Editorial
Access to higher education
Set the priorities right
IT is disquieting to learn that only a little more than four percent of the students passing HSC exams every year can pursue higher education due to lack of space in the universities. Clearly, something is going awfully wrong in our overall education planning.
Not that higher education is for all and sundry. For maintaining quality and imparting higher education in the true sense of the term the need for being selective cannot be overemphasised. But it has to be compatible with our national priorities and reshaped in view of more and more students making their way up to the threshold of university education. Likewise, an emphasis pattern has to be evolved in light of the changing times and the challenges of a highly competitive modern world. We definitely need to formulate a strategy for developing human resources for achieving our development goals.. A comparison with other Asian countries shows that the percentage of higher education seekers is much lower in our context.
The Chairman of the University Grants Commission has very rightly said that we need more universities to accommodate the ever-increasing number of higher education seekers. However, the education planners have to put forward some specific suggestions and an action plan to overcome the problems like acute shortage of teachers in the universities. It is no secret that the newly set-up private universities are drawing heavily on the existing resources through employing public university teachers as part timers. So introducing two or three shifts at the universities is not easy at the moment. The planners have to lay due emphasis on increasing the number of qualified teachers. Obviously, teaching has to be made a more attractive profession than it is now with research facilities provided.
There is a worry, however, about the students who get 'lost' after failing to find space in the higher education arena. We must not forget that they are the vast majority who will form the bulk of our workforce in future. It is true higher education is not for all of them, but it is also true that adequate facilities have to be created for them to eke out a living and be productive for the country. The answer lies in making them functional and employable at certain point of education. Vocational training at an affordable cost can bring the best out of them. However, it is much more than a question of setting up a few training centres. We need to have a strategy of imparting need-based education to the huge number of students who enter the job market every year.
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