Dr. D. Mukhopadhyay
The era beginning with 2020 is not far off by which higher education delivery mechanism is expected to be quite different from what it is today. Especially higher education delivery system shall be substantially supported by the digital environment and it is quite visible that there has been a radical transformational change in higher educational delivery system driven by innovation with the aid of most modern technology under rapidly changing academic environment. It can be noticed that higher education institutions have started responding to those changes in order to accept digital forms of education delivery system and besides digital delivery, learning is also becoming more and more digital prone mode of reception of education from the end of the students community by and large.
To make it simpler to say that interactive way of teaching-learning methods are becoming more and more popular among the students and classroom based confined method of education delivery system is taking back seat. The present era of professional and online based education is on the rise trend and digital environment is enlarging the scope of higher education in India. It is now the high time to expand the space along with emergence and dominance of new technology in the place of mere physical space. The digital era attributed with technology assisted innovation is in the process of transformation of conventional method of education delivery system. About half of Indian population is under the age of twenty five to thirty years and as a consequence higher education delivery system is under severe pressure in order to meet the requirements of higher education of such young population . The Indian economy as a whole shall be the beneficiary to reap the benefit demographic dividend. Coming decades are to poise challenges before the decision makers for providing the scope for skill and professional education to young population. By 2020, India is expected to emerge as one of the largest economies in the globe. But on date there is a noticeable gulf between demand and supply for digital friendly education in the country. The present education delivery system is facing constraints in undertaking research that can lead to advancement of knowledge, dearth of quality in teaching and learning methodologies and uneven growth in the availability of opportunities. It is perceived that private sector education delivery system both in terms of teaching and learning and research shall overtake the public sector education delivery system for which one of the many prominent reasons is the red-tapism in the decision making process. The alarming situation is prevailing with regard to shortage of teachers, non-contemporary and outdated syllabi, absence of understanding the requirements and needs of the users of education i. e. by and large the employers and there is hardly any scope and facility for interdisciplinary learning. The learners are to be exposed to the mode of critical and analytical thinking. It may be mentioned that majority of the teachers suffer from the dearth of exposure to research experience. The Universities are not having uniform standards and as such there are variations in the standards of teaching and research between the Universities functioning under the influence of urban and rural environments. The demand-supply gap is quite wider. Now the Universities have started to make in-depth analysis about their unique selling propositions. There is exponential growth in number of Universities in the country. To be specific, there were only twenty Universities in 1950 and the same has grown to about 800 in 2018.
The Universities are required to focus on developing a conducive environment that would promote research and critical reasoning based curricula. It is an imperative to strengthen teaching-leaning infrastructure for the purpose of instigating creativity and scientific academic temperament. The capacity building should get priority over the day- to- day monotonous conventional teaching -learning operation. Innovation should be the order of the day in the functional geography of the Universities. Indian Institute of Science, Defence Research and Development Organization and Indian Space Research Organization are some of the best research institutions in the country and they can be used as the benchmark. We should not initially aspire to be Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. India does have adequate strength to do best in academia but her true potential remain unexplored even after the passage of seventy years since she attained her independence from the British. Entrepreneurship needs to be promoted without having a second thought. If we look at the countries which are known to be developed nations today, it may be seen that the entrepreneurship and start-ups acted as the pivotal force for forward movement of the industrial wheel of their economies. The Indian economy cannot grow unless youngsters are encouraged and facilitated to launch their own business . This model is capable to generate employment in mass scale. Education is the only weapon that can make people innovative and creative and education is the only tool that can bring about transformational changes in the way of living of the people. It is not understandable as to why only three to four percent of the national income should only be allocated for education. Every University should have a business incubation centre in order to promote, nurture and mentor the young graduates and make them self sufficient and self reliant. The students should be encouraged to launch their own start-ups simultaneously along with classroom teaching and laboratorial research and teachers should take part in confidence building and motivating the postgraduate level students so that they do not feel insecure. The project based teaching-learning methodology is generating good results and online learning is about to eclipse the classroom based learning in a short while. The digital age has already started to take off and everybody in a family are becoming more and more digital savvy gradually. Digital Technology is a cost effective tool to educate more people at a time. India is the abode of one hundred and thirty crores of population and all round development is not possible unless everybody is exposed to modern education and that is possible only though digital mode of education delivery system. But besides digital delivery , traditional Universities need to exist since they play a great role in fostering social tolerance and respect for law of the land. However, certain brainstorming exercises are required to be adhered to by the society in order to embed academic culture in order to make the small and obscure institutions of higher learning as capable as other frontrunners in the academic environment. Quality education is the demand of the employers and competition among the educational institutions is making them quality conscious.
The conventional educational institutions are under tremendous pressure for maintaining their relevance under digital environment of education delivery system. Higher education in India has started to become costlier though not as costly as in the developed countries such as USA, UK etc. According to the available statistics, the educational loan in India has touched a figure of Rs. 700 billion in December 2016 against the a trillion dollars in the USA during the same period. Government of India has targeted to raise the Gross Enrolment Ratio to 30% by 2020 from 23.6% as on date. There is trend in up-ward rise in capital expenditure in building physical and digital infrastructures and the same itself is the indicator of high cost of education delivery mechanism. Presently, almost ninety percent of the students carry mobile and are armed with internet facility. Mobile is used for multipurpose and specifically speaking, for the purpose of information processing and dissemination of information and so on.
Today’s students are becoming habituated to rely on online databases and e-learning mode in the place of traditional classroom based lectures by leaps and bounds. Besides, examinations pattern and process of evaluation and assessment are under rapid metamorphosis. Students are being given more freedom to choose the subjects and they demand that teachers cannot deliver lecture what they think the best for students but time has already come when a teacher is to deliver a lecture on the subjects the students want. In other words, teaching-learning phenomenon becomes student centric. The demand for new knowledge from the students are on rise and today’s knowledge becomes irrelevant tomorrow. Now-a days students are in favour of short-term courses and they demand application oriented knowledge rather than mere theoretical studies. The institutions of higher learning including Universities shall be required to provide more flexibility in teaching -learning process. There is now urgency to make the education value driven under the background of digital academic environment.
(The author is Professor of Management , School of Business and Dean-Faculty of Management SMVDU, Katra)
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