The last 16 years have witnessed the greatest global expansion of tertiary education in recent history due to a 60 percent growth in student admission. India’s performance is even more noticeable—tertiary education expanded almost an eye-catching threefold, from 8.5 million students in 2000-01 to 23.8 million in 2013-14. The number of tertiary education institutions has also increased remarkably.
According to a recent survey, nearly eight colleges have opened daily in India over this period. As the World Bank researches show, students today choose professional education. In 2008, merely 25 percent of tertiary education students opted for technical education; today nearly 50 percent are enrolled in these courses. And importantly, the enormous majority of India’s tertiary level students study in private unaided colleges. Over the past decade, access to tertiary education has become more unprejudiced across all divisions—caste or income—though not so across regions and gender. Less positively, the quality of education conveyed is mixed, and complaints about its significance to changing labor market needs and employability issues are pervasive.
India is not alone facing this crisis. Other countries face same kind of issue when enrollment in tertiary education rises rapidly. These involve low levels of student learning and employability, weak research opportunities, and restricted innovation.
Three key factors restrain learning and employability in India: low levels of student preparation for college; high faculty vacancies and minor autonomy in institutes. While government attempts have led to more students accomplishing secondary education, many of them are just not prepared for college. A large number lack the skills—low academic preparation, insufficient language capabilities, little socio-psychological preparedness—needed to succeed. Secondly, as regards the limitedness of faculty, in the average government engineering college, vacancies can be as high as 50-55 percent. While colleges tend to cover this gap with guest faculty, even students in big colleges find they have no consistent teacher. Thirdly, many government colleges and private colleges affiliated to state universities have minimal
autonomy. This means they have little right in determining objectives and priorities—in selecting leaders, choosing faculty appointments or research priorities, on designing the curriculum, structure and content of programs and examinations. With limited flexibility in determining what students learn, they cannot provide students with the skills needed by a changing industry.
IIMT Group of Colleges, which is considered as one of the Top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR and Top & Best Engineering Colleges in UP is trying to set up an environment with the support of Government of India in order to eradicate above mention challenges.
