First, consider inadequate competition between the schools. The severe competition among striving, smart youngsters allows institutions themselves to live the good life. If credible global institutions enter India, it will make the incumbent institutions' professional lives harder. Expect India's 'best' institutions, therefore, to resist. Truth is, there are sufficiently few institutes in India that merit the appellation "excellent," and the heavy supply of applicants ensures that there's no urgency to improve these programs.
Second, there is inadequate experimentation. The Indian education system reminds one of the hamster endlessly rotating its hamster wheel with no end in sight. There is a certain mind-numbing uniformity to the path which the average upwardly aspiring family desires for its progeny. This is, to put it mildly, sad. All the ample research on education, not to mention common sense, suggests that the phrase "different strokes for different folks" is a better description of what India's youth need. Institutions should specialize not just in classroom learning, but in vocational skills, in experiential learning, in experimental learning, and many other modes. While there are localized pockets of such experimenting in India, they are sufficiently scarce as to not to make much of a difference (yet).
...
Third, there is inadequate measurement. There are few credible metrics at any stage of the Indian education system (other than entrance examinations perhaps to a small handful of institutions). We do not know the effectiveness of particular curricula, probably set by a sclerotic and unconstrained bureaucracy, nor the effectiveness of particular institutions, nor the ability of particular teachers to excite enthusiasm or to inspire a lifelong commitment to learning. As the old saw goes, what is not measured is not managed. ...
Indian higher-education institutions need to experiment and measure so that we can find out which strokes work for which folks.
Tarun Khanna is Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School , Director of Harvard University's South Asia Initiative, and co-author of Winning in Emerging Markets: A Roadmap for Strategy and Execution, Harvard Business Press, 2010. A longer version of this post originally appeared on Livemint.com
9:49 AM Thursday June 9, 2011
by Tarun Khanna
Second, there is inadequate experimentation. The Indian education system reminds one of the hamster endlessly rotating its hamster wheel with no end in sight. There is a certain mind-numbing uniformity to the path which the average upwardly aspiring family desires for its progeny. This is, to put it mildly, sad. All the ample research on education, not to mention common sense, suggests that the phrase "different strokes for different folks" is a better description of what India's youth need. Institutions should specialize not just in classroom learning, but in vocational skills, in experiential learning, in experimental learning, and many other modes. While there are localized pockets of such experimenting in India, they are sufficiently scarce as to not to make much of a difference (yet).
...
Third, there is inadequate measurement. There are few credible metrics at any stage of the Indian education system (other than entrance examinations perhaps to a small handful of institutions). We do not know the effectiveness of particular curricula, probably set by a sclerotic and unconstrained bureaucracy, nor the effectiveness of particular institutions, nor the ability of particular teachers to excite enthusiasm or to inspire a lifelong commitment to learning. As the old saw goes, what is not measured is not managed. ...
Indian higher-education institutions need to experiment and measure so that we can find out which strokes work for which folks.
Tarun Khanna is Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School , Director of Harvard University's South Asia Initiative, and co-author of Winning in Emerging Markets: A Roadmap for Strategy and Execution, Harvard Business Press, 2010. A longer version of this post originally appeared on Livemint.com
9:49 AM Thursday June 9, 2011
by Tarun Khanna
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