Suggestions for NEP 2020

First of all I appreciate the move of revisiting Indian education system. It has been long overdue. The change should be wholistic, with a defined purpose and should be implemented at all levels of education.

Multidisciplinary education

As I understand, we need 'multidisciplinary education' and not multidisciplinary universities. Converting all higher educational institutes to degree granting entities, may not solve the problem. Let the system evolve at its own pace. Let free market decide the course of evolution. Instead of directing the independent educational entities in which direction to grow and defining the process of growth, create an environment, an ecosystem conducive to growth. As a regulator government may decide (after consultation) the avenues in which there is no need to focus immediately. So, ecosystem support may not be provided for those areas.

Collaboration

As a step towards multidisciplinary education, facilitating collaborations between already existing degree granting institutes in the domains of humanities, social and pure sciences, engineering, management, law and medicine may be a more feasible idea. Let us decide the need of different profiles and create matching capacity.

Let each institute decide the output profiles of their pass outs and put together a bouquet of courses - some with own resources and others shared with partner institutes. For example a management institute may collaborate with an engineering collage for imparting technical courses to management students leading to a mixed degree. This way the need for investing in fixed assesses will reduced. Existing labs may be upgraded and faculty strength may be better utilized. For collaborations between institutes, the AACSB, NAAC and NBA ratings could be a good starting point.

There are few pressing issues:

1. Focus on capacity building for high quality research: Quality of research in almost all domains is pathetic to say the least. In some islands of excellence, like IISC, one finds some spark. The process of research in all domains need to be redesigned.
2. Give importance to vocational education: Currently our education system assumes that every student will definitely complete the degree in which she got enrolled. There is no exit points. Nobody is interested to consider reasons that forced her to discontinue the studies. Possibilities are that the student developed apathy towards the subject she had initially chosen, resources fell short, got attracted towards some thing else, circumstances force her to change the course. Recruiter society will take advantage with underemployment.
3. Entrepreneurial spirit to be encouraged: It is happening and picked up pace. Should be further accelerated.
4. Skill development: Is happening but till now impact is not visible. We need to put more focus.
5. Revive Polytechnics and ITIs: There are over 2100 polytechnics and 15000 ITIs in private and government sector. A few are exclusively for women. The curriculum, activities and industry linkages of polytechnics and ITIs need to be redesigned keeping in mind the demand of skill sets and knowledge.
6. Institutes of eminence: We have over 1000 universities. A large number of these have capacity in terms of infrastructure, and faculty to teach subjects Hindi, Philosophy, History etc., for which there are no takers (or the number of students seeking admission is far less). Students do not get suitable jobs with post graduate degree in such subjects. In my opinion instead of so much resources scattered all over the place, we should have a few institutes of eminence. For example have for post graduate degree and research in Hindi, have a few institutes with world class quality. Release the existing resources for the expertise that is needed. Rethink the entire structure of post graduate education.
7. Rethink undergraduate commerce education: A student with bachelor of Commerce degree cannot find a matching job. Why not reorient it with management or some other combination to make it more attractive for the recruiters?

These are a few suggestions for the planners and executives.

Lets hope for a brighter future for our children.