India would be a developed nation by 2020 – so dreams our beloved former President. India, therefore, would need a large pool of high caliber engineers, doctors, managers, scientists and the like. They would be the products of the Indian higher education system.

But is our higher education system geared up? Are the products coming out of the system suitable enough for taking up the challenge? Let us not forget what Mr Narayana Murthy avers – 75 % of engineers are not suitable for technical jobs. Why? The reasons are not hard to find, if one takes a close look at the way the system works.
Any education system would throw up good products if the major sub-systems of intake, teaching and valuation are of good robust quality with the objective of providing appropriate knowledge. But the system seems to be oriented towards degree – not knowledge or education. Many universities have become exam conducting bodies and not knowledge delivery centres.

Let us take the engineering and management education in Karnataka as examples and examine the status of the subsystems. 

Intake
Good seeds give good fruits! But sample this for engineering students’ intake. The Common Entrance Test for engineering in Karnataka openly states “no minimum passing marks needed”. Almost 38,000 seats are available for the taking in the engineering colleges, while only about 6,000 pass out with distinction (85 % and above) at the qualifying +2 level. About 20 % of the seats (7,600) are available – under management quota – to any one having excess money (5 to 12 lakh) without any need of merit. Just a pass at +2 level is sufficient. This is in addition to Rs. 1.25 lakh per year as regular fees. Almost anyone with money can become an engineer, quality be dammed! Higher education is available for hire!

A similar situation exists with the MBA. If you leave out the top 100 institutes, there are other over 1,200 institutes in India hiring out over 1 lakh seats every year for giving a piece of paper called the MBA or equivalent degree. Over 90% of these courses are run in affiliation with normal universities. These are mostly patronised by those students, who otherwise could not get through to professional courses at the graduation level. This puts a question mark on the basic caliber of the students taken in. Two joint entrance examinations are held in each State as directed by the recent law. One for central counselling of “Merit Seats” and the other for “Management Quota”, each being for 50 per cent of seats. The merit seats are filled based on a statewide central counselling.

Most of these are any way under the “reserved” category. The students taking the test for ‘Management seats’ get their State ranks through the other test called K-mat. But they are then free to approach any institution and the admissions are supposed to be based on the merit list created out of the students who have applied to the particular college. No central counselling is considered necessary. (Don’t ask why!) Hefty donations have to anyway be paid to the colleges for making your name appear on the “merit list” of the “Management Quota”.

Another malice is the existence of agents, who hook the students and sell them to the colleges for commission. Applicants approaching the colleges are first admitted by taking the “building fund” or on some other pretext and then asked to take the entrance test as a formality! Recently even the rule of a common test for Management Seats (K-mat) has been abandoned. Take any entrance exam, pay hefty donation to the college and you are on your way to becoming an MBA. The best example of the law makers helping the money makers!!

So what is the result? Just visit any MBA course run under the universities and interact with the students. You would be unpleasantly surprised at the quality of students, most of whom can hardly speak or write even one sentence coherently in English, the corporate language of  India!

And now there is a move to include English as a subject in engineering and MBA colleges. Did the students not learn it in schools? If they did not, why make them eligible to join a course which needs knowledge of English as a necessity? If, on paper, they did, it puts a question mark on the sufficiency of the school education.

Teaching
Who are the teachers grooming the generation which is to make us a developed nation? Again leave out the top 10% of the colleges. Most of the balance, who are private but affiliated to some university, have faculty most of whom come to academics since they are failures in industry. The compensation system for faculty fails to attract good talent. How many would work only for passion? The salary for the faculty is only a fraction of even the starting salaries of the students who graduate under them. Higher education is the only field in India where the government decides the salary structure for employees of private entities – in this case by AICTE. The managements of the colleges are pleasantly happy with the situation, since, running a college is business for them. The AICTE norms are supposed to be, by definition, the minimum, but are conveniently taken as maximum by these affiliated colleges.

The situation gets further compounded since the law makers are also de facto owners of most of the colleges. No great investigations are necessary. Just look at the names of the trustees of most of the colleges. You will find MPs, MLAs and Ministers (or their stooges) or businessmen with political clout. For them this is a “side business”. And to think that academics is not considered an industry in India and is run by “non profit” trusts as directed by law!

