Hyderabad: “The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education institutes in the country is only 25 per cent, whereas many foreign countries are leading with 50 per cent. And none of our universities are in the top 100 universities in the world, because of which we are lacking foreign students in the country, which is a key criterion for scoring better in accreditation and ranking around the world,” said Vijay Kumar Saraswat, NITI Aayog member at a two-day workshop organised by Telangana State Council for Higher Education (TSCHE) and other organisations. Policy makers, educational administrators and other experts attended the workshop on Monday.
GER is a statistical measure for determining the number of students enrolled in undergraduate, postgraduate and research-level studies within a country. India is aiming to attain a GER of 30 per cent by 2020, but it is still far behind countries like China with GER of 43.39 per cent and the US with 85.8 per cent.
GER in higher education in India has registered an increase from 24.5 per cent in 2015-16 to 25.2 per cent in 2016-17, according to the latest All India Higher Education Survey (AIHES) released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD)
Experts also pointed out that there is a need of Education 4.0 for the Industry 4.0 that is emerging rapidly, in order to take advantage of the ever growing industrialisation, and quality should be the focus rather than quantity.
G. Jagadish Reddy, Minister for Education, who was at the workshop, pointing to the brain drain in the country, said,
“Research and Innovation needs to be taken up by bright students, most of whom tend to go to foreign countries.”
If we want the best and brightest of students to stay on in the country, we must create an ecosystem for them to stay back, like in foreign countries. We should be able to provide them with a platform where their skills and potential can be best utilised, added NITI Aayog’s Mr Saraswat.
Experts also pointed out that many toppers are going to foreign countries because of the prestigious universities in the US and other countries.
We don’t have a single university in the top 100 global universities. If we could take our universities to that level, not only will our students prefer to stay back, but we could also attract foreign students. The shift from science to arts was also raised in the workshop.
One participant pointed out that “today more science students are unemployed than arts students. Hundreds of engineers are jobless. One of the high employment sectors is the service sector, where many arts students are taking the lead.”
