Tuesday, 8 November 2016

India has a superior (or even a half-decent) education system!?

A confirmation bias, where we declare the superiority of our education system and attempt to substantiate the claim with exceptions, exists.
In reality, students seem to excel in spite of the poor education system, and not because of it.
  • Of the 74 countries tested in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) 2009, a well-known international education quality assessor, two Indian states (Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh) came up 72nd and 73rd in reading and math, and 73rd and 74th in science. In the following years, until 2015, we "opted out" of the test, citing excuses.
  • 62% of our universities and 90% of our colleges are ranked average or below average on the basis of NAAC accreditation
  • In the world QS University rankings 2013, India has only 7 universities in the top 500 - 6 IITs and University of Delhi - and 11 in the top 1000, with a highest ranking of 222.
  • In the U21 2014 country ranking for higher educational universities, India ranks last amongst 50 countries, behind Iran, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia
     
  • India authored 187 research papers in the year 2011, 5 times less than China, 7 times less than the UK and 23 times less than the US.
  • Indian education is a victim of prolific Macaulayism - the British policy of liquidating indigenous culture through planned substitution of it with the alien culture of the colonizing power through the education system. In many elite schools, our syllabi reflects a strong focus on colonial thought and ideals as opposed to traditionally Indian ones.  
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  • Industry reports say 1 out of 4 technical graduates and 1 out of 10 non-technical graduates are considered employable.
  •  India is ranked 142nd amongst counties by %age of GDP spent on Education, at 3.1%, behind Uganda, Guatemala and Cameroon, and has been fairly stagnant for the last 2 decades. 
  • The BBC reported that in 2008, only 15% of India's students reach high school.
  • 11% of Indians finishing high school get a higher education.
  • India's higher education student-teacher ratio is 26, 62.5% higher than the BRIC average.
  • India has a literacy rate of 74.4%, with a 17% gap between genders, lower than Iraq, Syria and the Republic of Congo.
  • Indian students spend $7 billion to go abroad and study in foreign institutions, whereas at the same cost, we could set up 10 more IITs in India.
  • Even though we flaunt growth in numbers, reports show that no teaching occurs in half the primary schools in North India, on an average day. 
  • 45% of positions for professors and 53% for lecturers went vacant in higher education systems in India.
  • Higher educations on average have 9 books per student. Compare that to Harvard which has 81

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