India’s Future Generation Needs Better Education

Our economy is growing at rapid pace and according to a recent article in The Economist (cover page story), India is expected to outpace China in long run.

One of the key reasons cited in the article is the demographics of India, a young generation which will turn on tomorrow’s growth. While statistically this is fine, but realistically, there are many hurdle to be crossed.

One area where a fundamental shift is required is education – the overall education levels in India are dismal. Take for example schools, public (govt. owned) schools dominate school education in India, though they provide education at low cost, the quality of education is low – teachers are not interested in teaching, little effort for overall grooming of students, infrastructure is lacking etc.

Another example is colleges – the number of private colleges in India have increased significantly, but the good part ends there are most of the colleges do not provide quality education but only act as profit centres. The pass-out of such colleges are not industry ready – they lack communication, IT skills and most of all practical knowledge on the subjects they have studied.

There has to be fundamental shift which is required in thinking how various stakeholders in education sector collaborate to improve the situation. Schools should embrace technology and new methods of teaching to widen horizons of kids while colleges should start aiming their students industry ready by trainings internally and externally. There has been some efforts happening in this regard already. Some examples:

• Schools are using multimedia in their classes
• The percentage system has been changed to grade system
• One MBA school in Mumbai has 1 year internship for its students where the classes happen on weekends, talking to the students it was clear that they learn much more during the internship than sitting in classrooms).
• This also opens up opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to address this gap – for example is one of my friends who has started financial training for MBA students to sharpen their skills

Steps have been taken, but we are still far far away from our goal to develop a world class education system in India.