Indian Education System Is The Best … For India!

One keeps hearing that the Indian education system is lousy, how good the European system is, blah blah blah.

Actually, the Indian education system is the best there is … for India.

This becomes very clear when one examines a few key parameters from some other education systems.

Let’s take the age of graduation.

In Germany, for example, a person completes university education at an average age of 28 years. Yes, that’s right. While a few people come out at 26, there are several who take till 32 also. Contrast this with the average age of around 20 for a university graduate in India. Even granting that the average university graduate in Germany comes out with a post-graduate degree — their university system does not have the concept of bachelor’s degree, it’s all master’s degree only — and is perhaps more worldly-wise compared to the average Indian university graduate, the fact is, in India, we cannot afford for a person to wait till the age of 26 or 28 to start earning their own income. Neither does the Indian government provide for free university education, whereas university education is free in most European countries including Germany.  

Another parameter is the “standard” of education.

When I started off at IIT Bombay in 1980, there was a spate of so-called “capitation fee” engineering colleges opening up in Bangalore, Mangalore, Manipal, and elsewhere in Karnataka. When they started, it was rumored that many of them had very few faculty members, some of them had absolutely no lab facilitities, and so on. Many people used to wonder what kind of output is going to be produced from such colleges.

But, today, we can be sure that it is such colleges who have contributed largely to the creation of the huge pool of engineering resources that has made Bangalore an IT superpower in the world.

Therefore, in my opinion, there is no need to be overly-critical or defensive about the Indian education system. I think, given the needs of India, our education system is the best there is.

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9 Comments

  1. gregtossy

    Established in 1997, St. Gregorious Edu-Guidance is a leading education consultancy services providing exemplary service to students all over India. We deal in Admissions to all major professional courses in Premier Institutes across India. We are your one step solution for all career related needs, it may be MD, MBBS BE, BTech (ALL BRANCHES), , MDS, BDS, BPharm, BArch, MBA, MTech, MS, , PhD or any other courses. We provide personalized career solutions on an individual basis keeping in mind the aspirations of our client as well as the affordability factor.
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  2. joji

    Established in 1997, St. Gregorious Edu-Guidance is a leading education consultancy services providing exemplary service to students all over India. We deal in Admissions to all major professional courses in Premier Institutes across India. We are your one step solution for all career related needs, it may be MD, MBBS BE, BTech (ALL BRANCHES), , MDS, BDS, BPharm, BArch, MBA, MTech, MS, , PhD or any other courses. We provide personalized career solutions on an individual basis keeping in mind the aspirations of our client as well as the affordability factor.
    FOR ALL CAREER RELATED NEEDS CONTACT US :
    St. Gregorious Edu-Guidance,
    #2, 2nd Floor,
    J J Complex, Above Chemmannur Jewellers,
    Marthahalli – P O,
    Bangalore – 560037
    Karnataka
    e-mail :jojishpaily@gmail.com
    Contact: +91 9448516637
    +91 9886089896, +91 9449009983
    080-32416570, 41719562

  3. Chandankumarjain

    If so why not even a single indian institution comes under top hundred institution in world?????????

  4. sketharaman

    Good question. However, for a country like India, education is largely a means to an end of securing a good job, career, etc. As the Indian IT industry has shown, our institutes have succeeded in producing massive quantity of students. While featuring in the Top 100 universities of the world is a noble goal, absence from this list does not negate the success of Indian education system in performing its role as means to the end, instead of end in itself. 

  5. Raj

    However we do have to admit we have a long way to go, as our current high school system is extremely “inefficient”. There is a tremendous waste of resources and the inherent curiosity of students are not utilized maximally. 

    In a world where employers are complaining about graduates having no work or life skills, our schools succeed only at creating clerks – its original aim when the British introduced the system. It creates followers, and not leaders. I’m not referring to the top Indian institutions, but schools and colleges in general.
    We need to create leaders, not followers to attain maximum potential.

    During a time when the western world is focusing on innovation and creativity, we are playing “catch-up” doing the left-brained analytic work that the Westerners did at the turn of the century during the Industrial Revolution. 

    Indian institutions are successful only due to the sheer NUMBER of students in India. If we were to calculate the efficiency, or the percentage of productive students produced per total number educated, we wouldn’t be very high up.

    Although many other systems are lagging behind, igniting the flame of passion for learning in Indian students will help in tapping India’s unmatched potential and give it a lead over the other nations.

    New Zealand’s educational system (involving clusters of charter or community-elected schools where one school acts as a coordinator for innovation), the Finnish educational system, or the Swedish Forest Kindergarten system (low infrastructure costs) are good examples that can be adapted to Indian needs.

    The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) and the IB systems offer frameworks that can be adapted into cost-effective methods.

    Although India will certainly reach that level, I believe that the change will come from the youngsters who have the problems of the current system fresh in their minds, and not from older individuals who have gone through the system and learn to accept it. This is not necessarily rationalization, but is most likely the result of the huge difference in demands imposed on two different generations. 

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