Vice-president Hamid Ansari speaks about need of reform in higher education
ASHISH KEDIA , TEN NEWS
Interacting with students at Sharda University Greater Noida, Vice-President Hamid Ansari today said that it is very important for us to focus on higher education as much as we do on primary education.
Replying to a question regarding budget allocation for education sector being less than budget allocation for defence sector he said,”how do we produce skilled labour if we are only concerned with primary education. We must accept that this piece of legislation that we call Right to Education is not actually working. Quality of teachers that we have is not hidden from anyone.There was a time when Master ji of a village was revered. Not anymore. The problem is we are not investing in education as much as we should”.
Speaking about blend of education and technology and decreasing quality of research based education he said,”Smart classroom is a good concept but not many public sector classrooms have them. We are simply not devoting enough resources to it. Some years back I saw an official report about Phd in field of natural sciences in India. For year 1985 the number for India was twice than being produced in China. In 1995 we were equal whereas in 2005 China was more than double of India”.
Speaking about lack of interest in students to get into field of research he said,”if 100 students take admission, after a year around 30 drop out because of getting selected in some competitive examination. In the second year some more drop-out. Their main target is government service examination. The situation has become such that after 4th attempt of not qualifying IAS or other competitive examination they get in research field. This has become our benchmark and this needs to be changed”.
