INTRODUCTION:

Indian higher education system is the third largest higher education system in the world after China and USA. Having the largest demographic dividend in the world, it is our responsibility to develop a vibrant system of education to transform them into human capital and pave the way of New India.

India has a great tradition of nurturing knowledge since ancient times, world's first university was in Nalanda (Bihar), which was known globally for advancement in almost all streams of knowledge like Mathematics, Political Science, Astronomy, Ethics, Science, and Medicine as well. But modern education system of India which is product of colonial rule, has not been adequate according to Indian needs which is yielding only limited development of innovative ideas and scientific temper as very foundation of this education system is established to provide clerks not scientists.

Unlike USA, India Education system has pyramidal structure, pre-primary education level placed at bottom, in upward direction from pre-primary to primary, primary to secondary level and secondary level to higher education. Thus, higher education is on the top of pyramid of educational structure of India which can further classified into UG, PG and MPhil/PhD levels. In India almost 94 percent students enroll themselves in 369 state universities, and only 6 percent get to join 150 centrally funded institutions, on the other hand we only have 25.8 percent gross enrollment ratio in higher education.

Indian Education system is less dynamic and not able adopt the change in worlds’ dimensions, which results a lag between Indian Education Institutions and worlds’ best Institutions. This lag can be classified into quantity and quality lags. In this paper we have limited ourselves to mainly qualitative lag. Today, we are facing serious quality crisis in our education system as in QS world universities ranking 2020 only 23 Indian institutes got place in top 1000 worlds’ best institutions.

QS World University Ranking 2021:Global Top 20
2021	2020	Institutions	Country
1	1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	USA
2	2	Stanford University	USA
3	3	Harvard University	USA
4	4	California Institute of Technology	USA
5	5	University of Oxford	UK
6	6	ETH Zurich	Switzerland
7	7	University of Cambridge	UK
8	9	Imperial college London	UK
9	10	University of Chicago	USA
10	8	University college London	UK
11	11=	National University of Singapore	Singapore
12	13	Princeton University	USA
13	11=	Nanyang Technological University(NTU)	Singapore
14	18	Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)	Switzerland
15	16	Tsinghua University	China
16	15	University of Pennsylvania	USA
17	17	Yale University	USA
18	14	Comell University	USA
19	18=	Columbia University	USA
20	20	University of Edinburgh	UK

Source: QS World University rankings

Indian Major Institutes in QS world rankings, 2020

Institutions	2018	2019	2020
IIT Bombay	179	162	152
IIT Delhi	172	172	182
IISc Bangalore	190	170	184
IIT madras	264	264	271
IIT Kharagpur	308	295	281
IIT kanpur	293	283	291
IIT Roorkie	431-440	381	383
University of Delhi	481-490	487	474
IIT Guwahati	501-550	472	491
Op Jindal Global University	0	0	751-800

Source: QS World University rankings

India’s Top 20 Asia Rank

2020	2019	Institution / University
34	33	IIT Bombay
43	40	Iit Delhi
50	48	IIT Madras
51	50	IISc Bengaluru
56	53	IIT Kharagpur
65	61	IIT Kanpur
67	62	University of Delhi
90	86	IITRoorkie
112	107	IIT Guwahati
114	106	University of Hyderabad
136	137	Jadavpur University
139	134	University of Culcutta
152	167	Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai
169	169	Anna University
175	180	Birla Institute of Technology and Science
177	156	Banaras Hindu University
177	187	University of Mumbai
188	241	IIT Indore
191	237	Savitribai Phule University,Pune
192	177	Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Source: QS World University rankings

Till now, Indians have got only Nine Nobel prize out of 597 Noble prizes distributed across the world.

Nobel Prize Winners From India
(Includes people of Indian origin)
Year	Name	Area
1913	Rabindra Nath Tagore	Literature
1930	C V Raman	Physics
1968	Har Gobind Khorana	Medicine
1979	Mother Teresa	Peace
1983	S. Chandrashekhar	Physics
1998	Amartya Sen	Economics
2009	V Ramakrishnan	Chemistry
2014	Kailash Satyarthi	Peace
2019	Abhijit banerjee	Economics

Source: thebetterindia.com

and if we talk about patents granted by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), only12,387 patents granted to India, whereas China was granted with 4,20,144 patents and USA 3,18,829 patents in 2017.

Causes of deterioration in quality:

There are many issues which can classified into three structural problems; financial, administrative and regulatory problems.

Structural problems-

Unlike Europe and USA, Indian Higher Education system is very rigid and static in nature. We don’t update our old syllabus according to global changes and market needs. We don’t have any permanent body for syllabus upgradation.

Less flexibility found in course selection and time for its completion. In India most of the Bachelor courses have fixed syllabus and are lacking in interdisciplinary approach, like engineering and medical students hardly get chance to study in humanities and other important courses required for all round development of becoming a responsible and better citizen.

