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There is a battle taking place between India and China â not for today's economic growth, but for economic growth a decade from now. The field of battle is higher education, and India is losing. Big time.
World Bank statistics show that higher education enrollment is a leading indicator of economic growth. When a country substantially increases the number of university students it educates, that country tends to enjoy a spike in economic growth in the decade that follows. It happened with Japan and Korea in the early and late 1980s respectively
China will soon reap the rewards of its annual $250-billion investments in higher education. Since the turn of the millennium, China has doubled the number of institutes of higher education and increased enrollment five-fold. It has been the greatest expansion in university education in the history of mankind.
As a result, 26% of China's university-age population is enrolled in an institution of higher education, versus 18% in India. It was not always so. In 1990 and 2000, India bested China in university enrollment rates. Until China decided to make higher education a policy priority.
A New Medium
Do not let India's outliers â the IITs and IIMs â fool you. The key battlefield is in higher education for the masses. And on this China wins hands down, on both quality and quantity. Sure, India's IITs and IIMs offer top-notch education. But they reach a scandalously small proportion of Indian students.
The annual intake of the IITs currently amounts to about 10,000 students, a fraction of India's 12-crore-strong university-age population.
So what is India doing to catch up? Not much. The University Grants Commission's 12th Five Year Plan (covering 2012-2017) is short on ambition and long on vague laments ("considerable challenges remain" it says). While China has ambitious plans that it executes, India has un-ambitious plans that it fails to execute.
In 1995 the Indian government introduced in parliament a bill to allow foreign universities to operate in the country. The Foreign Education Providers Bill, a successor to the 1995 bill, is still languishing in parliament nearly two decades later.
With India incapable of rapidly building higher-education infrastructure, and stubbornly refusing to let foreign universities in to help, the situation would be hopeless but for one fact: technology is coming to India's rescue. American universities, led by Harvard and MIT, have decided to put their courses online for free.
Any Indian with access to a computer and an internet connection (whether in his home or in the next village) can take a class taught by a Nobel laureate in Boston. Or Princeton. Or Berkeley. Some 200 American universities are interested in joining the Harvard/MIT not-for-profit venture.
Education, a Click Away
The implications of free online content for Indian higher education â and for India's future economic growth â cannot be overstated. This revolution knocks down in a single blow the historical barriers to Indian higher education: uneven quality, overall lack of supply, and the high cost of sending a child overseas for study.
The availability of free online content will lead to an entirely new model for higher education in India. Forget the sprawling university campus with faculty developing their own course content. Now is the time for India to invest in a new higher-education model built around content in-sourced from top American institutions.
No one can pretend that free online content is a panacea for India's education woes. There are countless other shortcomings in the Indian system, including insufficient preparation for university studies beginning at primary school and through to secondary.
Vocational training (for those better suited to learning a trade than attending university) is another huge gap. And outside of the urban elite of Tier 1 cities, English-language skills among university-age Indians are limited, as is access to the internet.
Despite these complex challenges, the new reality of this revolution is quite simple. The demand in India is there. So is the brainpower. And the content is now available for free. The only thing required is a system to connect the content with the students.
Can real-time translation technologies be used to convert Harvard's classes into Hindi, Telugu or Malayalam? Will the new model be solely distance learning, or will students come together to discuss the material? Can existing village school facilities be leveraged after school hours?
India's entrepreneurs will find the answers to these questions and others. As the revolution in free online content takes hold, Indians should ask only one thing of their government: stay out of the way. The government had its chance. It did not deliver. Now technology is calling NGOs and the private sector to do what the government could not: offer high quality higher education to the masses.
Ultimately there is a role for the government in setting standards for this new type of education, and for certifying institutions. But that is all for later. The need of the hour is to get new university students learning by the lakh and then by the crore.
China's investment in higher education, while impressively executed, may have been poorly timed. For China invested in an old and costly model of higher education. There is a new model out there, one uniquely well-suited to India.
By investing in this model, India could yet win the higher education battle today, and the battle for economic growth tomorrow.
