Transforming Higher Educational Institutions Into Centres of Excellence: The Case Study of the Indian Education System

1. Introduction

In modern times, the quality of education taught in educational institutions in India except for the branded institutes like IITs and IIMs is not very satisfactory (Data Trained, 2022). It is due to this that academia has failed to deliver on the expectations of the industry in terms of talent and skills required to perform the job efficiently and effectively. The principal task of any educational institution either a public or private school or university is to inculcate the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities in the students to make them self-sufficient in their life. Moreover, it is the teachers that nurture the future of any country by equipping the emerging generation with moral values and ethics enabling them to become responsible citizens. However, the irony of the education system in India is that very few educational institutions make concerted efforts to raise the quality of education offered to students. More often than not public universities, colleges and schools remain dysfunctional due to excessive state interventions and lack of autonomy is a pertinent issue that hampers innovation. Apart from this lack of funds and delay in disbursal of grants is also a common feature in Indian government-funded educational institutions. The policy is also not very encouraging as the total outlay of funds from the government towards the education sector is only 2-3 percent of GDP (The Indian Express, 2018). The geographical location of educational institutions also plays a vital role where universities and colleges situated in and around metropolitan cities fare better than community colleges. Also, the government-funded educational institutions run on a not-for-profit mechanism in which their sole motive is to give access to education at affordable prices due to which more burden comes on to the government for the upkeep of the institutes. On the other hand, the educational institutions owned and controlled by private players work more towards quality accreditations. It is obvious that the sole motive of private educational institutes has never been to deliver quality education only but also to earn money. It means that such universities and colleges believe in selling education, the higher the quality of education greater the price. There are some instances where private universities and colleges act like degree vending machines and are still operational without adequate adherence to rules and regulations. Although, government bodies have earmarked these educational institutions and blacklist them on a regular basis. The primary reason to undertake this study is to suggest ways to improve the quality of education and transform educational institutions into centers of excellence. It is also seen that branding of an institution is also very important that would enable an institution to grow further in which word of mouth plays a vital role. Unless the quality of education is not improved, any country would continue to face severe talent management issues like

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  Under-development of individual competencies

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  Brain drains of talent from the country

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  Unfulfilled industry expectations

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  Less inclination towards entrepreneurship

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  Less rewarding career opportunities

These limitations have been discussed in length as these are significant challenges that probably do not allow Indian higher educational institutions (HEIs) to be centers of excellence. It is evident from the fact that the world ranking of Indian universities and educational institutions is very low compared with foreign colleges and universities. In order to take full advantage of a country’s human resources, the quality of education has to be developed for which educational institutions need to be revamped holistically.