in tune with NEP 2020, are embracing the ethos of accountability and good governance with profound effects on providing freedom, flexibility, and choices to our students in shaping their learning pathways. HEIs are now focusing on making our students good and lifelong learners with a “cradle-to-grave” vision of learning.
In addition to making them good human beings, a primary goal of education is to enhance their social and economic prospects. We can achieve this only when every student who wants to study can access high-quality education with affordable means. Considering that India already has 4.1 crores of students in higher education, and this number will double and triple in the coming years, relying only on the physical mode of education will not be able to fulfil the aspirations of our young population. We must use digital technology to take high-quality education to students’ homes. The work on establishing a National Digital University (NDU) is rapidly progressing. NDU will function as a hub and spoke system with many best HEIs becoming partners in providing different kinds of programmes in areas such as data science, machine learning, and business analytics, besides the conventional disciplines. The use of digital technology will also help in the massification of higher education, a necessary condition for democratizing access to high-quality education.
Increasingly, some HEIs project themselves as distinct and excellent because admission into their programmes is so competitive they reject a large proportion of applicants—as high as 98%. Such HEIs must address this elitism by working on other models of imparting high-quality education without straining their resources to avoid social stratification. The BSc data science programme offered by IIT Madras is one such example. One can now get a degree from an IIT without clearing JEE, an entrance test touted as the world’s most challenging exam. More institutions should follow suit.
Why are so many HEIs testing so many students for admission in many disciplines? Despite the increased popularity of entrance tests, such tests have also received much criticism from different perspectives. One line of criticism mainly concerns the mental and financial undue pressure our students experience. In 2022, UGC introduced Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for admissions to undergraduate programmes. CUET has now become a large admission test, with more than 240 universities adopting CUET for their admissions and more than 14 lakh students sitting for CUET for admissions in the 2023 academic session.
Currently, individual HEIs have different credit systems and learning outcomes and have created a system where students’ mobility across disciplines and institutions has become very difficult. To make education more holistic and effective and for the integration of general (academic) education, and vocational education, UGC has recently announced the National Credit Framework (NCrF). The NCrF is an enabling framework. It lays down the basic principles of creditization of learning from various dimensions, i.e., academic, vocational skills, and experiential learning, including recognition of prior learning. It enables seamless integration of all forms of learning from school to higher education. NCrF would be operationalized through the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC).
An important reform that will transform undergraduate education is the introduction Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) in all disciplines with multiple entry and exit options. Students will also have the opportunity to gain multidisciplinary education by opting for one major and one minor area or two major areas in distinct disciplines. HEIs must consider what are possible or impossible and already existing circumstances before embarking on starting FYUP. UGC has asked the HEIs to establish FYUP only when the HEIs have an adequate number of teachers and are running postgraduate programmes with some research facilities. This has motivated many HEIs to start FYUP. As many as 150 universities have decided to start FYUP from the 2023-24 academic session. Students completing FYUP will have the opportunity to go for employment or higher studies, such as PhD.
Soon India will have campuses of foreign universities offering undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programmes in emerging areas of science and technology. Their presence will help those students who wish to stay in India but access high-quality education from foreign educational institutions. The possibility of research collaborations between these foreign university campuses and Indian institutions is exciting.
These are stimulating times for India in the education sector. How NEP 2020 reforms impact the Indian educational system around the country is fast emerging as a clear resolution in sight.
- Prof Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar is Chairman, University Grants Commission (UGC) and former Vice Chancellor, Jawahar Lal Univeristy (JNU). Views are personal.