For much of the world, including for the University Grants Commission or UGC of India, the pursuit of ‘quality higher education for all’ is a key goal. The UGC, in liaison with other regulators like the All India Council for Technical Education, has proposed a model curriculum – for all undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and any associated core or elective courses – as part of the solution.
However, standardised or so-called ‘model curricula’ are ineffective when students with a variety of academic abilities are enrolled onto courses. Those nations which have seen a massive rate of increase in enrolment over a short period of time often face this challenge. Regulators who insist that a model curriculum be followed are actually part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
We need to abandon the one-size-fits-all mentality. What is important is that there should be continuous improvements in the quality of education and that this should be judged by factoring in the variability of the quality of the students who are enrolled on a course.
In an expanding higher education environment, it is likely that many institutions will enrol students with a lower level of basic skills (reading, basic maths, thinking, etc) than institutions did a decade ago.
In India, this is mostly true, from Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management to unranked institutes, due to the unprecedented expansion in both the supply side as well as in the demand side. Lately, the supply side has outstripped the demand side in an environment of increased unemployment that impacts significantly on the demand side.
The UGC in India has the dual mandate of distributing federal funds as well as maintaining standards of higher education. The UGC, like any other government bureaucratic organisation, loves to micro-manage and this results in overregulated and under-governed academic institutes in India.
For this reason, it has proposed a model curriculum for many programmes and courses; and for other courses, other regulators like the All India Council for Technical Education step in. One cannot help but be amused by the detail given to content for courses like environmental studies as the link shows.
One asks oneself: why do we need a professor in the classroom then?
There is nothing fundamentally wrong in suggesting a model curriculum, but the problem is that universities as well as old hands within the UGC (or similar government-approved quality agencies in India) often interpret such guidelines literally.
What is often forgotten is the fact that the suggested model may be advisory in nature and not binding. The context should never be forgotten, particularly the issue of student ability.
Higher education expansion
India’s massive expansion of its primary, secondary and tertiary education system (in terms of both access and affordability) has been met with the usual challenges of lack of quality in outcomes.
In many instances, PISA tests and various other research findings have found that students in grade VIII in India may not have the desired reading or maths skills of a grade II student elsewhere. Therefore, it is no surprise that when many of these students complete their schooling and enter colleges or universities, thanks to a massive increase in the supply side in colleges, reading or maths skills often remain a challenge.
Recently, Western Kentucky University in the United States took the difficult decision of asking more than one third of the Indian students on its computer engineering programme to leave after the first semester as the university felt the students would not be able to meet the minimum outcome standards set by the university.
But there are hundreds of engineering colleges in India which would be keen to offer the same students admission on similar programmes. The huge oversupply of places across institutes has led to a massive under-utilisation of resources in engineering institutes in India.
Quality means different things to different people. The contrast is visible in the different approaches of the UGC and Western Kentucky University. The latter realised that quality gets compromised when higher education is opened up for all.
Quality benchmarks should not be static over time, meaning what quality meant with regard to college graduates’ reasoning skills back in the 1980s may not necessarily mean the same today.
But there can always be a market-determined dynamic definition of quality: the reasoning skills of a college graduate in China vis-à-vis in the US vis-à-vis in India today, all countries which have seen an expansion in enrolment. Every nation wants to be ahead of the competition as well as advancing in quality over a certain time period despite the issue of enrolment expansion.
Students entering colleges and universities are not a homogeneous mass having uniform reading, maths or thinking and reasoning skills; nor are these colleges and universities a homogeneous mass when it comes to faculty quality.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise when study after study finds that graduates in India are barely employable, for instance, only 7% of MBAs are employable, according to a recent study.
Employability skills are not developed by following a model curriculum from the first page to the last page, but by moving at a pace that the faculty member considers appropriate, ensuring students learn, understand, apply their knowledge and think – all of this initiated in the classroom.
The employability skills for a college graduate expecting a salary of US$100,000 are different from those of another graduate in the same discipline who expects a salary of US$
However, standardised or so-called ‘model curricula’ are ineffective when students with a variety of academic abilities are enrolled onto courses. Those nations which have seen a massive rate of increase in enrolment over a short period of time often face this challenge. Regulators who insist that a model curriculum be followed are actually part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
We need to abandon the one-size-fits-all mentality. What is important is that there should be continuous improvements in the quality of education and that this should be judged by factoring in the variability of the quality of the students who are enrolled on a course.
In an expanding higher education environment, it is likely that many institutions will enrol students with a lower level of basic skills (reading, basic maths, thinking, etc) than institutions did a decade ago.
In India, this is mostly true, from Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management to unranked institutes, due to the unprecedented expansion in both the supply side as well as in the demand side. Lately, the supply side has outstripped the demand side in an environment of increased unemployment that impacts significantly on the demand side.
The UGC in India has the dual mandate of distributing federal funds as well as maintaining standards of higher education. The UGC, like any other government bureaucratic organisation, loves to micro-manage and this results in overregulated and under-governed academic institutes in India.
For this reason, it has proposed a model curriculum for many programmes and courses; and for other courses, other regulators like the All India Council for Technical Education step in. One cannot help but be amused by the detail given to content for courses like environmental studies as the link shows.
One asks oneself: why do we need a professor in the classroom then?
There is nothing fundamentally wrong in suggesting a model curriculum, but the problem is that universities as well as old hands within the UGC (or similar government-approved quality agencies in India) often interpret such guidelines literally.
What is often forgotten is the fact that the suggested model may be advisory in nature and not binding. The context should never be forgotten, particularly the issue of student ability.
Higher education expansion
India’s massive expansion of its primary, secondary and tertiary education system (in terms of both access and affordability) has been met with the usual challenges of lack of quality in outcomes.
In many instances, PISA tests and various other research findings have found that students in grade VIII in India may not have the desired reading or maths skills of a grade II student elsewhere. Therefore, it is no surprise that when many of these students complete their schooling and enter colleges or universities, thanks to a massive increase in the supply side in colleges, reading or maths skills often remain a challenge.
Recently, Western Kentucky University in the United States took the difficult decision of asking more than one third of the Indian students on its computer engineering programme to leave after the first semester as the university felt the students would not be able to meet the minimum outcome standards set by the university.
But there are hundreds of engineering colleges in India which would be keen to offer the same students admission on similar programmes. The huge oversupply of places across institutes has led to a massive under-utilisation of resources in engineering institutes in India.
Quality means different things to different people. The contrast is visible in the different approaches of the UGC and Western Kentucky University. The latter realised that quality gets compromised when higher education is opened up for all.
Quality benchmarks should not be static over time, meaning what quality meant with regard to college graduates’ reasoning skills back in the 1980s may not necessarily mean the same today.
But there can always be a market-determined dynamic definition of quality: the reasoning skills of a college graduate in China vis-à-vis in the US vis-à-vis in India today, all countries which have seen an expansion in enrolment. Every nation wants to be ahead of the competition as well as advancing in quality over a certain time period despite the issue of enrolment expansion.
Students entering colleges and universities are not a homogeneous mass having uniform reading, maths or thinking and reasoning skills; nor are these colleges and universities a homogeneous mass when it comes to faculty quality.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise when study after study finds that graduates in India are barely employable, for instance, only 7% of MBAs are employable, according to a recent study.
Employability skills are not developed by following a model curriculum from the first page to the last page, but by moving at a pace that the faculty member considers appropriate, ensuring students learn, understand, apply their knowledge and think – all of this initiated in the classroom.
The employability skills for a college graduate expecting a salary of US$100,000 are different from those of another graduate in the same discipline who expects a salary of US$
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