Higher Education in India: Past, Present, and Future

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00:00:18.00 People of India have had a long tradition of
00:00:21.04 education and higher learning, and some of the oldest universities that we know
00:00:27.08 were the universities of Taxila and Nalanda.
00:00:31.24 In the western part of India which is now in Pakistan, Taxila
00:00:36.11 and Nalanda, which is in the eastern part.
00:00:39.27 Taxila was before Christ, but the Nalanda University was one of the largest in the world at that time.
00:00:48.17 From somewhere around 5th AD to 10th AD
00:00:52.24 it continued, and it attracted scholars from all over the world to learn.
00:00:57.21 And the university pattern here was that students and
00:01:01.14 teachers of all disciplines stayed in big campus.
00:01:05.10 It was a typical modern definition of a university kind of system.
00:01:08.12 And it imparted knowledge in various disciplines.
00:01:12.01 But then when the Mughals invaded in the 11th century,
00:01:15.25 they destroyed the university completely.
00:01:17.17 After that for about, until the British came,
00:01:22.26 there were no formal education systems in India.
00:01:24.08 The education was then confined to individuals learning by a student with a teacher,
00:01:30.13 and that's typical guru that one would stay with the teacher,
00:01:34.11 learn from that teacher everything that one wanted to learn.
00:01:38.23 And when the British started their own way of education,
00:01:42.10 which was essentially to produce critical staff,
00:01:46.01 it was realized by some people in the country that that's not the education that will really serve the purpose.
00:01:52.20 And two intiatives were made: one was by the great industrialist Tata who set up the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore in the 1890s
00:02:01.28 and which even today is called the Tata Institute. Locally it is most common known.
00:02:07.11 The other major initiative was done by a remarkable person,
00:02:11.09 Madan Mohan Malviya who was a trained lawyer who became a politician
00:02:15.28 and then became a social reformer.
00:02:17.27 And he planned in 1905 to set up the Banaras Hindu University
00:02:23.05 with the very clear intention that this University would be very different from the British universities that were being set up.
00:02:30.00 This will be a kind of synthesis, confluence of the best of the Indian or Hindu philosophy
00:02:35.18 and the modern science and technology where within one campus all disciplines
00:02:39.22 will be discussed in a common manner.
00:02:42.23 And it was also decided that no money from the British would be taken for this.
00:02:47.15 This was to be entirely by participation of public across the country
00:02:52.28 from maharajahs and princes and zamindars, big industrial houses
00:02:59.27 and even a poor beggar on the street contributed to the Banaras Hindu University,
00:03:04.25 which is now placed upon about 13,000 acres of land
00:03:07.11 beautifully planned, about 140 departments
00:03:10.16 today. You name a subject, you name a language, you name a discipline,
00:03:14.07 and it's taught there. And this is what was set up there
00:03:17.21 and the way it was run and practiced, it very quickly became one of the best universities in the country.
00:03:26.23 Students from all over the country would want, if they can, to study at BHU
00:03:31.20 and BHU has produced great scientists, great philosophers,
00:03:35.14 who have actually been involved both in administration and science development
00:03:38.22 and philosophy across the country.
00:03:42.07 And of course many of them have been abroad as well.
00:03:45.05 And even today BHU remains one of the best universities in the country.
00:03:48.03 But what has happened after the independence is
00:03:53.04 that although we expanded our education system enormously,
00:03:56.05 and it went on fairly well until 1970 on that the education was being given the importance,
00:04:03.02 although the money was limited,
00:04:04.09 but still the quality of teachers continued to
00:04:07.15 provide the best of whatever they could be doing.
00:04:11.20 But from 1970 onwards there has been a shift.
00:04:15.16 More and more money, more influence goes to the research institutes,
00:04:19.03 and universities and colleges didn't get the amount of support both financial as well as moral
00:04:25.23 that they deserve. And in the process with increasing population, with increasing number of colleges being opened,
00:04:32.13 it became more of a kind of commercial activity than
00:04:35.07 a real education, social activity.
00:04:37.24 The quality of teaching, the quality of learning has declined and has continued to decline
00:04:43.05 until today very seriously.
00:04:45.15 That the result today is that although we have
00:04:48.20 nearly over 300 universities and several thousand colleges, the number is still too small for the large population.
00:04:55.14 But even these, the teaching quality in science is really very poor.
00:05:01.27 Most students never learn, never have the practice or opportunity of doing laboratory work with their own hands.
00:05:10.10 They just see some demonstration or they just read about it.
00:05:13.10 And the learning is more of not really getting excited about science, getting excited about biology.
00:05:20.26 It is just some information is given to them,
00:05:22.18 and they take it and that's it.
00:05:24.10 And consequently the quality of research is going down in the country,
00:05:29.28 and this has resulted in a serious introspection in recent years.
00:05:34.29 And the education is the government itself. Politicians have fortunately have also become conscious
00:05:40.27 that we are at the various serious situation now.
00:05:45.07 And if the country really wants to be a leading economy, knowledge economy,
00:05:49.12 it must improve its science education and overall education.
