Learner’s Park; The best of Indian education system yet to come, says M Sri Bharat of GITAM
India/February 13, 2023/by
The education system in India today has failed in being able to attract or develop good leaders, Bharat said.
M Sri Bharat, president, GITAM (Deemed to be University) shared his views on opportunities and challenges of Indian education system with FE Education Online.
What is the best thing about today’s education system?
I don’t think anything is best, but I would say that the horizon is exciting with what the National Education Policy (NEP) speaks about. I think the potential is tremendous. The people who have written the NEP have really given it a lot of thought, and to the elements that will bring excellence to education in the country. I look forward to seeing it being implemented and bringing out the much-desired autonomy, multidisciplinarity, and reduction of rigidity so that we can improve access and flexibility to the students and stakeholders. I think that is the best thing about the education system in India. I would also say it’s not here yet. It’s yet to come.
For the system that is there today. I think that our regulators – whether it be the states or the Center – a lot of times, have written policies to define the minimum level or floor of quality. In some sense, they’ve written policy to prevent fraud. And I don’t think that inspires excellence. So, we have seen some regulatory councils, some statutory bodies opening it up a little bit more over the last decade and a half. That has led to better outcomes and more freedom for institutions. But I think it has somewhere, it has started off wrong itself. The challenge is that for many existing institutions – that have existed in our environment of mediocrity, where they were rewarded for just meeting the floor of quality – very few aspire to reach the sky. Very few were ever given the language or the support of thinking about how to reach the sky.
I think the steps that the government has taken, like the Institutions of Eminence, whether it be public or private or giving the university access to people through the Deemed Universities, through UGC or private universities to the state government acts are all steps in the right direction. But we hope for a lot more agility.
Another element of the NEP which speaks about bringing all bodies of higher education together as far as regulation or permission giving is concerned, will really make it easy, because sometimes for a multidisciplinary university like us, to answer to different technical councils and bodies becomes difficult because they are sometimes conflicting in nature. That also is something that we’re looking forward to.
It is good for the education system if implemented where there is a single higher education body rather than multiple.
What is the one thing that you would like to change about the education system today?
The way I look at it, the most important thing for the transformation of any ecosystem is to have good leadership. The education system in India today has failed in being able to attract or develop good leaders. In the absence of good leadership, I think many institutions have lost their way. So, how can good leadership be brought? It’s twofold. One is, to ask the founder or the founding family of any private educational institution, what kind of exposure do they have? What kind of mindset do they have now?
Relative to at least an academician or an employee, the founder/founder family does have more ownership, more agency to do good. But the question to be asked is, is bad regulation attracting founders with bad mindsets or is bad regulation making even good people resort to unethical practices to survive in this challenging environment? Is something for the regulators to think about because I do agree. If you are seeking the symptom, the symptom is that there is a lot of fraudulent activity. But is that the disease? No, I don’t think so.
The challenges with leadership are that – for most of your career, you are rewarded for individual excellence, which is doing good and teaching good research as an academician, and that is what is going to get you into a leadership position. But when you become a leader, often you don’t have the experience or skill sets to be a good leader. To be a leader is to be a generalist, a people manager who can implement a vision and a good teacher.
So very few make the transition into good leadership and the ones who do unfortunately in the public setup get very little time to actually do good, because by the time they reach the age or time to become a leader, most people don’t live one term of five years as a vice-chancellor or as a director, and rarely they get a second term. For someone who believes they don’t have a second term, they don’t have the incentive to plan long-term. The overarching thing here could be that if we can hit refresh and have good regulatory bodies with good people.
Coming back to the question, I would change is that reduce or remove political interference from the education system. I think that would have a huge impact because right now the political interference or the government’s interference, the way all universities are governed, is high. That is preventing good leadership. Leadership is what I think is going to be the key differentiator if we want to bring high-quality education institutions to the country. And I think political interference and bad policies, are what’s limiting our ability to groom and create good leadership.
What is the role digital has played in the evolution of the education system?
At GITAM, one thing that has changed for the good since the pandemic has been that almost 80-90% of our meetings now happen virtually, at least at the leadership level. And this has really enabled us to work across campuses, work across different geographies. That has been a great enabler.
The teaching, learning and research activity continue to be physical and it’s important that it remains that way. During two years of the pandemic, we saw that student learning has suffered significantly. The digital aspect of it, whether it be the online classroom or online tools, enables those either who have no access but have a motivation to learn, or those who are highly motivated and have access but would like to learn a lot more than what their current programme is offering. This is for the outliers and for the under-served.
For a large population that is in the middle, who would benefit from physical education, I think that the complete replacement of a physical learning environment through a digital learning environment is not going to be good. But having said that, I think the use of many digital tools in the classroom is increasingly going up. COVID has been a great disruptor and has made many universities and organizations re-evaluate certain things.
What has been the disadvantage of digital in education?
The teaching-learning part has suffered hugely in the online world. Coming back to the physical environment has hugely benefited many of our students. Getting students back to campus has shown significant improvement in their learning. The amount of unethical behaviour and cheating that we saw in two years was high because people were switching off their videos, and found innovative ways of cheating. There are AI applications where one can type in any question and get a good subjective answer. So, preventing fraud, plagiarism and cheating, is now increasingly becoming a much larger responsibility for universities. We have to fight this menace of the negative uses of technology.
Because we do believe that learning should happen continuously and not just in examinations that are offered at the end of the term. But if they go online and cheat, then we really can’t assess their learning.
Speaking about faculty adapting to technology in improving their teaching standards and making the classroom more inclusive and interactive, I think it’s not easy for many people who taught in a physical environment for decades to transition to online teaching. Skill set upgradation of the teaching staff and technology also is a challenge in the short term.
What is the career advice that you would like to give to students?
The most important thing that any student should try to inculcate is a growth mindset. They must build the desire and curiosity to learn because the world is changing so fast. You’re going to become irrelevant if you rely on only one or two skills. If you have a growth mindset and curiosity to learn, I think you will do well in your career.
In the short term, evaluate growth sectors and build skill sets in those growth sectors. I think there are many great online platforms available for people to build their skill sets. These kinds of platforms give the opportunity for people to learn cutting-edge technology, and cutting-edge skills and keep themselves abreast and be employable if they want to seek employment. Even if they want to seek entrepreneurship, I think the opportunities that come through many of these online learning really exposes students to new ways of thinking.
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