This is the flip side of the high growth in higher education in India; characterized by the mushrooming of engineering and management institutions all across the country. While the government and the AICTE can pat their backs on the number of approved institutions they have created for quality higher education so that every child has an opportunity to become and engineer or an MBA, the fact remains that such institutions do little to create a quality Engineer or a Manager. Isnt it true that in most of the engineering colleges in India, you can graduate as a computer engineer without having to write a single line of code?
The problem goes deeper than just the lack of quality in higher educational institutions in India. The problem is due to the lack of thought given to its development. While I agree with the fact that we need more institutes and colleges imparting good quality education, I also believe that we need to create a system which wouldnt skew an individuals thinking to a single domain. Higher education with regards to engineering and MBA shouldnt be made so easy that a student is not allowed to think about options beyond that. The contrast in the number of specialized institutions teaching arts and humanities and those teaching engineering and MBA say it all.
Its high time we stop talking about higher education only in terms of engineering, medical and management. Higher education needs to incorporate arts, humanities, fine arts as well. Till this kind of expansion is not given to the realm of higher education, we can only expect substandard products from even high quality institutions. An important facet of educational reforms should be the availability of options with a student to pursue the subject of his choice with an open mind. This option should be both in terms of availability of institutions and the availability of jobs (after the course). Quality will be restored when students are spread out in the many different fields that education has to offer.