Chennai: Regretting that India ranked second from the bottom among 63 countries in school education rankings, eminent educationist and VIT chancellor G. Viswanathan recommended a hard relook at the manner in which the Centre and state governments have handled the critically important education sector.
“We have great hopes that the Narendra Modi government will bring us the long-needed reforms and get rid of the many growth impediments in the education field. India has a great potential to emerge as world leader in education and I think our time has come,” Mr Viswanathan told DC.
Among the biggest problems dogging the education sector, according to him, is the ‘unholy’ nexus between unethical education entrepreneurs and corrupt government officials and politicians. “A system has developed and got deeply entrenched, wherein even serious violations can be pushed through for a price. This situation must change,” said the VIT chancellor. He called for setting up a high-power committee of educationists and senior officials from related departments to study the existing system and recommend corrective measures.
“Our Union government should also send a team to highly rated countries to study why their school education systems are so good. Our universities woefully lack research and innovation facilities and the syllabi prescribing this. Even small countries like Israel are far above us. That is because Israel spends 4.5 per cent of its GDP on research whereas we spend less than that,” Mr Viswanathan said.
He said that the ideal situation, witnessed in most developed countries, was that the industry remained closely connected with educational institutions and research labs, which ensured that the universities produced employable graduates. There were now thousands of engineering graduates employed in petty jobs at paltry salaries because of the disconnect between industry and the campuses.
Speaking about the challenges that lie ahead for the new government, Mr Viswanathan there were now over 35,000 arts and sciences colleges. Of these, only about 400 are autonomous which empowers them to decide on their curriculum and syllabi, besides administrative freedom.
“As an autonomous institution, VIT University upgrades syllabi every six months, taking into account the global trends and also industry needs. Whereas, government universities do not do this even once in four years,” he said.
He pointed to the corruption in appointment of vice-chancellors of prestigious government-controlled universities. “There is corruption. Do you know that there is no minimum qualification requirement for becoming a vice-chancellor whereas even an assistant professor must be a Ph.D?” he asked.
