The document discusses several issues with India's higher education system and proposes solutions. It notes that while India has the second largest higher education system, only 6% of the eligible population accesses it, below developed countries. The key issues discussed are: education promotes rat racing over critical thinking; skills taught are irrelevant for jobs; students lack entrepreneurial ambition; and education fails to reduce social disparity. Solutions proposed include public-private partnerships, industry-academia connections, funding increases, e-learning, uniform standards, and forming an Indian Higher Education Service. The overall goal is for higher education to better prepare students for an unpredictable future.

1. “Higher Education- Lost in it’s Voyage, Is it a compass or an
engine?”

2.  It is worth noting that while India has the second largest
system of higher education, next only to USA, the total
number of students hardly represent 6 percent of the
relevant age group, i.e., 18 - 23, which is much below the
average of developed countries, which is about 47%.
Thus, access, equity, accountability and quality should
form the four guiding principles, while planning for higher
education development in India in the twenty-first century.
 In the next 30 years , according to UNESCO more students
will graduate than starting of the education system

3. PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT
INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION
SYSTEM:

4.  Education System Promotes Rat Race:
 No Critical Analysis, only Following the
Establishment:
If you want a society should become a lot better than
we must develop a culture of looking at things
critically. Students must learn to criticize our own
culture and other established narratives.
 Education Given is Irrelevant to Job-Market:
It is simply because skills that are required in a job
market are simply not present in a fresh graduate. All
that a student is taught in his entire school and college
life is almost redundant for job markets.

5.  Students Happy in Getting a Highly Paid Salary
Job but Lacks Ambition to Become Entrepreneur:
Now, in college campuses it has become a common
thing that every young student is interested in a
getting a job that pays them well. However, they would
never like to become an entrepreneur.
This lack of ambition does not allow our country to
excel in any field. This attitude of our children making
them slaves of few multinational companies.
Therefore our education system should be designed to
make our children a successful entrepreneurs rather
going for a salaried job.

6.  Lack of creativity and research work : Kids are not
frightened of being wrong. They will take a chance.
Being wrong is not the same thing as being creative. If
you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come
up with anything original. By the time they become
adults most students have lost that capacity and are
frightened of being wrong. “We now stigmatize
mistakes” . And we are running national education
system where mistakes are the worst thing you can
make. In the current scenario we rather believe
that an individual grows out of creativity in the
process of education.

7.  Education inflation : a job that initially required a
bachelors degree now requires a masters degree and
one that required a masters degree now requires a
PhD. Hence we need a diversified approach towards
our education system and new courses need to be
opened to cater our increasing needs.

8.  Gross Failure of Our Education System to End
Social Disparity:
Another failure of our education system is after so
many years it has not being able to reduce social
disparity in our country. In fact, social disparity has
gone up.
It is such a shame that education itself has become a
tool for creating divisions. A child of a rich parent
would get good education and a child of poor parent
cannot afford even a basic education.

9.  “It’s education that’s meant to take into future that we
cannot grasp. A child starting school this year will be
retiring in 2065 and nobody has a clue what the world
will look like in five years time. And we are meant to
educate them for, so the unpredictability is
extraordinary. Creativity now, is as important as
literacy and we need to respect it with the same
status.”
 It’s a step forward that at least now we recognize the
scale of the challenge. But, there is no such way that it
can be achieved by the government only.

11.  Public Private Partnership: PPP is most
essential to bring in quality in the higher education
system . India needs to make sure that private
universities are encouraged, and that the legislation to
create them is enabling.
The recent decision to allow the world’s top 400
foreign universities to open up campuses in India are
useful ways to address the challenge.
The industries belonging to a specific discipline or
related disciplines shall be encouraged to establish
state of the art Research and Training centres to
develop the necessary specialized man power.
 International Cooperation
 Examination Reforms

12.  We need to change our industrial or work based model
of education .
 Every education system in the world has a order in
which subjects are ranked acc. to their importance in
the industrial process .
 Human resources are like natural resources .

13.  Industry and Academia Connection: Industry and
Academia connect necessary to ensure curriculum and
skills in line with requirements.
To Provide Need Based Job-Oriented Courses : All
round development of personality is the purpose of
education. But the present day education is neither
imparting true knowledge of life and nor improving
the talent of a student by which one can achieve
laurels in the field one is interested.
 Incentives to Teachers and Researchers.
 Low teacher pupil ratio.
 Most of the Indian colleges and universities lack
in high-end research facilities.

14.  Increase funding: The decline in public funding in
the last two plan periods has resulted in serious effects
on standards due to increasing costs on non-salary
items and emoluments of staff, on the one hand, and
declining resources, on the other.
Industries and individuals may be encouraged to
channel a percentage of their profits to the higher
education sector, with no strings attached to such
contributions.
 Coming of Information Age :The world is entering
into an Information Age and developments in
communication, information and technology will
open up new and cost-effective approaches for
providing the reach of higher education to the youth
as well as to those who need continuing education for
meeting the demands of explosion of information.

15.  It is high time that an Indian Higher Educational
Service, along the lines of the IAS, is formed.
 To provide a broad choice of courses , like Health
Management, Fitness Management and Sports
Marketing.
 E-Learning appears to be a fast emerging mode of
global entry at the present time.
 There should be uniformity, as far as possible, in the
standards of the courses, academic calendar and the
examination system of Universities.

16.  Towards a New vision : India realizes, like other
nations of the world, that humanity stands today at the
head of a new age of a large synthesis of knowledge,
and that the East and the West have to collaborate in
bringing about concerted action for universal
upliftment , and lasting peace and unity.