The right education for right job

When we embarked on the globalization, detractors cried that all the bonanza of the global village would be grabbed by the rich few and enveloping countries like India would be worse off.

But the soothsayers have been proved wrong and with every passing day one would discover that it was never so good for Indian youth before globalization. Top IT companies are visiting campuses of Arts and Science Colleges along with Engineering and MBA Colleges to select graduates for different IT related jobs. These raw graduates would be given short training before induction.

So breath taking changes are taking place across the world with education fast turning global and in this global interaction thousands of youngsters are going abroad for higher studies and employment and as many of them are coming to India universities. Indeed education in India had become global more than two thousands years ago when Chinese monks came to Nalanda to learn more about Buddhism. But today, along with the winds of change blowing across the different continents, the young minds embrace the whole world in one sweep, for knowledge transcends boundaries and narrow confines. In fact he has to hone his skills in such a way that he can no only became a job seeker, but a job giver.

Global entrepreneurs like Mr. L.N. Mittal are not made in a day, greatness has been in the making for quite a long time born out of right education, perseverance and positive thinking. Mr. Mittal could just have been a high salaried employee in any steel company, but here is a visionary cast in a heroic mould who hitched his wagon to a star! He has spread his empire far and wide. Isn't it a miracle that a Youngman of a country enslaved for over two centuries has come upon his own just a few decades after India's freedom? Mr. Mittal is a symbol of the grand vision Dr. Kalam has projected for India's children.

With commercial consideration ruling the roost, there has been a mushrooming growth of engineering colle According to the figure there are 1,346 engineering colleges in the country with an approved annual intake of 4,39,689 students. So we should see that states are not saddled with too many substandard institutions and the students do not risk getting admission to such colleges that lack both in faculty and facilities. IT would be a sorry state of affairs if world class institutions like IITs and IIMs have to coexist with those whose performance has yet to come up to mark, because we need the right education for the right job.

After checking out India's top engineering colleges, experts recommended in March, 2005 against putting them alongside IITs, saying it may even seem detrimental to the stature of the existing IITs. The findings came from two course - an expert committee and a standing committee. The expertcommittee short listed seen institutions in order to merit, taking into account all the relevant parameters. The committee stressed that even these institutions fall far below the level of existing IITs in all criteria used for short listing and may be described as institutions possessing the best potential among the engineering and technology colleges in the country for up gradation to the level of IITs. All this shows the best seats of learning wouldn't like to compromise on the quality of faculty and the high intelligence of the students.

India's main competitor China and other counties like Singapore. Taiawn and South Korea areinvesting in large and differentiated higher education systems. They are providing access to a large number of students at the bottom of the academic system while at the same time building some research-based universities that are able to complete with the world's best institutions. A recent issue of the London Times Higher Education supplement ranked the world's top 200 universities that included three in China, three in Hong Kong, three in South Korea, one in Taiwan and one in India.

India cannot afford to sit on its oars though it has a large higher education sector - the third larges in the world, after China and the United States. It has an edger over China in that it uses English as a primary language of higher education and research. India has a long academic tradition.

While only ten percent of the young in India go in for higher education, it is 15 percent in China and more than 50 percent in the major industrialized counties. Out top centers like IITs, IIMs, AIIMs and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research enroll well under one percent of the population.

It is high time we take hard look at our higher education making it compete with the best in the world. We don't want institutions that produce mediocrities. In the rat race China is heavily investing in improving its best universities with the aim of making a small group of them world class in the coming decades and making a large number internationally competitive research universities. India needs enough universities that not only produce bright graduates, but also promising reach icons badly required for our expanding knowledge economy.

So lets remember that only right education can provide the key to right job. Right education not only opens up the threshold of right employment, but the limitless possibilities of self employment. If you glimpse through the lives of the heroes of rage to riches stories, you would find that most of them had the brain and the brawn, but no enough money to launch the project born out of their pet idea. There were propelled only by the right education and indomitable will power to achieve the seemingly impossible.