Unlike USA, India has fixed graduation period, for example for Bachelor of Arts 3 years is fixed, which results limited development of student persona as compared to western countries where 4+ year college system is followed.

While world best Universities such as Stanford and Harvard give more than 70 percent of its coursework syllabus as practical work, Indian Education Institutions still follow theoretical orientation rather than experimental approach.

There is very weak correlation between industry demands and educational institutions’ supply in India.

Indian Universities except few have very less exposure to International collaborations in terms of seminar, symposium, conferences and student exchange programs. Even, within India we don’t have unique national level platform for knowledge sharing among Universities and between research institutions and universities.

We don’t have unique academic calendar for universities and set global standard of teachings. We follow sub- standard pedagogy, where old inferior practices in research are followed which again lack required infrastructure, which is resulting brain drain, in which talented students go to abroad for better options.

Financial Issues:

1. As percentage of its GDP India is only spending 3 percent on education sector and merely 0.7 percent is given to research and development in 2018-19, which is far less than China and USA.

2. Inequality in allocation; centrally funded institutions get more finances than state funded institutions.

3. Mostly Indian institutions don’t have its own source of finance, wholly depended upon Governments’ mercy.

Regulatory issues

1. Education is subject of concurrent list in the Indian constitution, where both Centre and states can make policies on it, this dual system generates infirmities in syllabus, curriculum and academic calendar, which further creates differences in qualities of education.

2. We have old system of education which is 10+2+3. (Kothari Commission)

3. UGC and AICTE are nurtured as controller rather than facilitators.

4. There are complexities in regulation as there are different types of universities having different degree of freedom such as deemed University and research University.

Apart from above there is problem of accessibility and affordability of education for deprived section and problem of gender inequality in accessibility.

Required measures:

1. India needs to spend more on education sector as per its GDP expenditure at least 6 percent, developed better infrastructure as per Global standards.

2. Government of India should establish Higher Education commission to monitor, supervise and regulate the whole higher education system.

3. India need to develop an integrated education system from preprimary to higher education.

4. Government of India should start Indian Education Services to serve in the best institute across the country

5. Indian university should have autonomy in term of finance, administration and academic curriculum.

6. There should be an all India Research Institute to develop best practices in research, and generate creative ideas.

India should replace the old colonial Education system by an indigenously developed, value based education system as per global standards and India’s need.

HRD ministry through National Institute Ranking Framework should not only rank the institute but also provide the corrective measures.

Apart from above measures, there are some other measures suggested in Kasturirangan Report-

1-There should be National Higher Educational Regulating Authority for better regulation in HES.

2-Separate the NAAC from UGC to provide better accreditation

3-HES should be categorized in three levels; research institutes, Universities focused only on teaching and colleges focusing only on under graduation.

On the basis of above analysis an SWOT analysis of Indian higher education can be done-

Strength, it has potential to compete at global level like IITs and IIMs are globally known.,

Weakness, lacking in finance, infrastructure and better regulations.,

Opportunity, largest demographic dividend in the world.,

Threats, if demographic dividend could not be converted into human capital, it would merely become demographic burden.

Following goal-4 of SDGs (Education for all- ensure equitable, inclusive and quality education with the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030 government of India has taken many major steps like NIRF for ranking, Institutes of Eminence for greater autonomy and better finance, NEET and NTA for transparency in admission. Government of India has also launched a platform named DIKSHA for teacher training. As a result of these measures, few improvements can be noticed such as number of patents in R&D is increased substantially in 2018, enrollment in PhD has also increased in STEM. But still we are lagged behind as compared to other developing countries and there is large scope of improvement and many other steps needs to be taken to improve the quality of education and to achieve the target of new education policy of increasing the GER by 50% till 2035.

REFERENCES:

1. Mishra, S. (2006), "Quality Assurance in higher education: An introduction", National Assessment and Accreditation council, Bangalore: Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Van Conver, Canada, 17

2. Higher education in India: Twelfth five year plan (2012-17) and beyond FICCI Higher Education Summit 2012.

3. New Week, Special Report: the Education Race, August 18-25-2011.

4. 60th annual report. University Grants Commission, 2013-14 (pp-50-78)

5. PWC report on "Indian-Higher Education System: Opportunities for Private Participation, 2012.

6. Sanat Kaul, " Higher Education in India: Seizing the Opportunity", working paper no. 179, 2006.

7. British Council, Understanding India: the future of higher education and Opportunities for International Cooperation 2014.

8. Yojana 2016: Transforming India School Education: Policy Concerns and Priorities.

Websites:

· en.w.wikipedia.org

· Business-standard.com

· Vajiram ias.com

· the betterindia.com

· economictimes.com

· www.wipo.int

· www.topuniversities.com

Received on 23.03.2022 Modified on 12.04.2022

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2022;13(2):113-116.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5828.2022.00019