Despite having thousands of institutes across the nation in fields like engineering, medicine, commerce, arts etc. our country has trailed most of the developed nations in education since time immemorial. Whether its poor infrastructure, absence of teachers, fraudulent institutes – problems have existed in the education system at all levels in this country. And that’s the reason hordes of the Indian students go to study abroad mostly to Europe, Australia and North America.
But then, there have been many instances of various countries trying to send their students over to India. Some of the students have been sent for various exchange programmes while there are other students who have been sent for a few terms. While there are a lot of students from Asia, the Middle East and Africa studying full time in the country in various fields, there is very poor full time enrolment among the students from the developed world.
Recently UK has decided to send its students for studying science, arts, technology etc. in India for at least one term.
Through this they seem to be trying to create a two–way flow of students between the countries. But then, the biggest question is, when students from India are studying there for years and working there, why can’t the same happen in India in case of British students? Why should it be limited to a few terms?
There are a number of reasons for the same. The biggest problem is India’s uninviting nature. Yes, we are one of the fastest growing economy in the world. Yes, our per capita income has risen. But what about our education system? Has it kept pace with our dynamic growth? Do our universities provide the best place for research? Hasn’t education just become a business to an end rather than something which improves the intellectual capital of a nation?
One or two terms for these foreign students are just instances where they like to learn the language, culture, do a few Indian case studies on famous corporate stories (or some historical incident / personality) and then go back. For a longer stay, the entire research and development infrastructure needs to be overhauled. The need of the hour is an organized educational culture where the syllabus isn’t just said as being industrially oriented rather implemented that way.
And over and above that, the Indian attitude of ‘chalta hai’ makes it very difficult to implement anything. The foreigners think that since everything has remained that way since eons, even the youth won’t bother because this is the way things get done here.
Until the above things aren’t overhauled, we wouldn’t find foreign students coming to study full time here. We would just get our ego boost from reading such news stories.
I am sure many of you must be wondering on why am I so particular about foreign students coming to study here. My views are not only because of the UK article I read. But there have been many such articles over the years which generally try to market India’s education system in this way. But sadly that isn’t the case. Even though we have the IITs and IIMs, we aren’t anywhere close to world standards in education.
Now foreign universities are planning on setting up campuses in India. Will that help solve the problems?