BOOK REVIEW Details of Book : Higher And Technical Education Book: Author: Publishing Date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Higher And Technical Education W. S. Kandlikar B. M. Naik 2010 Gyan Publishing House 422

Higher and Technical Education Book Of Knowledge covers a large number of topics involved in Higher and Technical Education system in India and also addresses the gap between Indian Higher education system and Universities world over especially universities in developed countries. When we talk of HE education in India, one of the critical issues in front of authorities, educationist, politicians and the people of India are the issue of Privatization and Autonomy of Academia. Of course with recent changes accompanying globalisation, technology advancement, we have many challenges facing us at systemic level, as in how much to spent on research, and technology up gradation, training and development programmes in HE etc. which we can learn from the west and implement here, keeping available resources and present needs in mind. My serious disagreement is with the Book Title which is Higher and Technical Education and used technical education and higher education interchangeably in the book, without explaining the structure and governance of Indian HE, types of University , colleges further division into General(art and science) and Professional(engineering etc), like many subcategories, technical or engineering education is part of professional courses, it becomes important to discuss the governance especially when Authors(s) have taken Autonomous and privatization as a core area in the book. Here in review I have used HE as a replacement for higher and technical education. The facts about the Govt. policies which have positively influenced and recognizes the urgency and importance of reforming the HE system in India, post 90s and measures taken place are completely missing in the book. National policys recommendations on University autonomous structure, effective delivery of research, training to teachers students and policy on technology transfer, teaching and learning and also current policies if recommends about meeting global challenges of industry etc, must have been discussed briefly. Prevailing issues with HE can best be understood in context of the most critical challenges faced by the system. The issues and challenges faced by HE in India, presented in the book in quite cumbersome manner. Contents of the book are ambiguous. Author begins with the state of autonomous system which he argued that autonomous status is precondition to succeed and achieve the education pursuits, we must have a committed institutional leadership, stake-holders must be empowered enough to meet the requirements for holistic excellence to become knowledge source of the

society. Author has cited the world experience especially the universities of either developed U.K, USA and developing countries like China, Vietnam universities model may not be relevant in India context since we have huge gape in planning and policies in terms of human capital investment in countries like USA, UK and China. Why autonomy and why it should not be implemented are at the core of the discussion, these in particular can only be understood when we cite case studies of few existing autonomous and non- autonomous functionaries, their differences and their success stories. Then only author can state autonomous is the only way to achieve excellence in HE and this has not happened in the text, it lacks on empirical evidence in this regard. Authors have discussed many positive aspects of autonomous system of education but they are also expected to discuss about the recent trend of making more and more deemed universities on fake grounds that have created a serious threat to our HE system. These stories are often not being discussed enough, and only success stories are being brought to the realm of questioning, like for instance, when we say that the only good HE institutions in India IITs and IIMs and then contend that they too are not competing with the good international universities, then where are we going? The 2010 survey by the London Times Higher Education Supplement tells different story. Such facts make it essential at present to examine these facts more critically. How can we improve our system, an assessment of where we are lagging behind, these issues are essential and important for discussing the question of autonomy of HE institution, are the areas where more stressed must have been made in the book. Similar is the case with the issue of privatization, which the authors argue has caused damaged to the fabric of Indian culture. They describe how and why privatization happened in India. At the same time they go on to valorise how United States has progressed in Higher education, attributing it to the long history of privatisation in the country and they also observe how Europe is lagging behind because it has privatized its education system very late. This in my opinion is contradictory to their earlier observations on the perils of privatisation in the Indian HE context. While it is noteworthy that authors have indeed engaged to some extent with the idea of privatization rather than dismissing it out-rightly, this engagement could have and does require a more deep analysis and engagement. In the Indian context where investment in Higher Education is very less when we compare the Govt. share of investment in developed countries, there is not adequate explanation of why Indian Govt. fails to increase expenditure on HE, more so in light of the human capital theory and HEs linkages with greater social mobility and hence economic development. So in my opinion author have pinpointed many positive and negative aspects of privatization and had compared private institutions and Govt. by large, but authors have failed in mentioning how the health of private institution in India or for that matter the health of public institutions can be improved, and what can be the remedy has not been discussed. Privatization of higher education, however, is not without social costs. In a polity such as Indias, where structured inequalities have been entrenched, privatization is sure to reinforce existing inequalities and to foster in egalitarian tendencies. This requires the social supervision of the private sector and effective measures for offsetting imbalances resulting from unequal economic capacities of the population. Thus, we again confront a dilemma: Theoretically, how do we

