The concept
of distant education has taken a while to be accepted in the popular
imagination in India where it has been traditionally accepted since
Independence that the State will pay for higher education irrespective
of the market, merit or even financial status. But the pinch is now
being increasingly felt in the job market where virtually "unemployable
human resources" equipped with almost useless graduate or postgraduate
degrees are being churned out year after year by our colleges and
Universities. India is a welfare country where subsidies [non-merit
public expenditures] more or less benefit the privileged middle classes
and higher education is considered to be a tool that facilitates
proliferation of democracy. But "democratization of education"
[read proletarianization of meritocracy] can never be a solution to the
problem of unemployment and a stagnant job market.
Add unemployment and youth discontent to a serious population growth
scenario and you get an explosive combination where the entire nation
happens to sit on the top of a dormant volcano, apparently idling away
time watching the World Cup of Cricket, while permanent employment and
social security are fast becoming obsolete in a society where a job is
supposed to be like your mother in terms of security and sustenance.
However, the open school or University system can address this simmering
tension and disturbing state of affairs in an effective manner only if
more professional courses are designed by professionals to accommodate
our educated generalists, that is students with degrees in the
humanities, literature and social sciences. One such option can be
social work where the catchment area may cater to students from
sociology, history, political science, anthropology, public
administration and the like. The job market here is specific: the NGOs
who sponsor third actor intervention, public action and civil societal
advocacy.
Science and commerce graduates may even be taught entrepreneurial and
microcredit financing skills so that they may also contribute to the
nation's self-help movement in the professional services sector. Netaji
Subhas Open University, Calcutta is one of the foremost Indian
educational institutions in this area, according to Professor Asish Guha,
Director of Study Centres, NSOU.
The University Grants Commission's sponsored teachers' training programs
like refresher and orientation courses for college and University
lecturers are more or less like academic picnics where precious public
money is wasted in a meaningless manner over a period of three weeks or
so. As such our generalist colleges and Universities produce man power
that is often not employable without any further skill enhancement in
areas like computer literacy, management or any other technical
training. But India's tax payers have to still bear the brunt of an
expensive higher education system that almost entirely runs on subsidies
and without any material returns to produce in exchange. Doctors and
engineers and management professionals join the country's bureaucracy
after their professional attainments, thus resulting in huge losses in
terms of human resource management.
The UGC should seriously rethink its system of awarding scholarships,
funding seminars, symposia, workshops, travel grants, book and equipment
purchase and so on and so forth. Refresher and orientation courses are
almost entirely useless as after completion of these programs the only
people who happen to benefit are the teachers themselves so far as their
Career Advancement Scheme is concerned and nobody else. High theory is
flaunted at these programs with no regard to the UGC's guidelines that
undergraduate courses should primarily be brought into focus. Let's face
it: the commonplace and average student doesn't really need to read
about Plato or Aristotle - he or she is much better off studying how
commodities are produced for and exchanged in the market. This may sound
unduly harsh but students or trained human resources are, in the very
last recourse, commodities in the market to be bought and sold against a
value defined and determined by forces of demand and supply.
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