Perhaps
India produces
highest number of graduates every year from its colleges and universities.
These include professional degrees like Engineering, MBA, MBBS besides many other
divergent degrees. And the degree certification means employability also. Having less job opportunities has resulted in unemployment in our country. But
of late, we have seen many prominent educationalists, industrialists and top of
the industry managers whining about quality of education and employability of
the passing out students from our education system. Yesterday, one of my
friends was mentioning some remarks by R. C. Bhargava, Chairman of Maruti
Udhyog on this issue. Sometime ago, Narayanmurthy had raised similar issue
about employability of even IIT pass outs. So, What is the problem?
Indian
education system has some core issues, like we are forced to study more on
“WHAT” than “WHY & HOW”. Perhaps this is result of Mecaulayin education
system, which is at the core of even today’s Indian education system. But even
after that, Indians have achieved great heights in the field of academics. IITs
and IIMs have produced number of luminaries in various fields. Then “WHY &
HOW” this lack of employability has crept in?
While
putting forth my opinion here, let me very specifically clarify that I don’t
have any opinion about state policies of India. Whatever I am going to put here
is only my personal opinion regarding educational scenario and its
repercussions in our country.
The issue
of unemployable graduates can be explained by two hindi quotes:
1. कच्चे लोहे पर धार नही चढती।
2. कुछ दोष लोहे का है तो कुछ दोष लोहार का भी है।
Now let me explain these quotes
in context of our state policies and employability of graduates.
1. कच्चे लोहे पर धार नही चढती (Pig Iron can’t be sharpened into a blade) : Our education system provides
reservations in admission. The present system of reservation is caste-based.
Therefore, all the Govt. higher education institutions, including IITs, NITs,
AIIMs, etc are to provide admission on 50% seats on the basis of caste, even
though the student has practically no qualifying ability or aptitude. Now, the
esteemed institutes have to maintain their educational level, but can these
students, who don’t have the basic qualifying abilities, be sharpened into an
excellent professionals?
2. कुछ दोष लोहे का है तो कुछ दोष लोहार का भी है (If some shortcoming are in the iron, then some faults are also in the
blacksmith): This quote says in our present context that if some product
(student) is imperfect then it is not only due to raw material, there is some
fault on part of artisan/ manufacturer (teacher) also. In the present scenario,
many highly deserving students don’t get chances, due to reservation policy, to
get admission in institutes of excellences. So, to fulfil their dreams, they
have to take admission in other colleges, mainly private colleges. Private
college management also understands this problem, hence to attract good
students, they advertise/ publicise their institutes, its campuses, buildings,
facilities, etc etc. But problem is that they lack in key ingredient for
students i.e. exceptionally good teachers. We all know, that it is very very
difficult to find really good teachers. Here, we must understand the difference
between an expert of a subject and an excellent teacher of the same.
Thus, if
we combine the total effect, we find a situation that most of the excellent
teachers are not getting all the good students and most of the good students
are not getting excellent teachers. The net resultant is lack of employability
of our college graduates.