advance equality without sacrificing quality? Practically, how do we control the private sector without curbing its creativity and initiative? These are the few important questions should be raised and answered but are missing in the book. What will be the role of Govt. agencies like UGC/AICTE in context of private institutions, how is this sector envisaged in relation to its regulation and how can quality improvement be brought into the main agenda of privatization so that it actually contributes to strengthening our higher education system, is cursorily presented and needs strengthening both at the level of argument as well as empirical evidences. One more thing authors have mentioned that in India most of the private is running under the influence of politicians that is true and shareholders are different intellectual and business groups of societies but addressing its cause are missing in the book. Private institutions are working on profit making concept rather than imparting quality education, which is the most serious issue of privatization and this not been explicitly mentioned in the book. Private university end of monopoly regime, same thing has been repeated. Why Private University, cited examples of successful private university examples, stressed upon different positive aspects of privatization in India, role of bureaucracy, which is hi-jacking the interests of Higher education in India, all these arguments raised are good but authors opinion on entering of foreign university in India creates a contradiction of their own saying, as they have appreciated foreign culture of HE thoroughly in this book, so why entry of foreign university in India affect existing public and private universities in India, has not received a nuanced treatment from the authors. In a nutshell authors have not done full justice with this topic. Authors have stated that India should focus on world class knowledge or technological society but not clearly defined what they meant by Knowledge Society? Though have made many viable points like institutes plays a crucial role in building a technology oriented nation, professors are like navigators who give direction to industries and human civilization, institutes and industry should be supportive to each other, technology wealth is flowing from developed countries to developing countries and authors have presented the idea of modern institute etc. So here, do they (authors) mean modern institute should be the units of knowledge or technological societies? If yes then this is rightly said by authors that we need multifarious activities within the autonomous structure of institutes and if Govt. invest in such project will pay back 100 times and will empower our coming generation in period of globalization and industrialization. All the following topics discussed by authors were mainly based upon gap analysis between foreign universities and Indian universities and institutions, which we must take into serious consideration, as rightly said we lack visions not the resources. Throughout their text authors have emphasized the investment needs on research and development by Govt. agencies like TIFAC, ICSSR etc. as rightly said the big winners in this race would be those who simply make commodities faster and cheaper than the competition and they will be those who develop talent, technologies, techniques and tools so advance that there is no competition, these as author have said are because US Govt. realised in time to invest more in R&D, which is the reason why we have problem of

brain drain not brain gain. We need a model Like CEE, but how much effort we have done in this direction and how much this borrowed model would be beneficial has not clearly mentioned by the authors. So when we are comparing with counterparts we need to present above idea which make clear why India lags behind in this respect. The emphasis is given upon involvement in research activities required by our engineering graduates and technicians, but how to promote and strengthen research activities is not addressed. As authors suggest that Management education for In-service engineers is the only solution but on what ground are they arguing is not clear. These proclamations need to be discussed in detail having explored other important factors to the same problem must also be taken into account. Authors have presented some facts about innovation and how invention leads to innovation. The term entrepreneurship is used but how entrepreneurship development can be encouraged, is not addressed. Entrepreneurship and the sense in which it is used is not defined. In continuation same term innovation is used with technology transfer, which is based upon the survey on Management and Organization of Innovation and Technology Transfer in Germany and discussed suitability of these models in India perspective in spite of having many differences in HE. Idea behind selecting Germany for this study has not cleared by the authors. Similarly economic development as determined by scientific and technological capability of people that is true under quality assurance and quality management and hence authors bring this from the perspective of QIP, TQIP working manual in a cumbersome way. The Indian innovation system have many features that would enable dynamic innovative output author urges upon the need of more and more fund allocation from Govt. on students for innovation and discoveries to realize the vision of 2020. Old outdated practices of sanctioning resources, setting institutional targets for opening scientific project management based polytechnic colleges, making optimum utilization of resources etc. , should be replaced by new policy planning and practices. Teaching and research should be treated as inseparable. Author(s) have strongly disparage Indian HE, and stated that, higher education system is broad in scale and scope, its research output is poor. The university system has been adversely affected by inadequate funding, failure to recruit faculty, political interference, and a weak accreditation system, but all these statements given by author(s) are without substantiate fact.