(The writer, a former US diplomat, is the author of China's Nightmare, America's Dream: India as the Next Global Power)
How India can overtake China in the battle for higher education and economic growth - Page 2 - Economic Times
World Bank statistics show that higher education enrollment is a leading indicator of economic growth. When a country substantially increases the number of university students it educates, that country tends to enjoy a spike in economic growth in the decade that follows. It happened with Japan and Korea in the early and late 1980s respectively
China will soon reap the rewards of its annual $250-billion investments in higher education. Since the turn of the millennium, China has doubled the number of institutes of higher education and increased enrollment five-fold. It has been the greatest expansion in university education in the history of mankind.
As a result, 26% of China's university-age population is enrolled in an institution of higher education, versus 18% in India. It was not always so. In 1990 and 2000, India bested China in university enrollment rates. Until China decided to make higher education a policy priority.
A New Medium
Do not let India's outliers â the IITs and IIMs â fool you. The key battlefield is in higher education for the masses. And on this China wins hands down, on both quality and quantity. Sure, India's IITs and IIMs offer top-notch education. But they reach a scandalously small proportion of Indian students.
The annual intake of the IITs currently amounts to about 10,000 students, a fraction of India's 12-crore-strong university-age population.
So what is India doing to catch up? Not much. The University Grants Commission's 12th Five Year Plan (covering 2012-2017) is short on ambition and long on vague laments ("considerable challenges remain" it says). While China has ambitious plans that it executes, India has un-ambitious plans that it fails to execute.
In 1995 the Indian government introduced in parliament a bill to allow foreign universities to operate in the country. The Foreign Education Providers Bill, a successor to the 1995 bill, is still languishing in parliament nearly two decades later.
With India incapable of rapidly building higher-education infrastructure, and stubbornly refusing to let foreign universities in to help, the situation would be hopeless but for one fact: technology is coming to India's rescue. American universities, led by Harvard and MIT, have decided to put their courses online for free.
Any Indian with access to a computer and an internet connection (whether in his home or in the next village) can take a class taught by a Nobel laureate in Boston. Or Princeton. Or Berkeley. Some 200 American universities are interested in joining the Harvard/MIT not-for-profit venture.
Education, a Click Away
The implications of free online content for Indian higher education â and for India's future economic growth â cannot be overstated. This revolution knocks down in a single blow the historical barriers to Indian higher education: uneven quality, overall lack of supply, and the high cost of sending a child overseas for study.
The availability of free online content will lead to an entirely new model for higher education in India. Forget the sprawling university campus with faculty developing their own course content. Now is the time for India to invest in a new higher-education model built around content in-sourced from top American institutions.
No one can pretend that free online content is a panacea for India's education woes. There are countless other shortcomings in the Indian system, including insufficient preparation for university studies beginning at primary school and through to secondary.
Vocational training (for those better suited to learning a trade than attending university) is another huge gap. And outside of the urban elite of Tier 1 cities, English-language skills among university-age Indians are limited, as is access to the internet.
Despite these complex challenges, the new reality of this revolution is quite simple. The demand in India is there. So is the brainpower. And the content is now available for free. The only thing required is a system to connect the content with the students.
Can real-time translation technologies be used to convert Harvard's classes into Hindi, Telugu or Malayalam? Will the new model be solely distance learning, or will students come together to discuss the material? Can existing village school facilities be leveraged after school hours?
India's entrepreneurs will find the answers to these questions and others. As the revolution in free online content takes hold, Indians should ask only one thing of their government: stay out of the way. The government had its chance. It did not deliver. Now technology is calling NGOs and the private sector to do what the government could not: offer high quality higher education to the masses.
Ultimately there is a role for the government in setting standards for this new type of education, and for certifying institutions. But that is all for later. The need of the hour is to get new university students learning by the lakh and then by the crore.
China's investment in higher education, while impressively executed, may have been poorly timed. For China invested in an old and costly model of higher education. There is a new model out there, one uniquely well-suited to India.
By investing in this model, India could yet win the higher education battle today, and the battle for economic growth tomorrow.
(The writer, a former US diplomat, is the author of China's Nightmare, America's Dream: India as the Next Global Power)
How India can overtake China in the battle for higher education and economic growth - Page 2 - Economic Times
