The Lost Glory of Indian Higher Education ( By Dr.I.Goswami, Director, Management Studies, INFO Institute of Engineering, Kovilpalayam, Coimbatore-641041, Tamil Nadu, Email: idrgoswami@gmail ) One of the most renowned American linguists, Leonard Bloomfield once exclaimed – “It was in India, that there rose a body of knowledge which was destined to revolutionize European ideas about language. Panini’s grammar (ca. 350 B.C.), the earliest scientific grammar in the world, taught Europeans to analyze speech forms; when one compared the constituent parts, the resemblances, which hitherto had been vaguely recognized, could be set forth with certainty and precision”. John Archibald, a famous modern physicist who first coined Black Hole and Warm Hole and occupied the chair that had previously been held by Albert Einstein, enthuses – “one has the feeling that the thinkers of the East (India) knew it all, and if we could only translate their answers into our language we would have the answers to all our questions”. Similarly, Erwin Schrodinger, another famous physicist, known as the father of Quantum Mechanics, expressed – “some blood transfusion from India to the West is a must to save Western science from spiritual anemia.” There are many Western scholars and scientists who have spontaneously acknowledged the potential of India’s intellectual capital and ancient education systems (sanskritmagazine/india/, Accessed on 11-12-2014, accessed on December 11, 2014). Indian ancient education system was profoundly based on transforming individuals and not merely for just survival. Holistic understanding, holistic thinking and action based learning were the guiding principles of the ancient education system. Assimilation of values, aspiring for highest standards of moral and ethical practices and attaining collective consciousness were given priority over texts in the classrooms. Historically, our theory and philosophy of education have earned universal recognition for the schools /universities, such as Nalanda, Thakshasila, Vikramshila and Vallabhi. On the contrary, none of the higher educational institutions in modern India has been able to find a rank in the global top 200 global list. According to experts in the field, there might be several reasons behind such undesirable performance. Large scale privatization, commercialization and the growing impact of market economy on the education sector have been perceived as the main reasons for the decay of education standard. The education Education has become a business and the role of ‘education mafia’ in controlling the education system cannot be ignored. The uncontrolled proliferation of ‘self-financing’ technical and professional courses is mainly responsible for the scenario. Instead of improving quality, the regulatory authorities have become crazy for number-game and statistical parameters for measuring performance of the system. As a result we’ve given birth to more than 700 universities, over 35000 colleges and many other authorized and unauthorized technical and professional institutions. About 64 percent of the institutions are controlled by private players and out of total 25 million annual student enrolments in India, 60 percent study in private institutions. It is wondering disparaging to note that 62 percent of universities and 90 percent of colleges had been average or below average in terms of their academic performance (NAAC, 2010). The need of the hour is not just to debate, but rather to rediscover the ancient wisdom and contextualize that to the fabric of modern education system and practices. (Published in International Professors Project, E-Newsletter, January-2015)
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 04:49:57 +0000
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