MUMBAI:
It would seem a good time to be Kinjal Bhuptani. She is a college student
studying business in the financial capital of one of hottest economies on
earth.
But she has no illusions of sharing in India's new found prosperity
when she graduates from Hinduja College this spring. While
others land $100,000-a- year jobs at Goldman Sachs and Microsoft, she is more
likely to make $4 a day selling credit cards door to door.
Bhuptani's mistake, if you can call it that,
was not getting into one of India's most elite
universities, like the Indian Institutes of Management or Indian Institutes of
Technology. Those who are admitted go on to enjoy handsome paychecks on Wall
Street and in Silicon Valley, and to steward some of the world's largest
companies.
In the shadow of those marquee institutions,
most of the 11 million students in the 18,000 Indian colleges and universities
receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obeisance and light on marketable
skills, students, educators and business leaders say. All but a tiny handful of
graduates are considered unemployable by top global and local companies.
"We might as well not have studied,"
Bhuptani said.
The Indian educational system is locking
millions of students in the bottom berth of a two-tier economy, critics argue,
depriving the country of the fullest expression of their talents and denying
students a chance to share in the fruits of reform.
The problem, experts say, lies in a classroom
environment that infantilizes students well into their mid-20s, emphasizing
silent note-taking and discipline at the expense of analysis, debate and
persuasion.
Students at second- and third-tier colleges
suffer not because of a dearth of technical ability or intelligence, critics note.
Most simply lack the "soft skills" sought by a new generation of
employers but still not taught by change-resistant colleges: the ability to
speak crisp English with a placeless accent, to design and give PowerPoint
presentations, to write in logically ordered paragraphs, to work collegially in
teams, to grasp the nuances of leadership.
"It's almost literally a matter of life
and death for them," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National
Association of Software and Services Companies, an influential trade body that
represents many of India's leading employers. A study that the group published
last year concluded that just 10 percent of Indian graduates with generalist
degrees were considered employable by major companies, compared with 25 percent
of engineers.
"The university has become a
placeholder," said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former Harvard professor who
recently resigned in frustration from the National Knowledge Commission, a
panel advising the Indian government on overhauling its education system.
India is one of those rare
countries where you become less able to find a job the more educated you get.
College graduates suffer from higher jobless rates - 17 percent in the 2001
census - than high school graduates.
But even as graduates complain of the paucity
of jobs, companies across India lament the lack of
skilled talent at their disposal. The paradox is explained, experts say, by the
poor quality of the undergraduate experience. India's thousands of
colleges are swallowing millions of new students every year, only to spit out
degree holders that no one wants to hire.
The differences between elite colleges and
those attended by the majority can be striking.
Enter the manicured lawns and rarefied world
of St. Stephens College in New Delhi, one of the country's
best- known colleges. As an institution that counts among its alumni a
well-known novelist (Amitav Ghosh), a top UN official (Shashi Tharoor), and a
former president of Pakistan (General Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq), St. Stephens offers an illustration, through contrast, of what
lesser institutions lack.
P. Jacob Cherian, the acting principal, said
the essential difference was a focus on leadership and communication skills,
neglected at most other institutions. As on leading Western campuses, the students
have frequent chances to meet and attend speeches by prominent leaders.
"It's when you practice the skills that
you actually learn them," Cherian said.
But outside elite enclaves like St. Stephens,
tertiary education is a exercise in drudgery.
Take, for example, Hinduja College in Mumbai. It is
located in one of India's richest enclaves,
but it is a second-tier, no-name school, exemplifying a middling college
experience - neither the best nor the worst.
In between lectures, dozens of students
swarmed around the reporter to complain about their education.
"What the market wants and what the
school provides are totally different," said Sohail Kutchi, a commerce
student.
The students said they were not learning to
communicate effectively, even as mainstay activities in the Indian economy
evolve from pushing papers to answering phones and making presentations. There
were few chances to work in groups or hold discussions. And in this purportedly
English-language college, the professors used bad grammar and spoke in thick
accents.
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