Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

the forecast for increasing inclusiveness falls short. In a recentconvocation address, the Union Minister for Human Resource andDevelopment, Kapil Sibal, admitted: “While we aim at scaling upthe number of students enrolling in colleges to 42 million in 2020from the present 14 million, still 160 million students will be leftout. To give them alternative education, we need investments thatmay also come through foreign institutes.”Foreign optionsThis recourse to foreign investment signals the harsh reality thatthere is a definite market in India for foreign degrees. At the schoollevel even, new possibilities have emerged for many students whocan afford an international baccalaureate (IB) education. Opting forIB schools can, in cities like Mumbai, easily cost around USD2,500a month and many are comfortable with paying the fees for ‘international’quality. IB students frequently go on to an undergraduateeducation abroad and liberalization seeks to further this option forboth the state and the universities seeking new markets.There is no doubt that the mere scale of India’s youth and currentinfrastructural limitations warrant global alternatives. Already, manyreputable universities are poised to set up local campuses within India.A typical accusation from the quality/quantity school of debate woulddecry those who possess such options. However, the true scandal is notin the reality of those who exercise their choices, but in India’s inability toprovide more choices for the many who seek a quality college education.Unequal choicesA true liberalization of Indian college education would successfullyredress issues of demographic needs along with that of quality.Previously, democracy’s logic dictated that college education had tocater to scale, even at the expense of quality. Today we are dealingwith an increasing inequality where democratic reforms allow richconsumer access to a personalized curriculum, while the rest merelyfight it out for seats. The anxiety of the middle classes translates intopressures of professional competitiveness (as recently memorializedin the successes of Hindi films such as Three Idiots andTaare Zameen Par), robbing students of valuable choices.By reducing all quests for education into that of admissioninto a profession, the very possibility of anotherexperience is pre-empted. At the core, all the debates onregulation and delivery of quality stem from two basicproblems. Firstly, the segregation of knowledge throughstreamlining that occurs for most Indians at the age of 15,when they have to choose between professional coursesor arts, science and commerce. Secondly, under the guiseof managing scale through affiliation, universities governthe curricula and admissions procedures of colleges withwhose needs they are barely familiar.While these concerns might seem like operationalflaws, their impact on the real-life choices of studentscannot be emphasized enough. A common enoughpractice implemented in liberal arts colleges around theUS serves as a fundamental threat to the Indian styleof college education, modelled on economies of scale.The idea that undergraduate education should fostera wide view of disciplines – encouraging samplingacross several disciplines before the eventual selectionof major and minor specializations – is severely aliento Indian colleges. That the current system emphasizesspecialization and watertight choices at an early ageneatly fits with parental aspirations to early professionalizationand guaranteed jobs. Such a system disbursesa colonial legacy of fostering narrow expertise for practicalapplication, over the substantive experience of awell-rounded college education that teaches breadthand reflexivity. Sadly, college education has neatlydovetailed with the needs of an information society,further imperilling the sustainable development of theminority of youth, who amidst disparities manage toarrive in college.Image: FLAMEAt FLAME, students spend their first two years acquiring a solid foundation in the fundamentals of several disciplines before choosing a major[ 180 ]