00:05:52.09 And consequently, in the last ten years,
00:05:54.22 the science academies, the bureaucrats, the other scientists have come together
00:06:00.13 to think about what can be done.
00:06:02.08 And some new measures and initiatives that have happened... like one is a measure program called INSPIRE,
00:06:07.18 which aims to handle millions of school children across the country.
00:06:12.12 From every school, at least one child will be involved
00:06:15.06 to be rewarded in some way for doing something in science.
00:06:18.12 And then when the students come to secondary and college level
00:06:22.05 there will be some filtration, but then those who will be doing well in science
00:06:26.10 will continue to get scholarship, and this will continue up to Ph.D.
00:06:32.18 And beyond Ph.D., there will be about a thousand people every year inducted as tenure track faculty.
00:06:37.19 If they have been doing well, with good support.
00:06:40.10 So that is something that we expect, that will attract better people,
00:06:45.11 better faculty for teaching and to do research.
00:06:49.01 In addition, now that we are preparing for the 12 plan and there have been measured discussions about this,
00:06:54.18 the 12 factor plan.
00:06:56.17 We plan for five years at one time, ok, the next five years, what kind of priorities we should give.
00:07:02.09 And there has been decided that the government will
00:07:05.08 invest in education at a scale which has never happened in Indian history before.
00:07:08.25 And the idea that every college in the university, besides opening many, many new universities
00:07:15.05 and colleges, the existing ones will be really revamped, will be given a one time grant to improve their infrastructure
00:07:21.06 and to increase research by most university teachers and college teachers
00:07:26.11 A system has been planned that let's give them soft grants,
00:07:30.08 not that they compete with more established scientists,
00:07:32.16 because then they always run out,
00:07:34.18 and they drop, but just give them some money to start up, to ask a question,
00:07:37.23 which they might not learn anything, but just do something.
00:07:41.17 And with that happening, the courses being reviewed, and there is now a clear mandate
00:07:48.23 that the teaching has to be much more broad in scope.
00:07:51.18 Students of biology must learn physics,
00:07:53.29 and students of physics must learn biology at school and undergraduate level at least.
00:07:58.28 And thus there are many ways the semester system is being practiced.
00:08:03.27 At the same time, what has happened, the other side where biology is particularly concerned
00:08:09.02 we have had something which was remarkably done in 1980, that we started giving a course on biotechnology,
00:08:16.24 which I don't think, I personally think, was not the right thing, but then this
00:08:20.05 became a fashion and every undergraduate student
00:08:22.08 who once wanted to study biology would study biotechnology instead of biology.
00:08:27.01 And these students have not really been, although they expect
00:08:30.11 that they will get very good jobs, like what people have been getting in information technology,
00:08:34.12 that biotechnology will be the buzz word and they will get... but nothing of the kind has happened.
00:08:38.20 And in the process, their training is very poor.
00:08:41.03 Having realized this, the department of biotechnology of the government of India which has
00:08:45.25 been actually spearheaded by the biology teaching has now realized,
00:08:48.23 and now it is supporting, actually, the school of life sciences.
00:08:55.02 It is funding in a measured way goes to the university departments that have done something good to improve
00:09:01.25 the overall balance, to bring together the different departments like it is also funding colleges.
00:09:08.10 It wants to increase more and more colleges to get better integrated in teaching.
00:09:14.12 And I think with that kind of situation, one can be hopeful.
00:09:18.23 And the important point to realize this hope will be the young people who join faculty
00:09:25.04 now do not remain confined with their narrow disciplines.
00:09:28.28 They must make use of the biodiversity, the enormous material that is available untouched
00:09:35.28 for research. Only when they start doing, going beyond their model system,
00:09:40.03 going beyond what they have done in their postdoc or Ph.D. work,
00:09:43.19 they start up new things, and because the advantage here is
00:09:47.06 we will have grants which do not require that what you have contributed at all in this field.
00:09:52.23 You can just start on a completely new field.
00:09:55.28 And thereby if this is really taken advantage of,
00:09:59.12 I think biology will have a tremendous future in India,
00:10:02.27 and one can really enjoy the biology in its full glory
00:10:08.06 if you look at the biological system as a whole.
00:10:12.13

This Talk

Speaker: Subhash Lakhotia

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: September 2011

Talk Overview

India has a long tradition of higher education dating back thousands of years. Since the 1970s, however, funding to universities and colleges has been much less than optimal and consequently, the quality of science education has deteriorated. Recently, the government has intiated steps to rectify this and it is now funding universities and colleges to strengthen their life sciences departments providing hope for future biology education in India.

Speaker Bio

Subhash Lakhotia

Dr. Lakhotia is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Zoology at Banaras Hindu University. His lab uses Drosophila as a model organism to study non-coding RNA, stress genes, neurodegenerative diseases and the cellular mechanism of action of Ayurvedics. Dr. Lakhotia is also well known as a mentor of students and young faculty in India. Continue Reading