Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (The problem with our education system) that was published in Newsband

The problem with our education system

While primary and secondary education remain essentially broken, having failed to adequately serve the majority of the population, they are yet producing enough aspirants to cause a demand crisis in higher education. The education system is failing. It is encouraging students to try their luck overseas, reinvigorating the brain drain precisely when it is being reversed by uncertainties and visa restrictions abroad.

The university system in India does not believe in having quotas for extra-curricular activities. A promising basketball player in the US will be sought out by leading universities, but this does not happen in India. The real problem is the widening gap between the demand and supply of higher education.

This gap can be narrowed only by the rapid deployment of hundreds, if not thousands, of new institutions. Teaching shops should be discouraged and standardization promoted, so they should be rooted in existing educational canons.

The government has tried to get up to speed by pushing the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill of 2010. Despite a cabinet nod, it languishes. To bypass the need for legislation, it has also called upon the University Grant Commission (UGC) to formulate guidelines for twinning Indian universities with their peers overseas, a policy that is followed in technical education.

However, fresh legislation is necessary for a sweeping change, for which the government must make a lot of effort. Education should facilitate overall development of students. Where every average student gets above 90 percent, there is not much value in the number. Colleges and Media should understand and start using the concept of percentiles.

It seems that in the Delhi university case, to make it to the top 10 percentile, you have to get closer to 99 percent marks, because so many students are getting this "high" marks easily. This also highlights why the IITs were right in not accepting a crude average of the JEE marks and the 12th standard board marks as an admission criteria. While it may be relatively easy to get 99% in Delhi, it may be much more difficult to do the same in Kerala, unless the 10 + 2 system in Kerala does the same dilution in its 12th exams.

So in addition to the foreign investment, it is also required to bring some clarity into the discussion in the near term. Media can start that detailed conversation. FDI in Education will start protests, but well argued support can clear the way.