It is realized in the book that the basis of development of any country today and tomorrow, lies in its educating people in technology, technology alone can convert material into usable goods and services, country can only be developed when it can export goods and services to other country, so as rightly said by the author, socio-economic and political development of any country depends upon its industrialization, on technical education of its citizens, as authors have pointed out we must emphasize the need of looking at technical development in holistic manner. The basic argument is for development to be taken to rural masses without which the overall development of the country is not possible. And if we open technical universities in rural areas then those industries should be based

upon the resources available there like agriculture university with some technical skill oriented courses so that technical graduates having passed from such colleges would have some employment in-hand, such fact we must include when we are talking for tomorrow to realized such developmental dream. But authors failed to discuss a very important fact that much more is required at developmental level by the State than just to focus on creating technical graduates. Globalization is another important aspect to realize the 2020 dream as authors have tried to deliver, we must learn from the west to compete with their universities but we cannot be just blind copiers, reforms for Indias higher education will have to be found within India as many of our great thinkers like Gandhi, Tagore etc. have also said in the past. Revamping is required but keeping the basic needs in mind. One very important point raised by authors is the need of credit transfer system in Indian Universities. We need work on mission mode to make India a technology oriented nation by 2020, author have almost at every point repeatedly suggested the need to understand the role of TIFAC, AICTE, UGC at the same time without examining and describing the role of the government. Need to invest more on higher education, but the arguments for the same are not dealt with clearly; how we need to re-engineer Universities, Colleges and Polytechnics- to Lead a Change is not engaged with. How much it will be relevant in India context, same examples are cited again, same issues are discussed in vision like privatization reverse brain drain, lifelong education but what is life-long education has not described, as the authors have world experience most of the time of this research study was spent in reputed institutions in abroad, so vision 2020 could have been represented in a much better way. In the sense of establishing the relationship between Indian HE with the Indian economy, we are required to present some under-covered facts and link them with catalyst of growth in HE sector, where authors have failed to do so. India has been growing fast in recent years. This has been driven by the growing knowledge sector bringing to focus the need for human capital formation through its large and expanding higher education system. The fundamental changes taking place in the Indian economy and the rising tide of entrepreneurship reflect Indias strength in the knowledge sector. Entrepreneurship in higher education and training has given a dynamism and vibrancy to this sector. Due to technological changes, a global occupational structure is emerging. Despite loopholes and weaknesses in the recognition system for degrees in India, Indias recent visibility in IT has created a distinct brand of Indian HE. Graduates from the Indian higher education institutions, particularly from some of the prestigious institutions, are sought after globally. As rightly said by author that India desperately needs institutions which will provide new generations creative, inclusive, inquiring, engaged and enabling leaders that will come out of the higher education institution. Multiple approaches in private and public sector will grow, at the same time author forgets to mention effective public private partnership is the desperate need of this industry. Then only Indian brand of higher education can be creatively used to the countrys advantage. Although authors work shows their intense passion to improve the state of affairs in HE system in India and to bridge the gap between Indian Universities

and their counterparts abroad, and has presented a good work but still in my opinion the authors delivered work isnt well-ordered form. Most of the topics are repeated, no proper hierarchy is maintained in the chapters form. One more point I will add-up here is authors have italicised some quotes but without the reference details most of the time and if used not in the right manner. Rest the points raised in this book do contribute, either as criticism in positive or in negative manner for the HE education agencies, stakeholders and policy makers, common man of this country.