Dr. D. Mukhopadhyay
Nothing is permanent but change, says Aristotle, the Great Greek Philosopher, and every existing system needs to change and enhance the degree of its adaptability through transformability in order to survive, sustain and progress under such dynamic environment in consonance with change that take place in the society through a frequency of regular physical, biological and technological metamorphosis. Here it aims at focusing more on technological metamorphosis in general and digital metamorphosis in particular as a prominent enabler of socio-economic transformation. Technological change is such a dynamic change agent which does have direct or indirect influence over every aspect of socio-economic life of mankind and it is more so in case of education system of a country. The world is witness to see the effect of the first Industrial Revolution that took place in 1820 and it gave the birth of new human civilization. There was a paradigm shift in socio-economic system, technological advancement process and it created a consequential demand for trained and skillful manpower to manage such new economic order. The wave of the first Industrial Revolution had the repulsive effect on the British India too and such epoch making change gifted India three Universities viz. University of Calcutta, University of Madras and University of Bombay in 1857 for cultivation, advancement and dissemination of formal higher educational knowledge among the Indians.
Thereafter, manyspectacular transformations have taken place in the Indian higher education delivery system. As on date, India has emerged to bethe third largest higher education delivery system attributed with more than nine hundred Institutions of Higher Learning in the world. The constituents of Institutions of Higher Learning include Deemed to be Universities, State Universities, Central Universities, Indian Institutes of Technology(IITs), Indian Institutes of Management(IIMs), Statutory Professional Bodies such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India(ICAI), the Institute of Cost Accountants of India(ICAI-CMA) and the Institute of Company Secretaries of India(ICSI). There have been continuous changes in the higher education delivery formats as well as pedagogical changes including timehonoured dynamisms in the course curricula in contrast with education system that existed in ancient days which used to remain spread among the restricted certain strata of the society. It needs a mention that the Renaissance Age for societal transformation followed by the first Industrial Revolution made the society feel that the principal focus, of education and more particularly higher education, should be on the phenomenon of human resource development and people became more and more aware of the necessity of the application oriented education besides education in the fields of Basic Sciences , Arts and Humanities and later on the higher education that emerged in the Discipline of Commerce followed by the Discipline of Management whose common genesis is Economics and more particularly Commerce and Management received the status of Applied Economics . In this way, Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of London, Yale University, Colombia University, Princeton University, Harvard University etc. played a pioneering role in giving a pragmatic shape to higher education format which may be considered to be the foundation of today’s modern higher education that aims at focusing on cultivation and dissemination of knowledge for mass enlightenment in the society belonging to the economically developed nations in globe. These economically advanced nations have been successful in spreading time-honoured mass education with the help and assistance of modern Information Communication Technology(ICT) that expanded the access to higher education and due to this, there has been a revolutionary paradigm shifts in the higher education delivery process and in simplicity, it made an epoch making teaching and learning contrivance in cost efficient and cost effective manner. The conventional lecture halls have been transformed into virtual class rooms devoid of any physical boundary. Higher education evolution is taking place at an accelerated pace all over the economically advanced countries and the repulsive effect is not confined within the geographical territories of these nations but it spread its wings in the developing nations and economically underdeveloped counties too to a certain extent. India is one of the developing nations and she aspires to be included in the league of economically developed nations within a targeted time span of say another twenty five years and more particularly by 2047 when she will celebrate her Centenary of transfer of political power from the British rulers. It may not be out of place to mention that higher education is the pivotal force for bringing about accelerated socio-economic development in the economically advanced countries and India shall not be able to achieve quantitative as well as qualitative socio-economic development unless she gives utmost importance to the cause of generating quality education and research based on the scientific algorithm and logical reasoning . It is indeed a subject of imploration that none of the Indian Higher Education Institutions gets a room in the league of first two hundred best Universities in the world and the contributory factors among many are absence of quality research in the Indian Universities and purposeless education and it needs no assertion that research in any Discipline is the most vital and enabling tool to ensure advancement of learning and India is a country of population of 130 Billions and about 60% of her population belong to the age group of twenty five to thirty five years and therefore it is capable of generating demographic dividend if people belonging to this group are suitably empowered and adequately equipped with the weapon of skill based modern education driven by technology and quality research is the only process that can help in developing cost effective technology.
The Indian Universities are imperatively required to integrate themselves with the technologically advanced countries in order to enrich them with both the pedagogical and pragmatic course-curricula for meeting the needs of students of the twenty first century so that they can comfortably contribute to the growth and development of the employers who operate under digitally influenced economic environment. It is the high time for the Universities to focus on building project management capabilities and innovations attributed with research-bent orientation in order to have quick turnarounds under the influence of cost control, cost reduction, value-optimization and cost management strategies across wide-ranging industries belonging to both the manufacturing and service sectors.
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Now all the markets including education became very competitive and the students community by and large becomes bargaining prone and price-sensitive and as a consequence, they shall explore the markets where they are able to buy the educational services and products at competitive prices against requisite quality keeping pace with their financial capabilities and finally, they do have further options for availing affordable educational products and services such as Massive Open Online Courses. Therefore, education sector belongs to the category of buyers’ market and as a consequence prospective learners shall dominate the forces for fees determination.
Under the above prevailing circumstances, Indian Universities and Institutes of higher learning are recommended to adopt the effective measures to focus on quality research in all the Disciplines which are attributed with potential for accruing socio-economic development, cultivation of knowledge and latest theories as the basic inputs for developing conceptual framework with regard to any subject. It is of course a necessity to take into consideration the individual needs of the learners and provide them quality education and opportunities as well as facilities for research at affordable costs so that the learners are empowered with the philosophy of product differentiation and focus and as a result, they can make themselves readily available for meeting the unforeseen challenges of the future besides meeting the needs of the contemporary society at large. It may be a meaningful assertion that the advent of science and technology only has liberated mankind from the shackles of the Primitive Age when it used to eat raw flesh, lives on wild fruits and vegetables and resides in caves and trunks of trees. The most three important advents of mankind are fire, wheel and coin that was the beginning of today’s digital- age- civilization and it is education, higher education, research oriented education and perhaps the sole research that impact the living styles and create fusion for progressive metamorphosis in socio-economic development. University students, the takers of higher learning services and products must be bestowed and exposed to project-based learning and data interpretation in order to apply their class room based theoretical conceptual knowledge of a subject to quantification and conclusions based foundation of logic and scientific reasoning for giving a solution to the varied problems faced by the civil society in the day to day struggle for existence. Therefore, Universities and Institutes of higher learning must be encouraged , inspired and facilitated by both the State Governments as well as the Central Government to take the help of digital technology, virtual class rooms and other contemporarily available technologies for mass education, research and overall development of conducive teaching-learning process so that our university graduates do not become burden of the society but they can act as pivotal force in taking India to 2047 as one of the first order global economic powers.
(The author is Professor of Management and Dean-Faculty of Management, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University ,Katra, Jammu & Kashmir)
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