Notwithstanding the above, let us take the knowledge delivery in our universities and colleges. Without going into the contents of most of the syllabi, a case in point is Visweswaraya Technological University in Karnataka. The official syllabus indicates 56 hours of teaching for each subject. However, their own calendar of events does not allow for 56 hours of  teaching, what with 3 internal tests, holidays, college functions etc. Hence, the accent is on completing the syllabus, not ensuring that the required knowledge is imparted. A scrutiny of records in most of the colleges under VTU would show the input hours of 40 to 45 hours on an average per subject. Further, for the past many years, the admission process has gone on for months after the commencement of the first semester, thus depriving many students of many hours of  learning. With the accent on just completing the formality of conducting classes, that too by inept faculty, the only recourse to the students is self study or tuitions. College becomes only a conduit for taking the university exams for securing a recognised paper degree.

The syllabi themselves are outdated and are of little use to the industry (This is despite the proclaimed mandate of AICTE to keep the syllabi current). Private initiatives like Campus Connect by Infosys are products of such a situation, where industry has taken it upon itself to teach the students what is needed. What then is the use of the colleges and the degree, which is any way hired out ? In the case of MBAs under the universities, one of the subjects requires students to learn American culture in detail! Managing India the American way!

Valuation
A university degree is supposed to be proof of the body of knowledge possessed by the graduating students. His or her level of knowledge is tested through evaluation of the examination papers. But how is the evaluation done ?

Once again take the case of VTU, which churns out more than 35,000 engineers and 5,000 MBAs every year. Firstly, the paper setters and their evaluators are the same faculty mentioned earlier. Secondly, the evaluation is done in a similar way as an assembly line in a factory. The evaluators are crammed into dingy rooms and asked to do their job at paltry sums like Rs.10 per paper. While officially 40-50 papers are to be valued in a period of 5 to 6 hours, the evaluators manage to get more papers, just to make more money. It is normal for one evaluator to “finish” about 100 papers in about 5 hours. That makes it just 3 minutes per paper! One can imagine the “valuing” done. Hardly any differentiation is possible between students’ performances. Is it not an indication that a lot of evaluators may be going to the valuing expedition with pre determined marks, just in order to “finish” a large number of papers to earn a few rupees more ?

The result of such a system is that we find instances where students having attempted only for, say 40 marks, get more than 60! Also there are thousands who fail the exams leading to majority of colleges showing very low pass percentage. Of course, the low performance levels are also due to the low level of students taken in. But the evaluation method makes some good students get low marks and poor students get good marks.
The comedy starts after the results are declared. Thousands who fail, apply for revaluation. On a rough estimate (subject to verification), more than 75,000 papers are revalued every semester in Engineering. A large percentage of these end up passing by getting large increases in the scores. The university actually publishes these revised marks on their website, without realising that it speaks volumes about the shoddy valuation system. Further, the results of re-valuation are declared many months after the application, keeping the student in complete darkness whether he/she needs to reappear for the paper or not. By this time the next semester examinations come in and the students are still at their wits end.

In the case of MBA, the situation is more comical. There is a system of triple valuation. Two valuations are done first. If the difference in marks between the two is more than 15 (which itself is logically improbable), it goes for the third valuation. The highest of the three is taken as the marks scored. Even after such a vigorous system, a student can apply for “challenge valuation”. Records would show that hundreds of students apply by paying a princely sum of Rs. 5,000 per paper and a large portion end up passing. Some of them even getting additional 20 marks! The rule states that if the difference is more than 15, a portion of  revaluation fees is refunded. No apologies for a shoddy system, relief is only monetary! In the process the university makes money. There are many cases where a student is declared failed and ends up repeating a year. But once the marks cards are issued, after almost 8-9 months, it shows the student as passed. Again no apologies!! The university does not realise that it has deprived a student of one full year, only due to its pathetically inefficient working methods. A great system where inefficiency pays!

The story does not end here. Each subject of MBA has internal marks of 50 given by the college and the university examination is for 100 marks. Most colleges donate internal marks in excess of 35 (70%) irrespective of whether the student is really worthy. The objective is to “improve” the college results. In the university examination, the marks obtained are a fraction of this, since the real caliber is exposed. A glance at most marks cards show internal and external marks at the same level despite the maximum marks being double!! While the practice of donating internal marks is rampant in all the affiliated colleges, the University has, not even once, questioned or monitored the anomaly. This glaring inefficiency of the system is for the whole world to see since the marks cards give the two scores openly. Even the pettiest thief tries to cover his tracks!!

One cannot get a better example of formalising a farce. Imagine the state of the nation which wants to be developed by 2020, managed by the products of such a system, which hires out higher education. Who will bell the cat?