Quality, cost, and equity remain key US-India education challenges

Before freedom, many children, especially girls, were not in school. Independent India has managed to bring almost all children to school. In elementary education, gross enrolment ratio (GER) – that is, the number of elementary school children as a proportion of children in the age-group who should be there – started exceeding 100 per cent by the early 2000s with some older learners returning to school. Key policies like the Mid-day Meal Scheme and the Right to Education Act (2009) played a major role.  

In 2021-22, there were about 1.5 million schools (grades 1-12) with 265 million students—nearly 80 per cent of the total US population. Except perhaps a few very remote areas, most habitations have accessible options. With India’s fertility rate falling to 2.01 in 2022, the school-going population (ages 6-17) has declined by 6 per cent over a decade, and some once-thriving schools now have only a single student.  

While the ‘quantity’ problem of schools has been resolved, the ‘quality’ problem remains. A pressing issue today is the lack of foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) — the ability to read, write, and perform basic math -- after elementary school, especially for first-generation learners. The no-detention policy, which promoted automatic promotion until Class 8, might have worsened learning gaps by shrouding the problem. Now, State governments can hold examination in Classes 5 and 8 and detain students if they fail. However, remedial classes for children who fall behind, a sound solution to the FLN problem, still wait to be introduced in all elementary schools. 

The ’quality’ problem in schools also manifests in the difficulties in securing admission to ‘reputed’ schools. In almost every city or town, you can get your child admitted to many schools, but to a school of repute is an uphill task.  The same problem exists in higher education with greater severity. 

The number of higher education institutions has multiplied since Independence to over a thousand universities and about 17,000 colleges. Yet, only about 25 lakh students graduate every year in India compared to 1.2 crore in China.  India’s low GER of 26.3 per cent in higher education stems partly from poor school completion rates. Without finishing school, students cannot pursue higher studies.  Addressing challenges in school education is essential for solving India’s overall education problem. 

India needs many more graduates and diploma holders, especially in medicine. Scarcity of medical education facility is manifest in around 25 lakh candidates appearing for admission to about 110,000 MBBS seats.  The acceptance rate is only 4.5 per cent.   The same is true for reputed engineering colleges. About 1.3 million appear in IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for about 15,000 seats in IITs. The joke is: it is harder to get into the IITs than to MIT in the US.  The acceptance rate in IITs is about 1.5 per cent compared to 4.5 per cent at MIT. Getting into the best institutions in higher education is a problem in any country, but the perceived gap in excellence between the top and the middle level institutions is extremely high in India. 

With shortage of facility at home, many Indian students go abroad to pursue quality higher education. In terms of students studying abroad, India is the second highest with every year, almost half a million students going abroad, second only to China. US is their most popular destination.   

Differentials in salaries, research facilities and quality of peers play a major role in determining the quality of teachers in educational institutions. Highly qualified and effective teachers and researchers tend to congregate in a few institutions and tend to attract the best students. Good students are an integral part of a successful educational institution. The US-India complementarity in higher education stems from the availability of a large number of extremely bright students in India, who read, write and speak English, and are in search of quality education, and the presence of a large body of outstanding professors and researchers in the US.    

It is uneconomic for the US-India collaboration in higher education to remain restricted only to Indian students going to the US.   It will be more efficient and cost-effective for a few thousand young men and women to study in India under a few professors from abroad, than all of them relocating to a foreign country for the same service.   

The salary differential between India and the US is a challenge.  It may be difficult for government institutions to pay attractive salaries, at least for now. But the problem in paying competitive salaries is much less in private universities.  There are quite a few of them which have been established in the last two decades by successful entrepreneurs and businessmen, often first generation.  They are not-for-profit and for philanthropic purposes. Examples include Ashoka University, Krea University, Plaksha University and Shiv Nadar University.  This collaboration is particularly important in STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and medicine. While STEM subject can be higher education’s main pillar in India, we also need to develop the second pillar – humanities that includes the study of history, philosophy, language and culture. To combine technological advancement with good citizenship, we should also get a few outstanding scholars and academics in humanities from the US. This will help us –both in India and the US – to understand each other better. 

India has exported erudition since Independence. Some of these exports as software engineers, bankers, and medical doctors in the US are there for everyone to see. Some erudition was imported from the US by sending students to the US.  It is high time to import some academics from the US for delivery of higher education in India at a lower cost per recipient and scale up the service.  It will work wonders for not only moving the country to Vikasit Bharat, but also to augment mutual understanding in our two large democracies.   (The author is an economist and a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly)   These are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper