An alumnus of Andhra University, BITS-Pilani and the University of Bielefield, Germany, Prof. V.S. Rao is president of NIIT University, Neemrana (estb.2009), with 38 years of teaching and administrative experience at BITS-Pilani and Hyderabad campuses.

How satisfied are you with the Rs.85,010 crore provision made for education in the Union Budget 2018-19 of which a major share — Rs.49,530 crore — has been allocated for higher education? 

It is encouraging that in the Union Budget 2018-19, finance minister Arun Jaitley has focused on education and health, critical for growth of the Indian economy. 

In higher education, if we are to achieve 30 percent GER by 2020, participation of the private sector is essential. Therefore, a financial framework needs to be put in place to encourage public private partnerships while designing a robust regulatory framework to ensure that the quality of education isn’t compromised. Promoting state-of-the-art private education institutions that provide professional and employability-based skills education is essential for developing India’s future human capital. 

Not even one of India’s 800 universities is ranked among the Top 200 World University Rankings of the London-based ranking agencies QS and Times Higher Education. What are your Top 5 priorities for remedying this dismal situation?

Instead of becoming fixated with rankings based on parameters which may not be relevant to Indian conditions, we should focus on our context and needs, such as creating knowledge relevant to our economy, designing innovative teaching-learning processes, building real-time linkages with industry, etc. All of this can be done in quick time and at lower cost without mindlessly emulating foreign universities whose context is very different from ours. 

It’s important to note that the QS and Times Higher Education World University Rankings accord heavy weightage to research. But the great majority of Indian universities are teaching institutions with research being the domain of the CSIR (Council for Industrial & Scientific Research) and other dedicated research institutions. 
The low international ranking of India’s higher education institutions is attributable to the under-preparedness of school-leavers for higher education. What in your opinion are the urgent reforms required in K-12 education?
The Union budget’s proposal to treat education in a holistic manner from pre-nursery to class XII is a positive step towards improving school education. 

Moreover, as recommended by Unesco, we need to “create a supportive accountability system for teachers and administration by schools” and all other stakeholders in the K-12 education system. There should be a determined effort to improve infrastructure, recruit high quality teachers and use technology to revitalise school education. With this budget’s focus on holistic education, I am confident we will soon witness significant improvements in the country’s K-12 education system.

How realistic is it to hope that the Indian economy will realise its demographic dividend in the near or medium-term future? 

According to the well-known management consultancy firm Deloitte Touche and Tohmatsu’s third edition of Voice of Asia series, most countries in Asia are grappling with ageing populations, and imminent workforce shortage. India is of the few South Asian countries sitting atop a demographic goldmine with an average age of 27.3 years compared to 35 years for China and around 47 years for Japan.

However, to reap our demographic advantage, we urgently need to educate and equip our workforce with the knowledge and skills required by industry, agriculture and the social sector to develop the national economy. Focus on creating strong academia-industry linkages, re-skilling and co-operation among all stakeholders in education to enable India to realise its demographic dividend.