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PIYUSH ASTHANA
Piyush Asthana Page 1
 
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Making of School
NURTURING FUTURE
2009
Piyush AsthanaFor Asiel Consultants6/15/2009
 
by Piyush Asthana
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 Introduction
Before we discuss the current higher education system in India, a brief historical backgroundwill be helpful to understand its institutional context. India has a very rich history dating back several millenniums. Knowledge was preserved and propagated through an oral tradition. Inthis context, the teachers set up ‘residential schools’ in their own homes. Students were tolive with the teacher and his family and were expected to share the daily chores of the family.Sanskrit was the language of the educated and the texts were composed in this language.Mostof the major modern languages in India are derived from Sanskrit. During the rules of kingsbelonging to the Mauryan dynasty in the third and second century BC India flourishedwith the establishment of institutions of learning. Taxila, now in Pakistan, became the seat of learning where scholars journeyed to learn and to be educated. Nalanda in eastern India became famous for the Buddhist University where several religious conclaves were held. Inthe 10th century, India was invaded from the northwest and many founded their dynastic rulein India. Persian became the court language and the educatedelites became conversant inFarsi and Arabic. The dual traditions of Sanskrit and Farsi education were kept alive till thecolonization of India by the British. The British established schools to teach English and thesciences. In 1857 three universities were established in three metropolitan cities, Bombay(now Mumbai), Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Madras (now Chennai) following Oxford or Cambridge as models. Another university was established in 1887 in Allahabad. Theseuniversities imparted education in the liberal arts and sciences. The main objective was to prepare people for careers in the civil service, legal profession and in medicine. The need for technical education was also felt by the British, who established the first industrial schoolattached to the Gun Carriage Factory in Guindy, Chennai, in 1842.With this varied history of the higher education system, the current system is primarily modelledafter the Britishsystem. However, some the technical institutions in engineering and management aremodelledon the US system. The higher education system remains primarily the responsibilityof the state governments, although the central government has taken the initiative inestablishing and funding a few central universities and other institutions of national repute.India has 14 major languages. Institutions of higher education use English as the medium of instruction for most courses, particularly in the technical fields, though the regional languageremains a major cultural artifact that provides thecultural context. Only the universities aregenerally authorized to grant degrees. By special acts of Parliament, the institutions of national importance have been authorized to grant degrees. Post-graduate institutions and polytechnics can grant diplomasand are to be recognized by the All India Council of Technical Education.
Current Education Scenario in India
India possesses a highly developed higher education system which offers facility of educationand training in almost all aspects of human creative and intellectual endeavours: arts andhumanities; naturalsciences, mathematical and social sciences, engineering; medicine;dentistry; agriculture; education; law; commerce and management; music and performingarts; national and foreign languages; culture; communications etc. The institutionalframework consists of Universities established by an Act of Parliament (Central Universities)or of a State Legislature (State Universities), Deemed Universities (institutions which have been accorded the status of a university with authority to award their own degrees throughcentral government notification), Institutes ofNational Importance (prestigious institutionsawarded the said status by Parliament), Institutions established State Legislative Act andcolleges affiliated to the University (both government-aided and –unaided) As on 31.3.2006,
 
by Piyush Asthana
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there were 367 University level institutions including 20 Central Universities, 217 StateUniversities, 104 Deemed Universities and 5 institutions established under State Legislation,13 Institutes of National Importance established under Central legislation and 6 PrivateUniversities.. There were 18,064 degree and post-graduate colleges (including around 1902women’s colleges), of which 14,400 came under the purview of the University GrantCommission, the rest were professional colleges under the purview of the CentralGovernment or other statutory bodies like the AICTE, ICAR, MCI etc. Of the Colleges under UGC purview 6109 have been recognized by the University Grants Commission (UGC)under Section 2(f) and 5525 under Section 12(B) of the UGC Act, which recognition permitsthem toreceive grants from the UGC. In 2006-07, an estimated 13.93 million students wereenrolled in the institutions of Higher Education as against 10.48 million in the previous year and the faculty strength was 0.488 million as compared to 0.472 m in the previous year.Itmay, however, be pointed out that while India has the second largest system of higher education, next only to the US, the total number of students hardly represent 6% of therelevant age group aged between 18 and 23 years, which is much below the average of developed countries (47%) and less than that of developing countries which is 7%.GlobalMBA rankings would suggest that the die is already cast. According to the
 Financial Times
'2009 rankings, India account for only one school each among the top 100 MBA programs inthe world, as contrasted with 56 from the U.S. Even this(the Indian School of Business) isthe products of Western alliances. None of the top two purely Indian MBA programs (IIMAhmedabad and IIM Bangalore) make it into the FT Global 100 list. And Indian B-schoolsare reporting disappointing job-placement numbers for their graduates as the global recessiondampens demandfrom would-be employers.Framework of Indian education system
The Indian Regulatory Scenario
All the structures in the Indian Regulatory scenarioare geared towards the public financing of higher education. For this reason, there has not beensufficient emphasis on academic rigor and concentration on output.For example AICTE requires at least 1,200 contact hours for theMBA program, in addition to 6-8 weeks of summer internshipand field projects, divided over 
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